Granted we saw very little of this country and we hear that the north east is beautiful but we just were not feeling it. Its not that we disliked Cambodia it is more that it was rather bland and uninteresting. We really have no idea where all of this praise is coming from when we talk to people who “love” Phnom Pehn or S’ville. It just didnt’t work for us.

(Check out the Cambodia Photo Gallery here)

Favorite moments:

• Angkor at sunrise/moonset
• Crabs in Kampot pepper sauce
• Hammock time
• Shopping the in Russian Market

Not so great:

• Food (besides that awesome crab in Kep)
• S’ville
• Phnom Penh at night

Total Money Spent Per Person: $291.28

Average Per Day Costs Per Person:

• Lodging: $3.73
• Food: $8.54
• Transportation: $5.89
• Misc: $8.32 (Beer, going out, guides, park entrance, etc.)

Total Average Per Day, Per Person: $26.48

Number of Days: 11

“Get ready to feel like an asshole.” We looked at each other and got out of the tuk tuk and onto the idling bus pulled alongside the road. Waiting. For us. Against our usual protocol, we had booked a bus ticket all the way from Phnom Penh back to Bangkok thinking it was a bit cheaper than all the separate tickets.

Traffic in Phnom Pehn

We were up and in the lobby of our guest house at 6:50AM, as instructed, waiting for the bus to come pick us up. It was scheduled to depart for Bangkok at 7:45 and by 7:30, we were pretty concerned. Our guest house staff were kind enough to call and sort out the whole mess for us (although we didn’t buy the ticket through them). They tucked us into a tuk tuk and sent us zipping across town to the ticket agency who checked our tickets and, without explanation, send us in another tuk tuk which we assumed was to take us to the bus. What we didn’t know was that the bus had already left without us and was now waiting by the side of the road til we sheepishly pulled up and jumped on. A few irritated glances and we sank into our seats.

Anyway, it was a long day from 8AM-8:30PM getting all the way back to Bangkok and we are so glad to be back.

Travel Tip:

We don’t recommend booking a long haul ticket between Phnom Penh and Bangkok, either direction. It would be faster and easier to book your own ticket to the border (Poi Pet) and then cross through on foot as usual and grab a bus on the Thai side in the market area. If you are unsure of where to go and can’t spot lots of parked buses, just ask around until you get your bus.

Well, in terms of Operation Super Bowl 2010, we definitely had an epic failure. We watched 2 sports channels from 6AM-10PM and absolutely so sign or even single word about one of the biggest games of the year! At any rate, we were happy for the Saints to win their very first Super Bowl but we are pretty bummed that we didn’t get to watch the game. At any rate, Saben’s birthday was today and we celebrated with a massive English breakfast and a massive amounts of sports watching and beer drinking!

Saben working on his old man scowl

Ten minutes to noon we made a split decision to rush back to Phnom Penh so we could catch the Super Bowl. Already that morning we had walked the entire length of Kep and all the way into Kep City to the market seeking a decent place for breakfast. We never did get any breakfast and ended up grabbing a bit of lunch about 15 minutes before our 12:45 bus back to Phnom Penh arrived. We really loved visiting Kep but we also really love watching the Super Bowl and have never missed one yet. If it turns out right, we should be watching this year’s awesome game between our own Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints!

Saben on a motodrop back from the market

Swinging in a seaside hammock watching a bright pink and red sunset after a fat crab dinner drowned in Kampot pepper sauce and ice cold Angkor beer…we could get used to this kind of life.

Kampot Pepper Crab

Kep is the epitome of a “sleepy fishing village.” It seems to consist of a few tiny hamlets spread a few kilometers apart and the main part, Kep City, is little more than an uninhabited tiny town. It looks as if Kep is waiting for a large tourism boom in the next 10-15 years and when that happens, the citizens will get out and about. For now, everyone seems to lounge in shelter houses by Kep Beach in one of the rows and rows of hammocks looking out at the sea or just rest under a shade tree on the promenade that runs along the water.

Kep Beach

When we arrived we weren’t sure that we had actually even gotten to Kep. There are guesthouses and a couple restaurants beginning a few kilometers out of “town” and this is about where we were dropped off. We checked 3 places and enjoyed the walk between the guesthouses, relishing the quiet and little amount of traffic. The countryside is very beautiful and green, kind of reminds us of the farmland around Nicaragua.

The backstreets of Kep

We went for dinner down to the Crab Market where a small collection of tiny open air, seaside restuarants serve the freshest crabs slathered in Kampot pepper sauce. To give you an idea of just how fresh the crab was: we were sitting looking out at the sea and watching the crab catchers hard at work when we saw the lady who took our order go buy a bag full of live crabs from one of the catchers just below us!

Fresh crabs being brought in

After dinner we took a walk around town alongside the quiet calm water. There isn’t much to Kep and certainly not much to do but it’s such a beautiful and peaceful place. A nice place to recharge and really relax with the day’s top priority being swinging lazily in a hammock.

A little hammock time

Sihanoukville is not our favorite place. The beaches are so-so, the food is pretty good but a little pricey, and there are a few too many loud-spoken foreigners eager to brag about their own humanitarian activities here. A little disappointed that we traveled all the way down here for this but you can’t win all the time. Heading to Kep tomorrow morning to have a look and eat some fresh crabs and try the famous Kampot pepper.

