Phnom Penh

What can I say but this place is hot. Our car journey ended up taking 5 hours, maybe the plane would have been a better option. That being said we got to experience the graft and corruption that makes this place tick. To leave Siem Reap our driver had to give a $7.00US bribe to persons who shall remain nameless because he was acting as a taxi service. This was not the first time I had seen money change hands. I myself got hit up by the local constabulary who took a few photos of Oui and I in one of the temples. He and his offsider security guard fleeced me of $4US, I even have a selfie with the culprits.

Driving in Cambodia is not like anything you would experience at home. The lanes are fluid, even if they are painted on the road and two lanes is regularly converted to three as motorbikes, push bikes, tuk tuks, cars and trucks all vie for their part of the pavement and the footpath is fair game as well. If they’re is no median strip (and there frequently isn’t) both sides of the road are perfectly acceptable options should the need arise. Our driver would have had to hand in his license if he didn’t have a horn, it was constantly in use as we surged from 40kmh to 100kmh at totally random intervals dictated by the whims of the traffic.

We stopped for lunch about an hour out of Phnom Penh and the Chinese influence here is really noticeable. This is a poor country and the Chinese are building hotels, creating resorts, bringing in package tours and donating to the government. The American influence is on the wane and the Chinese are in the ascendancy. There is even talk of the US dollar being replaced by the Chinese RMB.

We arrived safely as advertised at our hotel, owned and operated by an Australian. It’s a pretty funky place and perfectly delightful. They even have AFL on the TV, not that I actually care. Dinner was on a rooftop restaurant two doors up. You have to take a lift to get there. That may not sound all that eventful but when the power goes out with the regularity that it does here and therefore the possibility that you could be stuck in an Cambodian lift for a few hours while the power comes back to life is not a pleasant one. We kicked on to a Japanese restaurant cum nightclub for some live music that was a little questionable. We called it a night soon after. 

Tomorrow will be our only full day in the city so we want to get to the Killing Fields, S21 (the re education centre and by that I mean torture), the national museum and royal palace before we fly out to Hong Kong. I’ll let you know why we’re are not going to Vietnam soon.