Further Wanderings

Following our surprisingly simple journey into the country, and a very pleasant night in Battambang, we woke up nice and early to catch a bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

When I’d visited Cambodia about 3.5 years before the roads in Cambodia ranged in quality from mediocre down to utterly abysmal. Further, it seemed that almost every vehicle in the country was designed so that only passengers under 5′2″ (i.e. many Cambodians) could ride comfortably. Combined with the fact that vehicles were routinely packed far beyond capacity (I recall a ride in a small VW van type thing with 22 people inside) I expected that our bus trip would be far from pleasant.

Fortunately things had changed. The road from Battambang to PP was paved and in pretty good shape. The bus had air conditioning and (just) adequate legroom. And while we did have to stop to repair a flat tire, it was a pleasant enough stop featuring a chat with some Cambodian-Americans back home visiting and a snack of fried spiders on a stick.

Mmm… Big hairy spider in my mouth.  These guys were a lot smaller than the last spider I ate in Cambodia, but you got 5 of them skewered on a stick.  They actually taste pretty good, though I still wasn’t too keen on chewing up the squishy abdomen

This one I wouldn’t be quite so keen on eating (though at least it proved that they were fresh) 

As had happened a few times on this trip in other cities (e.g. Istanbul, Kathmandu) I was very pleased to arrive in Phnom Penh and instantly be able to orient myself and findmy way around from memory. This made it a snap to get to our hotel, the beautiful Boddhi Tree Umma.

The afternoon of our arrival we explored the immediate environs of our guesthouse and called my friend Samnang (or “Lucky” which is almost a literal translation of his Khmer name, and is what he calls himself in English.) He was busy for the rest of the afternoon, but we made plans to meet in the evening.

While Sarah and I still did catch most of the major tourist attractions in PP, having a local friend in town ensured we got to see some of “real life” in the city as well. Some of the highlights of our stay in Phnom Penh included:

Hanging around with Lucky. The first night we went for a walk around town, both to have a look and to chat and catch up as we walked. I originally met Lucky in 2004 in Kampot, his home town in southern Cambodia. Since then he had finished his nursing studies and moved up to Phnom Penh to work. That night we stopped at a restaurant and had delicious grilled beef with a huge pile of garnishes/accompaniments, followed by a big “hot pot” cook-it-yourself soup type meal. Both of these are Cambodian favourites, and there are special proper ways of eating each. For example, when eating the beef, you mixed the peanuts, chillis, lemongrass etc. in with the “cheese” (Cambodian cheese certainly smells like its made from some type of fermented dairy product, but is liquid, not solid and in almost no way similar to western cheese) but you leave the salt and pepper aside. Then you pick up pieces of beef or accompanying veggies and dip them in salt-pepper, THEN in the cheese. In the end Sarah and I just ignored the rules and ate in the manner that made everything taste best, but it was good to know exactly WHICH rules we were ignoring.

Lucky and I at dinner.  The meal was HUGE!  Even with three of us we hardly had a hope of finishing it.

Later during our stay we went out to visit Lucky at his work, a reproductive health clinic on the outskirts of the city. The clinic was small, but tidy, although very busy. Apparently each of the midwives there sees 70-80 patients A DAY. While all of the signs and literature in the place were in Khmer, plenty of them included lots of pictures and symbols, which made it possible (with a few questions to Lucky after he finished work) to learn quite a bit about how the place operated, and what its focusses and goals were.

Lucky’s work, the RHAC, was located in an industrial area of Phnom Penh.  As such its clients were mostly poor(er) Cambodians, and prices at this location were half of those at many other RHAC clinics around the country.

Even more interesting than this was our wander around the neighbourhood. Most urban Cambodians are used to tourists, but we still got plenty of surprised, but happy looks as we walked around the decidedly UN-touristy neghbourhood near Lucky’s very pleasant apartment.

