Phnom Penh

After an amazing trek we headed for Cambodia. There could have been some sort of endorphin overload from our first true physical activity in weeks, which left us leaving Laos on a great high. We flew to Bangkok from Laos (on what seemed to be a less than "5 star safety inspected" Lao Airlines plane), and then connected with our Bangkok to Phnom Penh flight. When we went to check in for our second flight to Cambodia, we found out that we hadn't actually paid for our bags to be sent through, when we had booked tickets a month before. It was going to cost Melissa 20 bucks for hers, and it was going to cost me an additional 200 DOLLARS TO BRING MY BAG (this was an 80 flight)!!!!!!!! The stupid bag that I've been lugging around SE Asia was 13 kilos overweight due to a variety of additions which completely unnecessary for backpacking: leather shoes for work interviews, 4 pairs of pants/slacks from my travels in Ireland, 2 light jackets from my trip to Ireland, a few sweaters from my trip to Ireland- none of which come in handy in 90 degree weather, and an 8 kilogram slack-line that I brought to use in parks and around hostels (not so useful in a culture where bare feet can be considered vulgar, and public parks are limited).

We decided to split our bags, and put one gigantic bag of useless extras- which turned out to be 90% of my stuff... Melissa considered her things to be far more essential- into storage at the airport. It was a better deal and would cost only a few bucks per day, instead of 200 to ship the bag.  We said goodbye to the rest of our stuff and went on with one bag of the bare necessities for an undetermined period of time. This pic is all the stuff we left behind (as a side note: i ended up carrying Melissa's bag around which has a huge Canadian flag on it. Being the guy in a bright red Canada shirt while carrying a bag with a huge Canadian flag on it, and not being Canadian can be really confusing for locals).

In total it was about 3 hours of flying, but it ended up being a hell of a long day in different airports in transit. We arrived in Phnom Penh, and shuffled through baggage and immigration to get our visas. Then we grabbed a tuk tuk and head into town to find ourselves a hostel. The Phnom Penh traffic was the worst yet. There were proper street lights and lanes, but drivers were far more creative. For example, tuk-tuk drivers and mopeds might come to an intersection at a red light, take a left into oncoming traffic, drive the wrong way for 200 meters, cut in front of a bus and pull into a side lane barely visible to a non local. It is also common to see, a family of 5 on a moped (think Vespa) in the rain with arms full of groceries, with one passenger holds an umbrella above the group.  Meliss and I were hanging on in the back with our bags strapped to our arms and our fingers crossed when we arrived at some nondescript hostel in the heart of town.  It was already 6 or 7 and, despite the fact that our room was one of the dingiest yet, we were ready to crash for the night . We also found that the TV in the room had cable and we were able to tune in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and some American Cartoon Network, so we didnt mind taking the night off. I ended up getting pretty sick that night and didn't sleep much. We woke up feeling crappy, and were unenthused about getting out about, but also didn't want to spend too much more time in our room. We switched into a better hostel after getting some recommendations and went out for the day.

Thanks to our pessimism and low expectations, Phnom Penh really blew us away.  Crossing the streets and intersections was a recurring source of entertainment, and after absentmindedly waiting for 3 minutes for a pedestrian walking signal, we started having fun "Frogger"ing our way through the traffic. Cambodians also seemed to be alot more active then the Lao or Thai that we've seen. There are nightly Jazzercize classes in any public area, where packs of older women come out in their sweatbands, wheel out giant speakers and proudly do their best Richard Simmons impressions for all to see. We also stumbled across what seemed to be a Cambodian Idol competition, where little asian kids with terrible floppy haircuts sang Justin Beiber songs with reeeeeeeeally thick accents.

We also checked out a long riverside boardwalk that runs a few kilometers down the Ton le Sap river adjacent to one of the fancier strips of real estate in town. Lots of cool cafes and restaurants and hordes of cheeky little kids selling bootleg English bestsellers and Lonely Planet books out of baskets.  They relied less on their cuteness and more on pressure and aggression to sell their crap. Melissa tried to cut a deal for one bracelet with a 4 year old kid who couldn't have been more than 2 feet high. It turned sour real quick. The kid gathered a little posse of shrimpy kids who started insulting us with impressive fluency. Here are two of the little devils... Dont be fooled by the mickey mouse shirt, they were ruthless. They followed us for 20 minutes telling us to "go fuck ourselves", "get out of our country you dirty hookers", variations of "fuck you beetch lady" and "you fuck sheet tourist", all the while wagging their tiny little middle fingers. I thought this was hilarious and pushed their buttons as much as I could. We even tried to buy a bracelet at their original price so that they would take off but they weren't interested anymore. Melissa was a little more upset and eventually got worked up enough to tell them to fuck off.  I havent seen her tell anyone off in a long time and I was dying as she flicked off and cussed out a group of little kids. It really made the day for me.

