Bird’s Nest Bevarage – 25% bird’s nest

Our first destination in Cambodia was the capital, Phnom Penh. Every backpacker you meet pronounces the name differently:

1) Penom Pen
2) Fnom Pen
3) Nom Pen
4) Fnom Fen (?)

The locals pronounce the name similar to number one but with the stress landing on the ‘om’.

Two million Cambodians live here amongst the traditional Khmer and French influenced architecture. It’s a bustling city with sharp contrasts between rich and poor, past and present. Plastic-chaired food stalls fill the spaces between chic cafes and restaurants. Temples and palaces are packed with regular worshippers while a young and small glitterati dedicate themselves to the lower pursuits of bars and clubs.

We arrived at our chosen hotel which was situated on the banks of the Boeng Kak lake in the middle of the city. The Lakeside area has been labelled Cambodia’s Khao San road by many travellers. It’s a misleading description. Lakeside is a small, relatively quiet alley and though a backpacker ghetto of pancake serving restaurants and tye dye clothe shops we saw more Cambodians walking the street than fishermen pant wearing travellers. The two cannot be compared.

For the rest of this post please go here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 8:27 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.