Phnom Penh

We said goodbye to Vietnam early in the morning, sharing the bus with Ben and Kathryn, two travelers we met the night before. The destination was Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The border crossing here was the most stressful one we have ever done. Cambodia has visa on entry, and I guess the admin for these is quite slow. So the bus companies have a plan to speed it up, and coordinate with the border crossing. I must stress that the routine plan that is done is a decent plan. What is not decent is the communication. So here is the crossing, from our uninformed perspective.

The bus attendant rounded up everyone’s passports and 40 USD, and put them into a bag. Being seasoned travelers, we would like to hold onto our passports. Ben refused to give his up first, saying that he could do the visa himself at the border. The attendant wasn’t happy, and put him on the phone with a border person. Long story short, Ben reluctantly gave his passport over, stating that the bus wouldn’t wait for us if we tried to do the visa process ourselves. We followed.

Unbeknown to us, the driver used this time to send photo’s of our passports to the border, so they could start processing and creating our visas.

We got to the border, and were given our passports to depart Vietnam, only to give them straight back to the attendent. We then got on the bus to go to the Cambodian entry port, just a few hundred metres down. They ferry us back onto the bus so no one gets lost and left behind. .

We got to the Cambodian entry, then just kept going into the country. Here we were, moving deeper into Cambodia, without our visas, entry stamps, or our passports. The four of us in the back were freaking out. The bus then pulled over to a buffet, where we would have lunch.

None of us had appetites for lunch. We all wanted our passports back. Here we were waiting, hoping, and knowing that they would bring them back.

Unbeknown to us, the Cambodian border was using this time to put our visa’s in our passports, and get through immigration. The bus company was being nice by letting us hang out in a restaurant with food instead of a dusty immigration entry point.

Finally we got back on the bus and then drove away, not to the border, but towards Phnom Penh. After 5 minutes the bus attendant starting calling out names and was handing our passports back and then we were on our way. Into the country, safely and legally. Some communication would have been nice.

Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia. The reputation of the city is somewhat grimy online, but the city itself, at least what we explored, was actually quite lovely.

The first and only stop for the arrival day was Wat Phnom, a Buddhist pagoda in the centre of a large traffic circle. It had a nice little park with some smaller statues and attractions around the outside. The centre of the circle was a hill, capped at the top by a large white spire, which can be seen from everywhere in the neighbourhood. Small pagoda’s lay at the base of the spire.

When leaving the Wat, we noticed the largest bats we had ever seen hanging out in a tree. We thought they were birds originally, crows or some other medium-large corvid, but they didn’t look right. Then we noticed the webbing of the wings, and had to convince ourselves we were actually seeing bats.

We spent the night chilling out on the top of our hostel. It had a rooftop pool! We had a little swim and hang. The sunset was a burnt orange due to all of the smog in the area.

We had a couple of stops the next morning. The first was the Toal Sleng Genocide museum. The site of the museum is that of Prison 21, a notorious secret torture to death prison that was run by the Khmer Rouge. Only seven people that entered the prison ever came out alive.

The Cambodian Genocide in the 1970’s is a humanitarian atrocity of the worst proportions. Over three years, a quarter of the Cambodian population, 3 million people died due to starvation or execution. The Khmer Rouge, let by Pol Pot, had an agrarian utopian vision, and through cruelty, paranoia, delusion and downright evil, proceeded to completely destroy a country to the point where it still isn’t close to recovering.

The museum focused on the atrocities of the genocide, and the torture used. It is an important place, but not an enjoyable one. The narrator of the audio guide was a survivor of the prison. There was also another survivor on site that day, doing a book signing.

Our next stop was the grand palace, for a complete change of pace. This palace is lived in by the King of Cambodia, who is more of a ceremonial figure than a political one. The grounds were very well manicured, and the temples were very grand. Cambodian architecture, and Buddhist architecture for that matter is very lovely and ornate. The shiny reflection of gold leaf glistened in the harsh late morning sun. The bold reds and colours added a lot of vibrancy. It all creates a really nice atmosphere to be in. If only it wasn’t so hot all the time.

Cambodia doesn’t have much of an established cuisine as Thailand or Vietnam. It has the basics like fried rice, soups, noodles, and curries but there is a lot of western food and French food. We didn’t take a cooking class here.

It was a quick time in the capital, cause like all tourists, were in Cambodia for the main attraction. Angkor. We will see you there.