The homes in Lucky’s neighbourhood were pretty comfortable looking place, especially in light of the fact that their primary residents were poorly paid workers in the nearby factories

The changed city. During my previous visit to Phnom Penh most of the city looked pretty beat up, and while there WERE tidier, more modern looking areas they were few and far between, were notable primarily as counterpoints to the far greater number of grubbier, poverty-stricken sections. It was astonishing to see how much and how quickly things had changed. It seemed as though virtually every building in central Phnom Penh had been re-built, or at least had a new facade and/or some fancy signage added to its exterior. And this WASN’T entirely a case of the central city being gentrified and the poor being forced out into suburban slums. Even when we went out to visit Lucky at work, things looked reasonably tidy, and the residences almost all looked new and well constructed (if a bit small for the number of inhabitants by western standards.) I’m sure there are parts of town that haven’t made the same strides forward, but generally Phnom Penh looked like a bustling, fairly prosperous city on its way up.

The food court at the Russian Market.  I had a noodle soup there for breakfast one day… Apparently the other Khmer customers are in connivance with the owner, as when I asked how much the soup was and the owner replied “6000 riel” (which was abut twice what it should’ve been) my neighbour at the table said “same price, same price,” while pointing to her bowl.

Food. But of course We’d had one Thai meal in Bangkok, and some yummy fried nootlde from a cart in Battambang, but we still weren’t very far removed from our months of Indian-subcontinent cooking. The fabulous fried vegetables with rice (three types of vegetable, each cooked its own unique and tasty sauce) we had in the market near Lucky’s apartment were probably the highlight. Mmm…

Just some of the huge assortment of interesting goods for sale in Phnom Penh’s markets

Exploring the markets. PP’s two biggest (or at least best known) markets are the Russian Market and the Central Market. Psar Toul Tom Poung, or the Russian Market as it’s more commonly known to foreginers is an amazing place. It spilled out of the building that originally contained it years ago and now shops and stalls fill many of the surrounding streets as well. The market is divided up into sections, and one can easily spend hours browsing through the fruits and vegetables, the motorcycle parts, the machine tools, the electrical supplies. Many of these sections now exist primarily outside the market, as much of it has been taken over by tourist oriented businesses in recent years. The most notable of these, the CD and DVD shops are either an intellectual property lawyer’s best dream or worst nightmare. DVDs of English movies sold at the rate of $5 for 3, while computer software, some of it titles that normally retail for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, was available at the bargain price of $3/disk.

Souvenier stands at the Russian Market

With the recent boom in tourism to Phnom Penh the number of souvenier stands in the Russian Market has markedly increased.  This has led to many of the local businesses picking up shop and moving into the streets outside (though even if the souvenier stands all disappeared, there still wouldn’t be close to enough room to fit ALL of the stalls into the market building)

While not as time-consuming (especially since the market building itself is no longer in use) the Central Market was still more than worth a visit for its art-deco design (and for its proximity to the long distance bus station.)

The central market (closed for renovations) was without doubt the most impressive non-royal, non-religious (which in Cambodia aren’t too far from being the same thing) building in Phnom Penh

The Tuol Sleng/S-21 genocide museum. Located in a school right across the street from our guesthouse, this place is one of PP’s best known, but darkest tourist attractions. It began life as a school, but when the Khmer Rouge took over it was transformed into a prison and interrogation centre where thousands of prisoners spent days, weeks or months before being taken out of town and executed. Since that time it has been left almost untouched, and now serves as a museum, a reminder to all who visit of the horrors that once racked the entire country. It’s interesting to note that most Khmers have (consciously at least) moved on, and my friend Lucky, despite being aware of its presence, had never even seen the place before coming to meet us at our guesthouse across the road. Last time I was in Pnom Penh I visited Tuol Sleng, but was made so miserable by the experience I declined to return and let poor Sarah visit alone.

 The exterior of the National Museum in Phnom Penh

A fresco in the royal palace showing a scene from the Ramayana.  The Ramayana is a Hindu epic whose stories and characters permeated Cambodian society in the Angkor era, and have remained tremendously popular until the present

The Phnom Penh royal palace skyline with monsoon clouds in the distance

The National Museum and Royal Palace. I ALMOST decided to skip the Royal Palace, as I’d been there before and the entry fee had tripled since, but I’m glad I decided to accompany Sarah in. Both the palace and the National Museum were very pretty architecturally, and each contained some of the few beautiful Cambodian works of art that survived destruction during the terrible reign of the Khmer Rouge. In the case of the museum, these are mostly Angkor-era (600-900 year old) stone and bronze pieces, while at the Palace (and especially in the Silver Pagoda within) they were newer religious artifacts. The fact that many of the relics in the palace were made of gold, silver or gems makes it even more surprising and fortunate that they survived the Khmer Rouge without being sold to overseas buyers or melted down.

