The People's Pajama Party of Kampuchea

Part I- Sihanoukville:

After about 7 hours on a bus, which is pretty short by Thai bus traveling standards, I arrived at the Cambodian border just before it opened at 7 a.m. I had been warned about all of the crazy people who will harass you as soon as you cross over, and attempt to rip you off- but I hadn't really been told how to deal with it. The trouble is, even the authorities are in on it. When I was buying my visa, I tried to argue that I knew it only cost 1,000 Baht, and I simply was not going to pay 1,200... but there was nothing I could do about it. Either swallow the extra 200 (about 6 U.S. dollars) or go back to the Thai side. So I sucked it up... only to suck up an expensive cab ride, an over priced bus ticket and a terrible exchange rate in order to get to Sihanoukville. But there was really no choice... You just have to hope you get lucky and meet an honest person, otherwise you are at their mercy. Interestingly though, the Cambodian people speak English far better than most Thai people. Some people speculated that it's from necessity, but I'm telling you, in a lot of other areas also- these people were just terribly clever. The first funny thing I noticed about Cambodia is that somehow, the transference of the purpose of pajama sets got lost in translation when they were adopted from western culture, and loads of Cambodian people just walk around in pajamas all day long. It's really hard to take a grown man seriously when he's decked out entirely in Japanese cartoon characters and cruising around on a motorcycle. 

   Anyway, Sihanoukville is this small town on the beach that mostly caters to tourists which makes the locals a lot more well off than those throughout the rest of the country. I guess this was a good way to transition into seeing such crazy poverty, because even in Sihanoukville, little children come up to you and beg for your leftover food and people injured from land mines years ago crawl through the beach and beg for money. It's really hard to deal with, especially when you're sitting in a lounge chair drinking beer and ordering actual food. It's also interesting because everything in Cambodia is priced by American dollars, but they don't have American coins so they use Cambodian Riel as change. It's also important, as requested by the Cambodian government that you don't give or buy anything from the child beggars. Because this is a (very tempting) form of child labor, if tourists stop supporting it, parents will have no choice but to stop relying on their children to beg for money. Mind you- resisting these children is nearly impossible and the only time in my life I've experienced something literally gut-wrenching. These little boys and girls are terribly cute and terribly smart. They speak English and French and explain to you very eloquently that they need money to buy a bike to get to school, or to buy dinner. When you say, "sorry, no sweetie" they say, "sorry doesn't feed me... sorry gets me nowhere- you are a bad woman." It's awful. So after this less than leisurely beach trip, we got on a bus to Phnom Penh, the capitol city which is about 4 hours away (everything in Cambodia is 4 hours away from everything else, and to all Thai borders).

Part II- Phnom Penh:

We got to Phnom Penh at around 3 p.m. and after beating off like twenty men trying to take us to various guest houses, we walked down to the river front to get food. Like Laos, Cambodia has been colonized by Le French so therefore has baguettes everywhere. Unlike Laos though, it also has a very thriving ex-pat scene which means they also have awesome western restaurants... unfortunately mildly expensive because they're priced in dollars. I'm obviously kind of spoiled though- I found myself getting so annoyed paying $2.00 for a meal and cursing the damn dollar for being so damn strong right now. After eating, we wandered around looking for a guesthouse that was reasonably priced but found nothing on the river front. We passed one of the tuk-tuk drivers who'd been trying to take us to a place called OK Guesthouse at the bus station and he had a good laugh that we still hadn't found anywhere to stay. We finally caved and asked a different guy to take us to OK Guesthouse about 15 minutes away and got an a room with A.C. for 12 bucks. This is by far the most I've paid for a room since being in Asia... that 6 bucks is like 6 meals in Thailand. Our tuk-tuk driver asked us if we had any plans for tomorrow and for $18 offered to pick us up in the morning, take us to the market, The Killing Fields and The Genocide Museum. This seemed to be the preferred way of getting around the city, and most of the travelers there just settled on a driver they liked and adopted him for the rest of their stay.

So the next morning, we went to the market first. In Thailand, when you haggle and get too low, the vendors just kind of shoo you away. In Cambodia they will practically sell you anything for any price... which kind of gives you a sense of how little these things actually cost to make- because they wouldn't be operating at a loss. After the market, we went to The Killing Fields which was obviously a really sobering experience. The way it's set up now, is you walk up to a memorial temple that houses hundreds of victims' sculls in glass shelves, donate some money, light some incense, and then walk through the rest of the area. It's so eerie because grass has grown over all of the dug-up mass graves and there are birds and flowers and trees and the whole place is really beautiful. It takes about thirty minutes to walk around the whole thing, and certain graves and trees are marked with stories that happened to them specifically. Afterwards we went to Choeung Ek Genocidal Center which was a high school before Pol Pot's regime converted it into a prison and torture facility. Now it is a museum, but most of the rooms and cells remain untouched and you can see the torture weapons and chambers, as well as hundreds of pictures of victims, some only little babies. You can tell the Cambodian people are really eager to share their history with foreigners as it helps to put in perspective the poverty and wounded state of the country. Jakey spoke to us a little bit afterwards and said that he wishes everyone would be able to see the museum, as these things are all still so fresh in the minds of all Cambodian people. By the end of the day we didn't really want to stay in Phnom Penh anymore- it was really depressing... so we bumped up our bus tickets to that afternoon and headed to Siem Reap...

Part III- Siem Reap

We got the name of a guesthouse in Siem Reap from the one we stayed at in Phnom Penh because we wanted to stay somewhere Cambodian-owned. The owner picked us up at the bus station and he was this really nice 26 year old guy who spoke perfect English and French and owned like 4 of his own businesses. The place was pretty nice and he helped us get drivers to take us to Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples the next day. Now, I'm not usually one for temple ruins. I usually pretend to be interested in that kind of stuff because people are supposed to... but I'm usually of the mind that if you've seen one ruin, you've seen em all. I was a little resistant to pay the $20 entrance fee into the park, and I was a little resistant to spending a whole day there... I mean how big can the place really be? It is totally HUGE. Angkor Wat itself is the most awesome thing ever- it's humungous and beautiful... I was blown away. The crazy thing was, after spending a day driving around the area and seeing the other ruins... Angkor Wat became less and less impressive. I mean it was still obviously amazing, but it wasn't my favorite. The best one was this series of ruins that had been built in the middle of the woods. Over the years these massive, amazing trees have grown around the stones and it seriously looks straight out of Rivendel from Lord of the Rings. It was unreal. The only downsides to the day were having to walk up approximately 1 billion stairs in the positively sweltering heat... and the literally hundreds of children who try to see you junk at every turn. It was really sad turning them down... again, they were all really cute and smart. They'd remember your name like 3 hours after you first say them. Crazy. All in all, it was definitely worth the trip and everyone should put it on their life's list of things to do. Pictures do not do it justice... it was pretty awesome. We spent the next day on our 9 hour bus ride home... non air-conditioned this time and on the craziest, bumpiest dirt roads ever. It really made me appreciate spending hours and hours on Thai buses and on Thai roads. 

In summation- the trip was pretty excellent. Despite some parts being really depressing, the country itself was beautiful and the people were fantastically friendly when they weren't trying to rip you off. I really learned a lot and the whole thing was very fascinating. 

Last night, we all had dinner on a boat and sang karaoke and cruised through Bangkok on the Chauphreayu (that's spelled horribly wrong) River... It was really fun. This weekend I'm going to the floating markets and possibly wake-boarding. Keep in touch please...

Much Love!!!

-Esti