On Friday, our fourth day on the soil of Cambodia, it was time to leave the idyllic small town vibes of Siem Reap behind us and start our journey towards the nations capital, Phnom Penh. It would be cool to see the colonial era buildings and the more traditional Cambodian building styles intermingle in one city. Though we did not really have any big plans for visiting any sights in Phnom Penh, all of us were anxious to get to a new place already (although, I could have gladly spend more time in Siem Reap as well.) It was also worth spending a couple days in Phnom Penh just because it is of similar size with our home town, Helsinki – both in therms of population and in terms of population density.
We decided early on to discard the original idea of spending a night on a riverboat floating slowly down the Tonlé Sap, mostly because of the high price tag associated with it. So we opted for a much cheaper option – $7 if my memory serves me correct – and got ourselves bus tickets on Thu evening and alongside it a pickup from our hostel, so that we would not need to drag all our junk by ourselves.
In the morning we had a relatively early wakeup, packed our last things and ate some of the complimentary breakfast breads and eggs our hostel offered every morning. By 9am we headed out to the gates of our lil compound and were greeted by the minibus driver, who would take us to the bus station. Before heading to bus station we picked up some more travelers from the central office of the bus company (there isn’t any centralized ticket booking system and every company runs their own bus “terminals”, barely more than a shack to house the buses in most cases.) All of these new passengers were locals and I got to change a few words with a young, well spoken lad on our short journey to the bus depot. He told me that he was in the town to check up on some properties in behalf of a Korean businessman for whom he does all sorts of administrative work as a freelancer, and the rest of the time he offers his services for the government.
On the bus depot we found out that our worst fears had become true, the bus did not have a toilet. 7 – 8 hours without one would just not work. Gladly the driver made several stops on bigger road side restaurants where the bus poured on the street and migrated towards the toilets, like some sort of a wild herd. And it is probably needless to say this, but our ever so hungry driver had to also have a meal at every stop so they all were more than long enough for everyone to handle their businesses. All in all, the trip took us closer to 8½ hours, instead of the 7 hours that the timetable said it would take.
The road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was bordered almost gaplessly with houses, both big and small – though most of the way they were more like shacks on stilts. All in all it was almost impossible to tell when we entered another district or region as all the places looked the same – only the height of the stilts told a story about how far we are from the Tonlé Sap flood zone. It was also weird to see bright coloured concrete houses amongst the wood and corrugated iron shacks in the same neighbourhood. Other than the houses, the view was dominated by rice patties spanning wast areas and often starting right from the back of the houses. Many of the houses also had rice (or some other grain) drying on large mats on their driveways. On some occasions there was some ditch or such in between the road and the houses, which some folks used to grow rice as well, but some others as lily ponds or even as garbage heaps.
The surroundings were completely flat until we were only like 20-40km away from Phnom Penh, where small hills could rarely be seen popping out of the surrounding farmland. Most of em were barely noticeable, but one particular one caught my eye: there was a whole hill (at the least like 30-40m high, most likely much more, and with quite wide base) that was being carved out to feed the construction business in the country. The hill was literally cut in half and being shipped away until nothing remains. Gives you quite a different perspective on the speed this country is developing and recovering it’s economy – we finns dig some sand from the hillsides and then renovate the place so that no evidence of such activity remains. Not gonna happen in Cambodia! No time for such – and the need for resources is so dire that there is no time for it either.
The ride was sometimes quite thrilling as especially at the later parts of the trip the road was quite bumpy and the pavement – if it existed – was a lane, perhaps a lane and half wide and whom ever was there first used it. This naturally applied only to larger vehicles as smaller vehicles are in general always the ones giving space in the Cambodian driving style. Potholes and such were also plentiful. The distraction from this was provided by some karaoke videos and movies played through the av system of the bus – some were disgusting, most were somewhat funny for us westerners (our troupe was the only in the bus) and all were really weird. From what I could tell all the movies were based on some old folklore or legends – the weirdest of em all had magic cow which could fly people to places and turn em into stone. The ancient Khmers must have all been tripping balls!
At the seat of the Imperial power
We arrived to our hostel – though only namely, in reality it was more of a hotel – over an hour late from the arrival time we had given them, but there was no problem at all getting our rooms. We guys stayed in “fifth” floor (the numbering system included a ground floor and a zero floor, in addition to the usual numbering scheme) and gals got a room one floor above us. Both rooms had windows opening to the street, which proved to be a source of constant commotion and all sorts of weird noises. The rooms themselves were rather usual two bed rooms in cheap hotels – we had a fan, tv and a small cupboard in the room as well as a toilet ensuite, though we didn’t have hot water as it was included only in some of the more expensive rooms. The beds themselves were comfortable enough and the cupboard proved invaluable as it could be locked with our collection of locks – as “rich” westerners we of course were always afraid that the cleaner or some staff member would steal our “invaluable” electronics (which the hostel seemingly had a bit of a reputation for.
After settling down, refreshing ourselves and resting for a while we headed out to find some fodder for our screaming bowels. After some walking around, we ended up opting for a small local street side restaurant crowded at the time by a group of locals having a celebration of some sort – a birthday party most likely. After some difficulties because of language barrier I managed to order chicken with ginger and some steamed rice. A mistake! The chicken proved to be some slices of chickens leg, with a bone in the middle and nearly no meat at all, and a couple wings (which I am bad at eating as well). And the “ginger” proved to be something called lemon grass, a bitter and somewhat sour green chives like plant. And at the least in my mouth it does not even remotely resemble taste of lemon – unlike the taste of lemon balm, which I happen to love almost as much as lemons themselves. This grass will keep haunting me for the rest of my stay in here, that’s for sure. All in all the meal was a disappointment for me, as well as for Paula, who had similar experience with her chicken. Gladly the two others from our group had something they liked.