Road to the beach

Bussing south to the beach from the less picturesque city of Phnom Penh sounds like a pretty nice endeavor. We were heading to Otres Beach in Sihanoukville, known to be a quiet and relaxing beach. We arrived in a tuk tuk via a dirt and sand covered path with alternating giant rocks and giant holes.

Ahhh.. beer and icecream

From town it was maybe 20 or so minutes to Otres Beach. When we arrived, we found Otres was not so much “quiet” and “realxed” but completely silent and a bit dirty. After checking out several of the bungalows and such, we decided Otres was really just not for us. There are so few people, tourists or locals, in this area that the road was virtually empty. We were incredibly lucky to have been walking along the road only a few minutes when a tuk tuk came by. Otherwise only 1 motorbike had passed us and there was no other traffic in sight–or hearing range!

Serendipity Beach

We bumped and bounced and rattled our internal organs nearly to death on the way back toward town to both hit an ATM (bad planning on our part) and find a new beach. We decided to just park ourselves at the first place we found. It was called Serendipity Beach and it was nice enough, even if overly touristed. If nothing else, that made it very convenient and left many options open for finding cheap food and lodging.

On first glance, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Musuem seems fairly non threatening and even walking around the grounds feels pretty innocuous. But take a step just inside any door of the entire compound and you will feel your gut seize and your heart tighten.

Cell at S21

The musuem was once a school but when Pol Pot seized power in 1975 the school was then turned into a torture prison for those citizens who did not fit into Pol Pot’s scheme. His plan was to take all Cambodia’s people out of the cities and make them into farmers in the countryside, living on communally owned property cultivating rice and owning no indivual possessions. He wanted to cleanse Cambodia of everything evenly remotely western and make Cambodia a completely self sustaining country through the raising and exporting of rice.

Faces of S21

The people who worked well in his plan were those already farming and living in the countryside. Those who fared worst were the city people working as doctors, artists, musicians, teachers and so forth. For more clear and in depth information about the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, click here.

Halls in S21

Inside the buildings are pictures of what the Vietnamese found when they invaded Cambodia in 1979. There is a single bed, and usually the accompanying pair of shackles on top of it, in the rooms of the building next to the small cemetary. In the other 2 buildings there are rows and rows of photos of the inmates, simple black and white portraits for record keeping purposes under Pol Pot’s direction. Though not every single person once imprisoned at S-21 is pictured, Pol Pot was meticulously in his record keeping and much more is scattered throughout the country. Walking through the rows of faces is very difficult. Their expressions and their pleading or empty eyes haunt your mind while you get a glimpse of the horrors that those people went through before a miserable wretched death. Out of some 14,000 prisoners, only 8 made it out alive and only then because they were put to work under Pol Pot’s regime. Many of them were artists and were thus used to paint images of the happenings at the prisons. Some of these works can be seen in the musuem alongside the rooms of rows and rows of photographs of faces.

Cells at S21

Visiting the musuem can be emotionally exhausting. You are left with a sense of horror and wonderment at seeing what human beings are capable of. Probably best to plan something upbeat for when you finish at the museum…

If you are looking for an entertaining way to spend most of a day, take a stroll through the maze of stalls and shops at Phnom Penh’s famous Russian Market. There is nothing distinctly Russian about the place today besides the name of course. Cambodians call it “Psar Toul Tom Poung” and you can find just about anything you might like there.

Russian Market

Rope, engines, tourist trinkets like art prints of all sizes, carved boxes, ceramics, pillow covers, scarves, hammocks, western clothes, shoes, sunglasses, purses, watches—lots of nicely made knockoffs and most at pretty decent prices. A wristwatch might set you back anywhere from $10-$40 for a knockoff Omega, Gucci, or similar brand name. Most of the watches look pretty convincing and have a nice weight to them. Sunglasses tend to be the typical Ray Ban variety but clothes for men or women are bountiful and even just outside the market you can find a 2 floor air conditioned (woohoo!) exports store for western clothes that just didn’t quite make the quality cut to be exported out of Cambodia where most of them are made.

In the market

There are also plenty of food stalls inside the market and outside as well. Depending on how strong and brave your stomach really is, we might recommend sticking to one of the street restaurants just outside the market for slightly better chances of some attempt at food safety and hygiene.

As with most things in Cambodia, items at the Russian Market are prices in US dollars. As usual, be sure to bargain hard as everyone wants to charge minimum $1 for the tiniest trinket that might only be worth paying about $0.30. Just know the quality of what you are buying and try not to pay too much attention to what the vendors say about the materials or origins of an item because 95% of the time they are misleading you in attempts to make a sale.

Butt flattening exercise day. 8 hours on a bus did the trick. Arrived in Phnom Penh later in the afternoon and found every guest house to be full. Left us wandering around the city for couple hours very sweaty and very irritated. Found a place finally and took it even though it was pretty crummy. Not good place to find food, cheap or otherwise, but at least we are walking around with our gear at dusk!

Deep fried spiders at the bus stop