After getting to know a few of the local street children, we went to some of the local markets to check out the goods. Since a lot of clothes that you find with the bigger brands in the States and Canada are made in Cambodia, local workers will often steal boxes of high end clothes which can end up in the dark alleyways of the markets here. Stacks on stacks on stacks of clothes piled 12 feet high with a little Cambodian face popping out from the middle of the pile saying "good price" or "we have big size too". There are also amazing movie stores. We picked up a full boxed set of Curb Your Enthusiasm, seasons 1-5 for 5 bucks! We also started getting into Breaking Bad, and picked up a few other movies on the side. We could have comfortably floated around in the markets for days, constantly finding new corridors and new stalls.

We also had a really depressing (but fascinating) day in Phnom Penh. We decided to forego the visit to the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, and instead went to a prison that had been used during the Pol Pot regime by the Khmer Rouge, to house and kill many of the bourgeoisie intellectuals in Phnom Penh 30 during the Khmer Rouge. The building functioned as a school before the Khmer Rouge years, which made the whole thing much creepier. We had a very good tour guide who had lived through the misery, and we also met 2 of the 7 survivors of this particular prison. We were able to take in a ton of the history,  and it helped to shed some light on the current Cambodian psyche. The fact that everyone here over 40 has lived through such a terrible onslaught is hard to see. The people are incredibly friendly, seem optimistic, and really seem to appreciate their lives and their culture. It ended up being a tough day, but we learned a lot.  This picture is from one of the old school rooms, which had small brick cells built into it- no more than one meter wide. Notice the chalkboard still on the wall.

We went out for dinner and a few drinks later on that night, and after getting ready to head back to the hostel, Melissa spotted a few of the people that had been on our 2 day boat trip into Laos (luckily, they also happened to be the ones we liked the best).  They came and sat down and for the next couple of hours we got round after round of 2 dollar pitchers. There was a blackout around 11pm, which lasted for about 20 minutes. It was very cool to be in the heart of the city and be able to look up and see the stars, from the patio of a bar. This pic is one of the local cops who was working his way around with a lantern... nobody seemed too concerned.

One of the guys we were with had been to Phnom Penh before and he wanted to take us to a club he had been to a few years back. It was called Heart of Darkeness (which seemed like the perfect place after such out blackout).   The club was definitely overwhelming. Intense club music (with a hint of tribal music), bright neon lights, creepy older expats, and even creepier packs of hookers. Butt pinching, winking and blown kisses were flying past from every direction. This much attention back home would have have made me feel great about myself, but in this setting it ended up being pretty gross (and i couldn't stop looking for adam's apples on all of the "girls"). Melissa came to my defense pretty quickly and we had a fun late night of jagerbombs and dancing with our group of friends. We even decided to stay an extra day so we could see the crew again the following night.

The next day, we woke up a little worse for the wear and decided to head to the local mall to try and catch a movie and relax. Nothing was showing that we wanted to see but we were lucky to find an amazing arcade next door. There were so many blinking lights we knew we would either have an awesome time or quickly have a seizure and have to leave. 5 bucks went incredibly far here, which i was happy to see. We were the only foreigners in the place and people were very impressed to see how we fared in different games. They had some punch meter thing that "gauged your strength" and all the Cambodian boys seemed pretty impressed with me... if i do say so myself... i broke the record twice no big deal. We played some air hockey and they loved seeing us on the basketball thing. Later that night we met up with our friends for dinner and decided to take our good luck to the local casino. We were in over our heads and didn't end up playing much. As we were "feeling the place out", one of the guys we were with promptly lost 100 bucks and we decided it made more sense to take off. We headed back to the guesthouse and packed our bags.

We were ready for some beaching in the sun down on the coast of Cambodia, which was only a 4$ bus ride away. Sun turned out to be a lot to hope for... but you'll hear all about that in the next post. Phnom Penh did us well.