The great Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh was great and a change in my lifestyle
To be just a tourist and walk in their shoes a mile
But something about both working and traveling
Helps for me to see Cambodian culture unraveling

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA

June 30 - July 2, 2008

I know that was a terrible rhyme, and I apologize. I'm in the office full of mosquitoes wearing long sleeves and long pants tucked into my socks, worn with sandals, and I'm having trouble thinking. Dammit, I just got bitten anyways. Oh well...on with it.

***DAY 1***

The ride to PP was long, of course. 230 km really should only take a couple of hours, but with the roads the way they are in Cambodia, most are unsealed, unpaved, so it takes almost five hours to get between Kep and PP. And the bus had mosquitoes on it, and I fell asleep and got bitten up an arm, on my toes and all over my face. I looked great. A cool thing about Cambodian buses though is that there's a tv at the front and karaoke plays for the entire ride. It's hilarious. I'll take a picture next time. There was even some Cambo rap. One group featured a rapper who looked like he was 45 and another who actually did look a little like a fat rapper. Both were blinging though...although the bling was pretty small; I guess that's a result of being a rapper in a poor country.

Got to PP and was informed by G that he had to fly out that day, so TH, H, G and I decided to go for our goodbye lunch together at Sorya mall, the only mall in Cambodia. G got to pick the place, and we ended up at BB World, kind of McDonald's knockoff (there are no Western fast food chains in Cambodia) and had fast food. Can't say that it was my first choice (we were originally supposed to get Lebanese food), but it was definitely interesting. I had chicken bits, dipped in fish sauce.


We did a little shopping at the Russian Market, where I picked up some tank tops (to help me get rid of my horrible farmer's tan) and a couple of t-shirts, since my clothes are falling apart (handwashing my laundry has not been kind to the cotton and holes are developing). That place has everything and I now have some Abercrombie stuff -- all for $3 or less. Except that I also got a hoodie, and I splurged on that because I needed a long sleeve sweater -- but that was $10. Oooh. We also bought moto helmets...going to be so mobile for the rest of the summer...

Met up with Peon 1 at the Guesthouse. Bunthoeun was there and before even saying hello to me, told me that Peon 1 was getting on his nerves ("She always asking me to do things.") In typical Peon 1 style, the evening included her, and we went and walked along the Tonle Sap river and had dinner, which consisted of tofu amok, morning glory and Khmer style curry. Yummy. Should have gotten a picture...I'll have amok again next time I'm in PP. It's so good to have good food again.

***Day 2***

Funny thing about the guesthouse. I noticed this sign on the wall, and had to get a picture.


TH got really pissed at Peon 1 today. The previous night we had decided that we'd visit Wat Ounaloum, a Buddhist monastery in the morning. I told Peon 1 that we'd have to leave the guesthouse by 7 am because TH had an appointment with an NGO at 9:30 am. I don't care what you decide to do for breakfast, I told her, just be ready to leave at 7. Next morning, we head down to the entrance of the guesthouse at 7 and I went up to Peon 1's room to check on her. She comes to door, fully dressed and says, I'll be down in 5. Okay, I say, that's fine, but hurry up because it's already 7 and we have to leave.

10 minutes later, there is still no sign of her, so TH calls her cell. "Oh, I told Sar that I'd be down in five minutes. I guess it's been five minutes. I'm coming." Another 5 minutes later, still no sign of her. I call this time and she tells me she's on the stairs, coming down. She doesn't get there until another 5 minutes has elapsed. It's now 7:20 and TH is really pissed.

Anyways, we eventually got to Wat Ounaloum. There seemed to be a party going on there, so we weren't able to visit the main building, but we did vist the wat, or temple. There was a monk there who allowed us into the shrine and gave us a Buddhist blessing with water. It was a nice way to start the day. And here's the wat:


In typical Buddhist style, everything was ornate, and on the wall surrounding Wat Ounaloum was an incredible relief carving.


After the wat, Peon 1 took her leave of us and TH and I went to grab breakfast at a food stall. We found one and had congee with fish, lime, and pickled vegetables. It was SO good (and super cheap!). The two of us split up so that she could go to her NGO meeting, and I spent a couple of hours wandering around Russian Market. We met up at lunchtime at the Russian Market for lunch and ate market food in a stall there. Again, so good. We had fried noodles with vegetables. The noodles were really good, they were the short fat round ones made of rice flour and slightly tapered on either end, so they end up tasting like dumplings. So much better than instant noodle...

At this point we split up again, since TH had another NGO meeting, and I was just in town to play tourist. I visited Wat Phnom, on a hill after which the city, Phnom Penh is named for. It's the only hill in the entire city, and only 27 m high. The wat on top is really nice and is filled to the brim with Buddha statues.


Behind the wat is a giant stupa, and when I say giant, I mean giant.


It was just nice walking around on the hill and wandering among stupas and Buddha statues. Very peaceful; there's always been something I've found intriguing about Buddhism -- and it's that serenity that is very appealing. And except for security guards constantly demanding to see my ticket of entry, I definitely got a feel of that serenity.

Met TH back at the guesthouse and we decided to head over to Sorya mall for gelato and groceries before meeting up with Banana, A, J, H and N for our Canada Day celebration. It was a long walk -- about 30 minutes -- but we got there, and were a little hot and sweaty. We'd brought our helmets too, in case we needed a ride back (which we didn't) so that was extra weight. Got a gelato (tiramisu flavour) and walked around the mall. Interesting place. It's got a roller rink on the top floor where rich kids hang out, and the view of Phnom Penh was incredible.


Also, it's probably the most modern looking thing in the entire city, so it's in quite a contrast to everything else.


