After two flights and about 15 hours of travel time I arrived Sunday morning in Phnom Penh. The first thing I had to do is get a visa. Even though the waiting lines were quite short, I first needed to get money out of the ATM, which didn’t work. Cambodia uses US dollars as their primary currency and I needed 20 bucks to pay for my visa.
As I also brought some euro’s with me I asked whether I was able to pay with euro’s. The guy who first sent me to another queue where I had to pay the 20 dollars, quickly said; euro’s? OK! 20 euro ok?? I figured this would be a bit more than 20 dollars, but I couldn’t care less about the few euro’s difference. I gave him my 20 euro’s and instead of having to wait in the big line, they immediately started to stamp my passport and gave me the visa.
Later on I tried to get money out again from a different ATM and it turned out it just wouldn’t accept my ATM card, but it did work with my Credit Card. Once I had money I grabbed a taxi from the airport to the hostel. Once I arrived there, I checked in and found two people in my Dorm; Joe and Jamy. An Irish guy and an American girl. I had a shower and then I joined them for a walk into town. Jamy had been in Phnom Penh for 3 months, so she knew her way around town.
Just 5 minutes walking the streets Jamy was nearly mucked by a scooter driver who tried to steal her purse from her shoulder. Thankfully someone walking behind us saw it happening and yelled at us as soon as the scooter driver tried to pull. He failed and she kept her purse. I wasn’t aware this type of mucking was going around here, so I was more cautious from there on with my stuff.
After a full afternoon walking through town and seeing most of the highlights we had some typical Cambodian lunch with rice, beef and some sort of sweet sauce. It tasted really good. Afterwards we went back to the hostel and I had a little powernap to get rid of my jet lag.
Later that night we had some dinner and some beers in the hostel bar which turned out to be a really nice social place to hang out. I decided to get back to my room for some sleep.
Day 2
The next morning I woke up fresh and energized. I decided to go and check out the killing fields and the prison S21 museum. After breakfast I walked to a few British guys and asked them whether they were going to the killing fields, it turned out they were and I asked them if I could join them. It turned out to be quite a depressing day, as the audio tour through the killing fields explained in detail how gruesome about a quarter of the whole population was killed in the most horrible ways, usually with axes, knifes or the sharp edges of the branch of a sugar leave tree.
I was happy to be with the other guys, as we all needed to vent this horrible information to each other. After the fields we went to the S21 prison museum where most of the people who were killed in the killing fields were first detained and tortured. After walking through the prison we were done. We had some food and then went back to the hostel. In the hostel I met up with a Canadian guy with whom I was going to watch the final episode of Breaking Bad with in a proper movie house. I had some food. Before going we went to the bar as between 7pm and 8pm the hostel gave away free beers on Monday nights.
After watching the episode of Breaking Bad we went back to the hostel and had big night out with the rest of the hostel. It became a nice night out.
Day 3
The next morning I woke up with a big hangover. I had only 45 minutes to pack my stuff and have a shower because I was getting a bus to Siem Reap. I made it just in time and then sat on the bus for about 6,5 hours. On the way we stopped for a quick toilet break .Whilst walking to the toilet I was offered all kinds of things, among others fried tarantula (spider). I kindly thanked for the offer and at some Pringles instead.
On the bus I sat next to another Dutch guy who was working in Shang Hai, which was fun to talk to. Once we arrived later that night in Siem Reap, I grabbed a tuktuk with two other guys who were going to the same hostel. With alll our big bags and stuff we cramped onto the small tuk tuk which was funny.
That night we had some food and a few drinks in the hostel bar upstairs. Around midnight we decided to call it the night and went to sleep.
Day 4
I slept in for a little while and then had a shower and had some breakfast in the hostel bar. Afterwards I met up with the British guy, Nick, with whom I had been to the killing fields the other day. We decided to go to the ancient museum to learn some more about the history of Cambodia and the ancient temples in this area. The museum was nice, but really big so at some point we were done with the history lessons. We went back to the hostel for some noodle soup. I then decided to write this first blog. We wanted to go and check out the temples at sunset, but unfortunately it started to rain really bad in the afternoon, so we decided to skip that and go tomorrow for a full day.
I’ll stay a few more days in Siem Reap before I’m moving over to Vietnam. From there I’ll continue my journey up the coast and then the rain should slowly start to disappear as well.
Sep 29th 2013 – Oct 2nd 2013
Leave a reply