Turn left at the crab

Pick of the Day: Dorm bathroom, 88 Hostel, Phnom Penh

Style: Western Sit w/ bum gun

Atmosphere: Two tone

Extras: Being the bathroom for the dorm room this obviously also came with a shower and sink, but as i assume you are all familiar with these i'll focus on the one addition that i am surprised we haven't seen elsewhere: Reading material! Some kind (forgetful) soul left (forgot) the book they had been reading here. The joy of reading on the loo is perhaps something only we in the west with our thrones of porcelain truly understand. It made me a tad homesick.

24/05/13 to 02/06/13: Phnom Penh, Kampot and Kep

Having successfully negotiated our way into the country we had a cross-country trip on some of the worst roads we had yet seen with the noisiest, most annoying 3 year old child sat directly behind us. We arrived in Phnom Penh with the knowledge that brats are brats the world over and a child can’t be cute enough to stop you wanting to strangle it.

Our first impression of Cambodia was that (apart from Russia) it felt like one of the more dangerous countries we had been to. There was a latent something in the air that gave you the feeling that you shouldn’t be too surprised if someone robbed you using a gun in broad daylight. That said it was also easily one of the poorest countries we had been to so it might have just been a hint of desperation in the air. There was also a definite seediness to Phnom Penh. An evening stroll around the capital showed up quite a lot of middle aged western men complete with badly disguised bald patch and paunch either already in the company of a lithe (maybe) 20year old Cambodian or clearly on the hunt for one.

However, our hotel was a nice chilled place with a pool and its fair share of chirpy deluded hippies for whom the most important pieces of luggage they carried were their guitar and possibly a locally purchased bongo. We could hide from the scary world in here and frequently did!

Cruising the city streets, tourist style

On our first day we decided to go for a walk along the waterfront and have a look at the royal palace and the adjoining silver pagoda. The palace was very beautiful with ornately built tiered roofs covered in brightly coloured tiles set around some pretty gardens. The silver pagoda is so named because the floor is covered in 5000 solid silver tiles weighing over a kilo each. You can only see a small section of it as they have to cover most of the floor to stop the wear and tear of thousands of tourists destroying it but what you can see is magnificent. The silver pagoda also has loads of examples of really intricate Khmer gold work and a golden Buddha decorated with hundreds of diamonds. Whilst at the palace complex it started to rain and as we hid in one of the doorways we got chatting to a Cambodian who had emigrated (or escaped I suppose) to Texas in ’79 just at the end of the Khmer Rouge regime. This was his first time back to his home country since leaving and he was clearly quite emotional about coming back. He said that an awful lot had changed in the intervening time and we certainly believe him.

At the royal palace, heavens about to open

The patio/garden in front of the silver pagoda

We decided to pay a trip to the ‘Russian market’ that afternoon to hunt out some cheap deals in silk and Ben managed to get himself a lovely Bell&Ross watch for a bargain $12. We did later wonder if it was quite such a good deal since later a man at a petrol station offered him $4 for it but never mind.

"I think i remember this bit" Lost in the rabbit warren which is the russian market

The next day we took a tuk tuk tour to go and see some of the less savoury but nevertheless important sights around phnom penh- the school 21 prison and the killing fields.

School 21 was a high school not far from the Russian market in the centre of Phnom Penh which was converted into a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime. It is estimated that around 20,000 people passed through its doors, many of whom were women and children. Once in the prison they were tortured until they confessed to their crimes (being a teacher or growing your own food were considered crimes against the state) and made to name others before being transported to the killing fields for execution. Of all the people held at the prison only 7 survived- a further 14 were killed as the Khmer Rouge fled the prison and are buried in the prison grounds. It’s a chilling place to visit as the tiny brick cells surrounded by barbed wire are still exactly as they were at the time. The Khmer Rouge were also very meticulous in their documentation and photographed every person that passed through their doors, and many after they had died from torture. Those thousands of photos are now on display and there is a whole section of a room devoted to the photographs of the children who were killed in the prison or nearby killing fields. It’s quite haunting. The sense of respect for the dead is slightly diminished by the oddball tourists who decided to have their photographs taken in front of the gallows, of all places.

It says a lot about a people when you need signs to say no laughing. Inside were photos of dead people.

The cells. The Khmer Rouge were so busy killing they didn't even bother with the aesthetics.

We then carried on, creepily enough by the very same road that the transport trucks originally took, to the aptly named killing fields.  This was one of the many places where Khmer Rouge dissidents, intellectuals and ‘enemies of the state’ where taken for execution. Here were pits filled with hundreds of bodies, most of which have not been identified. Some of the bodies have been recovered, catalogued and stored but most still lie beneath the earth and each rainy season the rains wash away the soil from a few more bones which are collected and preserved by the curators. Most of the victims were killed by being hit over the head with farming tools and then had their throats cut. Babies were killed by being hit against one of the big trees. Poison was then thrown over the bodies in the pit to kill any survivors. Creepily enough the killings always happened at night under the cover of loud patriotic music to make it sound like a political gathering. It was an awful place but an interesting tour with many first hand stories of those who had been sent to forced labour camps or had seen family members killed. In all around 2 million people died in the 3 years that the Khmer Rouge were in power which was ¹/₄ of the country’s population.