So the mall was great...especially because I had gelato while I was there. Mmmm...and at less than half the price of gelato in Kep. I had one scoop of tiramisu ice cream in a waffle cone that was still warm from the waffle press. Double mmmmm. Not quite as good as Kep gelato but definitely good and the price was right.

That evening we met up with Banana, A, J, H, N and Peon 1 and headed out for a celebration of Canada (woohoo! feeling like expats). We went to Le cedre, a Lebanese restaurant (the one that we were supposed to eat at the previous day), but it took us forever to get there. The tuk tuk driver insisted that he knew where we were going but it turned out that he really didn't, so we ended up spending quite a long time in transit.

Dinner was okay (not wonderful, but okay), and it was just the girls who were eating. The guys joined us later and make a bit of a ruckus on entering (getting kicked out for trying to bring in a beer, until they finished it). But it was fine because they arrived just in time to share the shisha. In honour of Canada, and its multiculturalness, we smoked the shisha after dinner.

(Before questions start flying, I'd just like to remind everyone that there are no illicit substances in a shisha. In fact, you can smoke them back in Toronto, too. It's got some tobacco, but the main attraction is that it's flavoured; and you can smoke it like a cigar, i.e. don't inhale.)

It was pretty fun: it was flavoured with a mix of fruits and tasted pretty good. And oh! Peon story alert!

I'd never smoked a shisha before, and neither had she, but we figured we'd try. I think she was a little nervous (to which Banana lovingly comforts her by saying "Don't worry Peon, it's always a little awkward your first time"), which is fine, so we went around the circle in the direction that allowed her to be last. When it came to her turn, she wanted a picture taken of her. Fine, that's fair, so she asks me to take a picture, and I oblige. She exhales before the camera is in my hands, so I have to try again. I say "1, 2 -- " and she exhales and I'm not ready, so I miss the puff of smoke. She wants another picture. I tell her to hold her hand up when she's ready to exhale and that way I'll just shoot the picture, but she doesn't give me a chance to focus, so I rush the picture and it looks terrible. I explain the concept of raising her hand again...anyways...a total of 5 shots later she's finally satisfied.

Dot dot dot. Later, I had taken a break from the shisha because it was starting to get a little rough and burny (on account, I am told, of having too much coal on the shisha). Most of the others had dropped out earlier too, but when the waiter came to clean off the top of the shisha and remove one of the pieces of coal, it was much smoother, and the smoking resumed.

She turns to N and asks "Should I smoke it?" N looks at her, mystified, and everyone is stunned into silence. Peon 1 turns to me and asks again, more shrilly this time "Should I smoke it?!" To which I replied, "You have to decide for yourself. If we say yes, that's peer pressure, and if we say no, it's condescending, so you need to make your own decision."

She shoots me a dirty look and says, "Why are you talking to me as if I'm a child?"

Oh dear. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

We went out to an expat place called Equinox for beers afterwards and talked and chilled for a few hours, and then hit up the infamous club, Heart of Darkness, known in the Cambodia for being a place that's full of trouble (it really wasn't, and the security going in was super tight -- they took away my swiss army knife). We were only there for a few minutes though, and ended up just heading back to our Guesthouse. All the fuss about Heart of Darkness didn't seem to be worth it.

***DAY 3***
TH and I got up early to try and hit some tourist attractions before I had to catch a ride to Kep with Bunthoeun. We first headed out to the supermarket and bought lots of stuff to avoid eating crappy fried rice and fried noodles in Kep, and it was there that we landed the veritable jackpot: turns out a 2-4 of soy milk is actually cheaper here than in Kep, by $4. So...we bought 48 cans of soy milk, plus all the other snacks and stuff we needed to buy. Needless to say, the walk back to the guesthouse was hilarious, with locals just staring at us: first of all, no one walks in Cambodia, secondly, no one buys cases of anything and thirdly, women generally don't carry things. Bing, bang, boom. I was excited.

We visted the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda next. It was a lot like going to the Forbidden City in Beijing, but not as big, and yellow instead of red. The architecture was beautiful, and since all the flourishes on all the buildings flair up toward the sky and are painted gold, it looks like all the roofs are on fire. There's even an "elephant dock" and it took a while to figure out what that was for; however, it's literally an elephant dock. Like a place you go to to climb up on an elephant since it's so tall.


There was also an iron house in European style which had been a gift to the King of Cambodia by Napolean III. It's really out-of-place looking, and it's not even centred within the couryard in which it was placed. It's just plopped right in the middle of everything.

The Silver Pagoda was something else, too. It's called that because the tiles on the floor are all silver. They cover the floor with mats to avoid damage from tourists, but as you walk on it, you can hear the silver tiles deforming with each step; none of them sit completely flat. The santuary inside contains a large Buddha statue with more than 9000 diamonds on it, the largest of which weighs more than 25 carats.

We headed to the Central Market for lunch and at market food (!), which consisted of a fried daikon radish cake- (lopet gao-) like thing. It's a little different than the Chinese one; it's fried in oil with chives rolled into the cake itself, and then they plop it in a bowl, pour a sweet water on it, and then you add hot sauce and eat it. It's so good. Dessert was a sweet bean thing in what I think was a coconut paste, all in a little bag. I should have gotten pictures of those...

After that we went back to Sorya mall for another gelato -- this time it was After Eight flavour for me. Triple mmmm.

Getting back to Kep was a little sad because it was so fun being in a city with all sorts of food options. Kep is nice because of its location, but it's also a little sleepy. I probably won't spend much more time in Phnom Penh again, so it looks like that's pretty much it for me, other than an afternoon prior to leaving Cambodia for good.