One Week in Cambodia...

Q. How many people can you fit on a moped?

A. 5: One driver. Two other adults. One baby stood up between the two adults. One toddler sat on the handle bars.

Welcome to Cambodia.

They will quite literally put anything on a moped.

We arrived in Phnom Penh (PP), the capital, after flying from KL with the intention of looping round and up through Vietnam and Laos before meeting up with P Money in Bangkok. We collected our bags which were literally the world’s wettest items as some Malaysian spazlord had left them out on the runway I guess when a monsoon hit and delayed our flight!

Our first cab ride through the city during rush hour taught us an unbelievable amount about the traffic laws in this country, primarily that there are no traffic laws in this country.

When you are sat in a cue of traffic, you have a number of options. Either wait in the traffic like a sensible, normal human being, (ultimately that is a mugs game); or drive on the opposite side of the road in to head on traffic. You can also opt to mount the pavement and weave between ordinary pedestrians.

Junctions are quite probably the biggest joke going as they are a free-for-all of mopeds and tuk-tuks barging, undercutting and generally being unsafe. Quite literally mental! (Obviously not actually “literally” but people say “literally” all the time now.)

It is well documented that shooting guns in Cambodia is readily accessible and offers the westerner with enough dollar to shoot chickens with an AK47 or fire an RPG at a cow. I didn’t really fancy this, maybe I’m going soft; so instead we just fired rifles and machine guns at coconuts.

On the way there our tuk-tuk driver nearly plowed into a 3 year who as just going about her business playing in a mound of gravel!

Also during our stay in PP we went to see an animal sanctuary, this included tigers, leopards, lions, bears, elephants etc. Jack though this was a brilliant trip, I thought it was a shit zoo. After much consideration I have actually decided that this was in fact… a shit zoo and I’m ashamed that I ever doubted myself over it.

The tour guide for the trip just felt dodgy, we can’t put our finger on why but just something about him. He was Dutch but moved to Cambodia after meeting his now wife on the exact same tour 2 years previous. He had a cloth water bottle holder/handbag. He had a very odd handshake come greeting. Also there was a child knocking around that wasn’t his and Jack thinks he was a bit paedo-ish with it, I didn’t see it that way myself but Jack says there is a limit to how much you can interact with a child, and he was on it. He was alright though.

We went to a market to get some ridiculously cheap but pretty good fakes. Yes the fakes were good but this was so overlooked due to the incredible smell. And by incredible I mean horrendous!

Imagine this combination. Piles of pale meat covered in flies, old women cutting out fish guts on the floor, open sewage drains and for garnish, tones of incense. I actually though I was going to be sick on some little Cambodian birds head when I got penned into a narrow alley way. Still we did get to the best name for a shop I’ve ever seen!

I will say that we had one of the best meals we have had travelling. It was local Cambodian food (which is pretty good in general, although a lot of it tastes like Sambuca) cooked and served by disadvantaged Cambodian youngsters training to work in the hotel industry. Lush and morally satisfying.

The final trip for us on our tour of PP was to see the Killing Fields and a quad bike drive round some poor villages. The Killing Fields were, I’m sorry to say, pretty dull. I mean it was unlikely to be a barrel of laughs anyway but tbh; cba

Just so you’re aware, the Killing Fields are a site where the evil dictator Pol Pot killed some of the 25% of all Cambodians alive during the late 70’s.

The Quad bikes however, were awesome. We headed through remote little villages with kids just running around waving and the like. I managed to get this picture which could be on the front of National Geographic or some shit, just Saiyan. I was so surprised to see that Cambodia kids are well happy, they bloody love it.

We got really muddy and had a short stint driving on the main roads of PP, after all that noticing how dangerous it was… I shat myself.

The next stop was to head to Sihanoukville, a coastal town that was supposed to be good. About 4 hours away and we were feeling flash so we got a taxi the whole way. It cost about $50 (£30). Oh yeah I forgot to mention that the currency in Cambodia is Riels and you get 6000 to the quid; but actually everything is paid in US dollars, even the VISA. Anything less than $1 is in Riels so you basically end up carrying around two different currencies, slightly bizarre.

Anyhow in Snooky we basically just went to the beach and drank in the evening, nothing too interesting.

 At the beach I got approached by a vendor selling bracelets:

“You want to buy bracelet?” he asked firmly

“no” I replied calmly

“you want play game?”

“what?”

“you want play noughts crosses?”

“no”

“you want buy bracelet?”

“no”

“yes”

“no”

“yes”

“no”

This went on for at least 3 minutes I’m not even exaggerating”

I finally said “no, no, no, no, no”

The vendor cocked his arm and squared up to me as I sat in a deck chair, I looked at him perplexed.

He then drew his thumb across his neck saying “I kill you!” before he walked off to his next victim.

I would estimate that the vendor was 8 years old, maybe 9, not sure. LAD

 Drinking included beers for 60p or less and vodka cokes for about £1.50. This led to Jack losing his iPhone. We are not sure of the exact moment when; but I think it was when this happened:

It also led to the inadvertent texting of Jack’s dad:

 

And it led to bumping into Catrin from Uni who I promised would get a shout out, so here it is.

The bars were cool and had some different features like puppies and kittens walking about on bars looking bewildered.

I really liked Cambodia, and here’s another typical video to highlight some highlights that you may or may not want to watch. Key an eye out for a high 5 fail, completely embarrassing.

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