Cambodia Day 1 - Phnom Penh

Wednesday, 14 October, 2009

I love budget airlines for their crazy fares! This time, we found a $74 Phnom Penh flight from Jetstar, and this even spreads over the Deepavali holiday! The regular budget prices are over $200. I always complain about how budget airlines like to cheat you and charge you that extra $5 at the end for admin charges or this and that (tiger now charges $6).. but oh well. With such mad prices, sometimes I seriously wonder how they make a profit.

After taking Jetstar, I hardly check the TigerAirways website anymore. I used to think that Tiger is way cheaper but Jetstar's prices are more competitive now. Also, Jetstar gives that 10kg (3 more kg than tiger) of cabin baggage allowance.. and most importantly, they fly from Changi T1! The experience, is way different from the budget terminal.

The best time to visit Phnom Penh is in November to January. The rainy season is from May to Oct. I have always thought that weather would change gradually, i.e. Oct is the last of the rainy season so it should be less rainy.. After buying my air tix I realized that October has the highest rainfall for the whole year!

Source: http://www.worldtravelguide.net

All the forecasts had gloomy gray clouds and precipitation warnings.. So we were prepared for bad bad weather.

The prettiest arrival/departure card I've ever seen!

Here's Sang, our driver. I booked him from Dara Prum Taxi cos they quoted me the cheapest rates for the Siem Reap round trip. He commented that 'Dara' is not free to bring us around.. Which makes me wonder if 'Dara' even exist, haha.

Dara Prum is supposed to be good at English and very knowledgeable about Phnom Penh. Sang is not. We were unable to communicate very well with him. We asked him to bring us to have local food, and he smiled and said he would ask his friend about it. We were wondering why he had to ask his friend for local food recommendations.. Was he not familiar with Phnom Penh? It took us half a day to realize that he didn't know what 'local food' means.

always make sure everyone throws away their stickers!!


First stop: breakfast


Menu in Cambodian. I approve!!


Love the painted adverts

It took us some time to figure out what to order though. Sang seemed to only know the words 'beef, chicken, pork'. After a while we decided soup noodles was a safe choice since it would definitely be cooked on the spot.

The fishcake dish was cold, but thankfully nothing happened to us from not eating freshly cooked food. At least we got to try something different. The noodles were nice but I still prefer Vietnam's pho bo which has a lot more taste even though they look the same.

While paying for the breakfast, the waitress came back to us holding a $50usd note. Sang explained to us that the note had a tear in it which was why she rejected it. I really should have checked before using it, cos I don't even know if it really was my note.

We later tried to use the note many times, but the Cambodians were very sharp and they always managed to see the tear and reject the note!

Anything that moves can go on their roads!

First stop: Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Well, while the weather was still good, let's go do something outdoors first. This place is located abt 15min out of Phnom Penh city. When I think about Cambodia, the 2 things that come to my mind is Angkor Wat, and images of skulls of victims of the Pol Pot regime.

The victims were sent to Choeung Ek from S-21 to be killed and the remains of 8985 victims were exhumed here.

This place is now privatized and owned by a Japanese company


This memorial stupa is filled with >8000 skulls




The clothes found were disinfected and placed at the bottom of the memorial

In order to save bullets, many of the victims were hit with sharp objects until they died. Toddlers were held by their feet and smashed against a tree.


This 'magic tree' had a loudspeaker hung on it to play loud sounds, to cover the moaning of the victims being executed.


It is always very depressing to see or write about these photos. And what's scary to me is that this wasn't committed thousands of years ago, but it only just happened in 1980.


Many kids were begging at the entrance, but this girl had time to pose for me! =)


Independence Monument, built after Cambodia's independence from France

We went over to the Royal Palace, but they were closed til 2pm. So we decided to go over all the most horrific parts of our itinerary first.. so that we can later lighten up our spirits and have a bit more fun. Time for the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. The name itself sends shivers down my spine.

This former high school is also known as Security Prison 21 (S-21). People suspected of espionage were detained, tormented and interrogated here. They included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc.

When the prison was found by the Vietnamese, some rooms had an iron bed frame with the victim's mutilated body still chained to it. A photo of the victim's body as it was found is hung on the wall.

shackles



Inside the prison



Barbed wire everywhere. This prevented the prisoners from committing suicide by jumping down.


tiny cell


I was quite fascinated that these people are staying so near to such a horrific place.

Ok, I think I am done with all the scary stuff. Time for lunch!

After we realized that Sang doesn't know what 'local food' means, we asked for 'Cambodian Food' instead. Here we are at Khmer Surin, which coincidentally is located right opposite our guesthouse! I love their 'fish omok' paste (bottom left), which is actually otah, but is very fragrant and there's lots of coconut milk in it.

great ambience.

Now that it's 2pm, it's time for the Royal Palace. A teenager selling drinks at the entrance started to talk to us and she told me that my shorts were too short to enter the place.. That was when we realized that her English was much better than our driver's. (We later realized that everyone's English was better than our driver's).

I went to change into longer shorts, and Erwin managed to use up my slightly torn $50 usd note while buying the entrance tickets! Whew.

This Cambodia trip made me realize that I love the saturation filter. Ok this is a bit overdone but.. haha I like it overdone!


We were super fascinated with this French building in the middle of the palace compounds! It's a gift from Napoleon III and looks totally out of place, haha. Why would anyone allow it there!

The sky was slightly overcast on one side.. but on the other side it was pretty and blue!


Chan Chhaya Pavilion




a mural of our favourite ramayana story

We went into the Silver Pagoda, but no photos were allowed inside.



From what I know, we've visited the most important part of Phnom Penh! Since we still have some time left, we headed to Wat Phnom. Wat = temple, Phnom = hill.

Most temples have this 7 headed snake (naga) at their entrance.



The temples usually have carvings of Apsaras, which are beautiful dancing nymphs.


super fat monkey!!! omg

Amazingly we still had some time after Wat Phnom. Actually we had used up the 8 hours' worth of tour for the day, but Sang was nice and said that it was fine to continue. So we actually have time to go to the Russian Market (Psar Tuol Tom Pong) to do some shopppping! I'm so excited at the thought that I can't type properly. The Russian Market is so called because the Russians used to shop here. I was quite excited because the guide books said that this market has all the factory rejects for brands like Banana Republic and GAP! AnF, here we come!

Unfortunately we didn't see anything interesting.. they did have erm, AnF.

At one section of the market, it was really dark, with a ray of sunshine coming through a hole in the ceiling, giving opportunity for interesting back lit photos.

After not buying anything at the market, we decided to head to our hotel to check in. Sang was not very sure about where it was (many other hotels are called Goldie something) so we were lucky that our lunch place was just opposite the hotel and we could just direct him to go to the restaurant.

Goldie Boutique Guesthouse. It wasn't as cheap as our other guesthouses, but the photos and reviews looked really good and we thought we would 'splurge' a bit for something nicer. (Oh, and they had this spa place that had $10usd massages too). Turned out that.. it was just OK. I think we could have went cheaper and got something still decent.

Good thing was that it was within walking distance to the Lucky Supermarket.

Of course we had to get our supplies.. So many types of Beer! Must try! (they pretty much taste like crap)

Keeping strictly to our budget, we had a very economic Lucky Burger meal.



This Lucky chain is everywhere. Supermarket, Burger, Cafe and Gelato.