Cambodia

Thats right boys and girls. We are in Cambodia now. From Saigon, Vietnam we took a 2 day trip through the Mekong delta and came up through Cambodia by boat.. We thought it'd be more interesting this way (instead of by bus) and it was. From Chau Doc, Vietnam in the delta region it was a full day's affair with over 6 hours in 2 boats and a couple hours by bus to the capital - Phnom Penh.

Boat trip through the Mekong Delta


Border crossing to Cambodia and a warm welcome by locals


We are down south in Kampot at the moment. Its a quiet little place. We got here yesterday after spending a few days in Phnom penh. PP is an interesting city that still has a long way to go as far as development goes. Not all streets are sealed and we had blackouts everyday. Phnom penh has lots of old French colonial building (like much of the region) as well as some new buildings including a very new 4 level western style shopping mall. A lot of the locals aren't used to this sort of thing yet as markets are still the main depots. Some fully grown adults haven't seen escalators and we watched a lady stand in fear refusing to go up one. Luckily the escalator trainer was there to help. There is a riverfront which has many of the high end restaurants. Not surprisingly, the area attracts the most beggars.

Phnom Penh: Central Market, A Typical Motorbike ride, An Elephant in a French restaurant, Silver Pagoda



We saw all the major sites of Phnom Penh in a day. Cambodia has got some seriously sad history and it doesn't look like its going to be forgotten anytime soon as the s.21 prison and the killing fields are arguably the two biggest tourist attractions in Phnom Penh. They got a shooting range near the killing fields where you can fire a rocket launcher if you want to but I think its somewhat poor taste to have such a place so close to the killing fields mass graves. Not cool. It also turns out to be more expensive as its 2 US dollars per bullet.

Shrine of human skulls at the Killing Fields


We visited the old capital of Udong the following day.. It was there that we really got to see the poverty. Being the only tourists there, we attracted a lot of attention with everybody wanting to sell us something or wave fan's at us to cool us down, hoping we'd flick them a bit of money. The kids were cool but they laid on the guilt trip nice and thick asking for money so they can keep going to English school. You could tell that a lot of the people there would be lucky to even make 1 dollar a day. Life is hard here.

Udong kids.


One of the things thats stunned us is how reliant Cambodia is on U.S dollars.. Almost all prices are quoted in US dollar and you only really need to use the local currency (riel) when you need to buy things that are less than a dollar as you can't use US coins. There are a few ATMs around and they all dispense dollars as well.



-Derek