You have been warned

After a pretty harrowing day we headed down to the foreign correspondent’s club for a cocktail to settle the nerves.

Sunset cocktails at the Foreign Correspondents Club

The following day we took a bus to Kampot in the south. What was supposed to be a 3 hour bus journey somehow turned into 5 hours and when we finally made it off all of our belongings were covered in a thick layer of red dust. This was supposed to be one of the better buses!

One of the "feature" rooms and the river resort

River side bungalows

We had booked into somewhere that sounded a bit posh for us given that it called itself a riverside eco-resort but was cheap enough so got a tuk tuk to take us. We were sure he must be taking us the wrong way then we turned off the tarmacked road onto a dirt road and then onto a dirt track no wider than the tuk tuk itself and then through somebody’s farm but finally we reached the end of the track by the river. The resort was a beautiful little collection of bamboo huts set by the river in gardens full of mangoes, papaya and lemongrass. It was run by a French hippie couple (think yoga teachers and copious amounts of weed smoked daily) and we were duly greeted by Bert, the Labrador whose job it was to keep rats at bay and escort guests to their rooms at night since there was no outdoor lighting.

Cool clouds over Kampots new bridge, or maybe its old bridge. They both need a little love.

Graffiti?

Hat shopping post melting

We had a chilled day the next day where we cycled into Kampot which is a quiet, easy going town. I managed to buy a straw hat in the market for a dollar to try to reduce the effects of the fierce sun and then we headed back and decided to take the boat out. The resort had its own little dugout canoe which we decided to paddle round a loop of the river. It was very heart of darkness with dense jungle pushing in on all sides. We had a little problem on the return journey when it started getting dark and I discovered that ben’s instructions for finding our way back through the myriad of mangrove swamp was ‘turn left at the trees’. Given that we were in a jungle this was less than helpful and we came extraordinarily close to being lost in a watery jungle at night.

Going off in search of Marlon Brando

The following day we hired a scooter and went for a little ride around (essentially dirt biking as there is no road surface- wear a mask and expect to be a dusty orange colour by the end of the day).We went to visit a pepper plantation (Kampot is famous for its awesome pepper) and learnt that green pepper is the fresh, unripe seed (which we never see as it’s only fresh for a few days), black pepper is dried green pepper, red pepper is the green pepper that has been allowed to ripen before being dried and white pepper is red pepper that has been stripped of its outer skin.

Born to be wild

Don't eat pepper right off the bush

We then carried on to the seaside town of Kep where we found a little beachside restaurant and ate tons of fresh crab and enormous prawns for next to nothing. People in Kep like their crab so much you can get is as a take-out dish for a picnic and they have an enormous statue of a blue swimmer crab on the beach. In fairness they do have a lot of statues all over the place- this is apparently because in a country with a relatively low literacy rate people need to find an alternative to road signs to find their way around and ‘turn left at the crab’ seems to work well.

Crab feast (with fresh green pepper), f****** awesome

On our way home it started to rain. Really rain. Hard. We had just pulled in under a tree when a man appeared from his house to wave us in to shelter from the rain. It turned out he was a tuk tuk driver and could therefor speak some English and he invited us into his tiny one room house made of corrugated iron with no expectation of payment or anything in return. He was really friendly and we stayed for an hour but we couldn’t really hide forever as it was getting dark so we bought a couple of ponchos from his sister, thanked him and got very wet on the way home.

Siberia in winter, South East Asia in monsoon. Holidaying. We're doing it right

That night we splashed out on some melon and green pepper margaritas- one of the best cocktails either of us has ever tasted.

Next on the agenda was a scooter ride up to Bogkor Hill Station. This was an old French colonial hill station that had been left to slowly decay, or so we thought. The top of the hill was actually high enough to be quite cold (for Cambodia) and very misty. Most of the ruined villas and the church were still there lending a spooky feel to the place but we also discovered that they had built a concrete monstrosity that was a casino on the top of the hill and were in the process of building another one that was the size of an aircraft hangar.  We are all for the development of tourism in Cambodia to benefit the people but at some point the authorities should probably realise that if people want to go to casinos they will go to Vegas, if they want to see beautiful unspoilt countryside, they come to Cambodia and mixing the two will not work.

Some builders are tidying this Bokor hill station icon up to make it a........ casino.

Only gate posts remain of this pad

That evening was our last in Kampot and we went on a very romantic sunset boat ride up the river and came back in time to see an amazing lightning storm across the coast at Kep.

Didn't find Brando.

The next morning was a rather sad bus ride back to Phnom Penh followed by another long bus journey to Siem Reap.

Not as scary when its a long way away!