Phnom Penh

Days 71-73

After an epic 21 hour journey we arrived in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh from Bangkok. The journey was nothing short of cruel: battling traffic, corrupt border officials, transport scams and poor roads to get here. But get here we did. And we have spent the time since exploring the sights and dark history of Phnom Penh. We will make for Siem Reap and the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat tomorrow   

On Friday (2^nd) morning we had to navigate our way back across Bangkok to the Vietnam embassy to pick up our visas and then to the Northern Bus Station to the Cambodian border and hopefully to Phnom Penh, but aware that transport and infrastructure would be considerably worse than Thailand we weren’t sure if it was feasible to go the whole way to the capital in one day. We declined the option of private buses from the Khoa San Road and decided that we would do it ourselves, this in hindsight was probably not the best decision.

 Getting around and then out of Bangkok was our first problem. The city is a nightmare to navigate around, which is a little difficult to understand since there are good roads and plenty of cheap taxis (as long as they switch on their meter!), and an efficient skyrail system. Our taxi crawled through the city to the Vietnam embassy, the 9km (5.5miles) took 25minutes but we soon had our visas in hand. We then made our way to the Bangkok’s sky train (BTS) to the bus station. The BTS was clean and efficient, if a little expensive, but it got us to the destination of Mo Chit were the bus station was supposed to be. Wrong; it wasn’t there but we grabbed a map and made off in what we thought was the direction of the bus station. Wrong again; after about 30 minutes of continuing to believe that it was just around the corner we had to admit defeat and flagged down another taxi to get us to the bus station where we caught a bus to Aranya Prahtet on the Cambodian border. This bus journey should have taken 4 hours, but a broken down bus and the horrendous Bangkok traffic meant that it was 6 hours later and 18.30 before we got dropped off at the border market. The border market in Aranya Prahtet is a maze of market streets and the bus dropped us 2km from the border post. Along with our equally clueless fellow Thai passengers as to where the border checkpoint actually was, we set off and eventually their ability to speak to the locals and our ability to follow them got us there.

We had heard plenty of tales of overcharging by the Cambodian border officials at this post, but we had researched and we knew all we needed was $20 and a passport photo for a Cambodian visa. In the immigration building there was a sign confirming this, but it didn’t deter an official producing another sign and asking us for an extra 100bhat (£2/$3). My wife though pointed to the more official looking sign on the wall and the guy didn’t push it and we soon had our visas. Our corrupt official’s sign was laughable, it was written out by himself in bubble letters on a piece of cardboard with marker - not the type of thing that should fool most people and he did relent quite quickly. However if he was more persistent and refused to give you a visa unless you pay what could you really do? Payment would be the only option. I suspect that the huge casino right on the border could contribute to this behavior of the immigration officials and an extra few dollars or bhat could be feeding a few gambling habits.

Once in Cambodia we weren’t sure how far we could to our next destination Phnom Penh so we set about finding a bus. Poipet is a dirty little border town and the transport for the tourists is controlled by a bus cartel who overcharge tourists by as much as 200-300% on local prices. Sure enough they weren’t going to let us slip through the net and a tout picked us up from before the border and we were soon forking out 500bhat (£10/$15) each to get us to Phnom Penn. It may not sound like a lot but in comparison today we paid $6 for a trip about ¾ as long as this. This bus itself was a local bus and the trip was the toughest leg of the journey as the road was potholed filled and the bus shock absorbers appeared to be nonexistent, the result from our perch on the back seat was like a shifting trampoline. Our fellow passengers seemed friendly though and one lady next to my wife offered me what looked like a cricket. I ate one and it didn’t really taste like much but then she offered me half the bag, I politely declined,  the lady wasn’t going to let them go to waste though and soon had the whole bag of crickets devoured. Unlike me, my wife who despite her chronic travel sickness managed a few hours sleep I got very little before we pulled in Phnom Penh that morning.

Cambodia’s official currency is Riel but rather strangely its use is minimal. All prices are quoted in US dollars and ATMs even dispense dollars. This along with the traffic driving on the right should make Cambodia feel just like home for my wife.  But then the lack of English, funky transport and exotic foods would leave you in no doubt you are in Asia.

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia and its busy streets are situated at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and the mighty Mekong river.  The Tonle Spa is fed by a huge lake which fills a huge plain in the centre of Cambodia and when the monsoon swells the Mekong a freak of nature occurs. The higher level of the Mekong actually causes the flow of Tonle Sap to be reversed and instead of draining its lake it starts to supply it with the Mekong excess. Phnom Penn was officially the capital ever since the downfall of the Khmer Empire, but it was not until the colonial French arrived that the city expanded and became a key trading post on the Mekong in French Indochina.  It has come out of a turbulent period of history and today looks like a busy thriving city, although not in the same league in size or prosperity as Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur.

After grabbing some much needed sleep we took off through the streets to the National Museum and the Royal Palace. The French influence is clear in the building architecture as we visited the National Museum which was packed almost exclusively with Khmer and Angkor Wat era artefacts; next up was the Royal Palace. 

Until I crossed the border I wasn’t even aware that Cambodia had a monarch, but the border post was welcoming us to the Kingdom of Cambodia. It has been a constitutional monarchy since 1993 and the monarchy has a direct lineage back to the Khmer empire. However Norodom Sihanouk, who had been in power since the new constitution, died on 15 October this year and is lying in state at his palace.  For this reason the palace is currently off limits for visitors and we didn’t get to see the spectacular looking buildings within the compound. 

Today we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which was the site of notorious political prison S-21 used by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 after a power vacuum and civil war resulting from the withdrawal of the French and the Vietnam war. Lead by Pol Pot they were initially cheered as they entered Phnom Penh. But he and his regime soon became feared and hated as they set about about imposing his Maoist inspired vision of an agrarian society in the most brutal fashion when the urban populations of the country were uprooted to be put to work on the land. He exterminated anyone that would not fit into his ideals, this included intellectuals and spectacle wearers and anyone else deemed to be an enemy of the revolution. The prison was used as a torture centre for political prisoners to extract some form of confession before they were shipped off to the Killing Field on the edge of town for execution. In the four years of its existence 17,000 prisoners passed through mostly all on the way to their death. Other similar Killing Fields litter the country and in total an estimated 2 million died in these mass graves. Walking around the prison walls was an eerie experience and it is difficult to comprehend the torture, fear and screaming that hung over this place on a daily basis when it was used as a prison. The instruments of torture, skulls, tiny cells and mug shots of the former prisoners all combine to chill your bones, despite the oppressive humidity. Thankfully back outside of the prison walls the city seems to be recovered and the once deserted streets are now awash with the scooters and honking of urban life.

Thankfully tomorrow (Nov 4th) morning we will be journeying to Siem Reap and a happier time in Cambodian history, when Cambodia happily lorded over their now more powerful neighbors from the mega city at Angkor.  Angkor is now the site of one South East Asia’s biggest tourist attractions; the giant temple of Angkor Wat.