The king’s stupa at the royal palace.  I didnt ever figure out just how many cremated Cambodian kings now lie beneath this stupa

 Gateway at the Royal Palace, Phnom Pen

This picture’s for my mom.  She’s very fond of Garudas, the bird-man creature that is the Hindu god Vishnu’s traditional mount.  This one, at the Silver Pagoda in Phnom Penh was her first favourite Garuda and the start of her fondness of (obsession with?) them

Celebrating Canada Day. We were in Pnom Penh on July 1, and since the Canadian Embassy wasn’t doing anything to mark the occaision, Sarah and I had a little party of our own (with the help of some friendly Khmers.) We spent the evening at the Coco Tree, a fun little restaurant-bar just down the road from our guesthouse. We had lots of fun there, drinking Cambodian beer, chatting with the staff and enjoying the general good cheer of the crowd. The $2 pitchers combined with the fact that neither of us had really drunk much alcohol since leaving Germany didn’t do much for our heads the next morning when we went to catch our bus back to Battambang, but it was a fun night, and more than worth it

We were taking the bus to Battambang in hopes of getting a cheaper boat ride to Siem Reap, and while we didn’t really accomplish this (the trip via Battambang cost us $1 mor than the direct boat from Phnom Penh) the boat trip we ended up with was more than worth the extra day’s travel.

The boat slashing through a larger portion of the river at full speed

We left early in the morning, on a boat filled with about 15 each foreigners and Khmers (though you can bet the Khmer’s weren’t paying $20 apiece for their boat tickets… grumble.)  The boat was a small-ish affair (certainly smaller than the boat I’d taken up the Mekong in 2004) which meant we couldn’t sit on the roof, but was still reasonably comfortable.  And while the wooden seats didn’t REMAIN entirely comfortable for the whole seven hour journey, at least the company was good.  Our fellow tourists were an interesting bunch to chat with, and several of the Khmers on board were lots of fun as well (plus they were so kind as to swap some of their lunches for ours.  Grilled banannas wrapped in sticky rice.  Yum!)

The cruise started out along a small, twisting waterway that passed small agricultural villages, probably only accessible by water.   After a few hours, the river widened into a major waterway, and the occaisional larger town began to appear.  And while some of these settlements may have been accessible by road, the business of the riverside made it clear that it was clearly still their main artery.

Houses in a small farming community on the banks of the river.  In these places, EVERY structure was along the banks of the river, as had doubtless been the case for hundreds of years

Our youthful boat driver.  It was a bit of a shock to look back and see this lad at the wheel (though he did only take over for the simpler bits of driving)

Finally the river opened out into the Tonle Sap, southeast Asia’s largest lake (and the source of much of the fish we’d been seeing in the markets for the past week.)  The Tonle Sap was a big lake (and this comes from someone whose home is on one of the great lakes) and there were many times where you’d stare out from the boat across it, unable to see land.   Thankfully we weren’t headed out into those sections (as the Phnom Penh boat did) and merely journeying across the very northwestern tip.  After an hour or so on the lake we turned onto yet another river.  Our progress slowed at this point, so as to ensure that our wake didn’t disturb the vessels and homes we passed on the way up the river, for we were passing one of many floating villages that ring the Tonle Sap.

Kids playing in the river at the Floating Village.  In this village, not only were all the structures by the water, they were all ON the water, including the homes, restaurants, even the pool hall and the school!

After a final hour on the river we arrived at the Siem Reap dock and back onto dry land, ready for our final stop in Cambodia at the legendary Angkor temples.

An election campaign was just beginning when we arrived in Cambodia.  Political signs were everywhere, and vans like this one for opposition candidate Sam Rainsey drove around towns and cities everywhere in Cambodia playing speeches by their candidates over (loud) loudspeakers

A traditional Khmer funeral cart (or “Khmer Hearse” as I called it) near the riverbank in Phnom Penh

Tags: Battambang, Boat Trip, Cambodia, Llew Bardecki, Phnom Penh, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 2:04 am and is filed under Cambodia, 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.