Hi all

Now I thought Cambodia was going to be one of the highlights of Southeast Asia. It was the one I’d done the most reading on, culture and historywise, and it was the one I’d spent most time planning. Added to that, we hadn’t met anyone who’d had a bad word to say about it. Wonderfully friendly people, good food, great hospitality. A real fun place for the most part. A country on the up with a real sense of optimism about it. I really couldn’t wait to get out and see as much of it as I could.

So after a wee while, our bus eventually arrived in Phnom Penh.  Our first impressions were of a bustling, vibrant city and we couldn’t wait to get out and explore it. Our guide spent the last twenty or so minutes of the journey doing his best to convince us to stay at his hotel (which rather unsurprisingly was where the bus terminated) but we’d already decided we were going to stay by the river.  Most backpackers head for the lakeside which sounds pretty skanky, and as Mand wasn’t feeling too well (again) we decided to spoil ourselves a little and stay on the riverfront.

Off the bus and into the waiting arms of 50 or so drivers all yelling and trying their best to take your bag off you and put it in their tuk tuk and take you wherever they thought you might want to go. We picked the one who was yelling the loudest and told him where we wanted to go. The California 2 Guesthouse. He told us it was closed. This is a fairly well known attempt to get you to stay in a hotel of the driver’s choice i.e. one where he can get commission, so I took control and told him we’d already booked a room there and it most definitely was open. Cool. He looked at me like I was mad and said ‘I’ll take you there, but trust me it’s closed’. And he was right. Closed as it gets. For refurbishment. Spot the bloke looking all embarrassed for effectively calling the tuk tuk man a liar. Ah well, f*** him. He then tried to take us to a different hotel but we’d already decided on a secondary option and told him to head there. Thankfully this one was open and we booked in. While I was sorting it out, he elicited a promise from  Mand that he could be the one to drive us wherever we wanted to go, and she arranged for him to pick us up in a couple of days time to go to Tuol Sleng Museum (where they kept and tortured people before shipping them off to be killed), a shooting range, and the Killing Fields.

I’ll leave that happy day trip for another postcard and instead I’ll just tell you about everything else that happened in Phnom Penh. The answer is really not very much. With Mand feeling under the weather, we sent a lot of the time just sitting around, either in cafés or in our room watching cable tv. One night as we were walking round looking for something to eat we ambled into what we thought was a café and I signaled to the guy on the door that we wanted food. I did this by miming eating off a fork. He obviously took this to mean I wanted to smoke either opium or heroin. Hmmmm. We walked in and sat down and it turned out there were only 4 other people in there, all Cambodian and all looking seriously mullered. As soon as we were inside and sat down, the owner(?) ran outside and turned on some thrash metal music loud enough to make our ears bleed, came back in and locked the doors. In Cambodia, no-one can hear you scream. Needless to say we got up and walked to the door and convinced him we really wanted to leave and in his defence he looked really sad and disappointed that we’d decided not to stay. Even so, he unlocked the door and we left smiling politely and promising to come back another night. If we’d been drunk we’d have probably stayed. Probably.

One of the days we attempted the walking tour (it’s almost tradition nowadays) as laid out in our ever reliable Lonely Planet. We got far enough to see pretty much all of it, but as is our wont we eventually stumbled across a bar we liked and got twatted instead.

We started at Wat Phnom which I suppose is where the city got it’s name from. Penh is the name of some girl who discovered the four Buddha statues that originally resided here. It was pretty cool as far as temples go and had three or four smaller temple buildings around it, but by far the best bit was that there were loads of monkeys running around. You might have guessed that we were still feeling pretty so so about temples at this point. But hey ho, not to let our cultural sides down we gamely wandered around for ooohh about 10 minutes and then decided to crack on and see what else was on offer. f*** all as it turned out. Past a library (hmmmm), a hotel(?) and a train station (yawn). Somewhere along the way, I took off my t-shirt in an attempt to top up my ever decreasing tan, and that was when things started to get a little arsey from my point of view.

Now my tattoo has a provoked a range of responses from people in the various countries we’ve been in so far. From people saying it looked good, to people looking at me like I was mad, people asking where I’d got it done (Pompey), how long it took (ages), how much it cost (s*** loads), if it hurt (yes it f***in well did – and no, it wasn’t a nice pain), people transfixed by it and some people slightly unnerved by it (especially Vietnam where the dragon tattoo is a sign of Chinese gangsters). But more than anything, people were curious about it and treated it with a sense of fun. And I’m used to it. But nothing prepared me for the reaction in Phnom Penh. I stopped the traffic. Seriously. There were throngs of people pushing to get a better look. I s*** you not. But the thing is it wasn’t a particularly fun feeling. Even when I looked at people and smiled, occasionally speaking to them (albeit in English) I just got stared at. No reaction. The stares ranged from blank, to contemptuous to downright hostile. And no, it wasn’t that I was the only person with my top off. Loads of people had including a shedload of locals. To be fair, they weren’t all fixed expressions. Some of the more contemptuous ones laughed. The final stroke for me was when a guy ran off to get his mate to come and have a look and they walked beside me for a good five or six seconds with me smiling at them and saying hello. The reaction from them was zero. At this point we were approaching the indoor market there and I decided I’d have to put my shirt back on anyway. The only friendly response I got was in one of the quieter side streets when a tuk tuk driver and four or five of his mates were sat round. He called over smiling and said ‘Your tattoo is very beautiful’. I laughed and said thankyou and he responded with ‘Are you a strong man?’ I told him I could lift his tuk tuk. Everyone laughed and they said goodbye and waved as we went on our way. Cool. But that was the only one in the whole forty minutes or so.

Inside the market it was lovely and cool and we wandered through the various stalls selling just about everything imaginable for a good hour or so until we started to get a thirsty and decided to find somewhere to have a drink. On the way round I decided that maybe I was over reacting to the whole staring thing and so when we stepped outside I took off my shirt again and we headed for the huge department store opposite. Same thing all over again. I’m not averse to showing off every now and then but only when the crowd’s appreciative. By this time though, it was starting to annoy me so when a tuk tuk man and his mates looked over said something to each other and laughed. I just stared at them, and took on what I hoped was a disinterested swagger.

As we went into the department store on went the shirt and we had a nice cold milkshake and then headed off back on the tour. I once again disrobed the second we were outside and was pleased to see we were heading down some slightly quieter streets and even got a smile or two off some people as we walked on down. We stopped off briefly at a barber shop where I got my hair cut to perfection using clippers (in Vietnam they insist on using a kind of mini lawn mower which is hand operated and is absolutely useless – or one time the guy cut it with scissors which took about an hour), and then came across a sports bar called Gym Bar. Game over. We went in and watched a variety of sports on the dozen or so screens they had arounfd the place, and got chatting to the Australian landlord who was an avid viewer of Eastenders and gave us a complete rundown of everything that’s happened lately. It was here that I found out we were just about to win the Ryder Cup from a Sceptic of all people. Beautiful. I just gave him a magnanimous smile and tilted my glass at him. He wasn’t impressed and him and his girlfriend didn’t hang around for too long after that. Poor losers these yanks you know. And poor winners for that matter. A few games of pool, a shedload of beer and some dinner, and that was about as far as the walking tour went. Home to bed.

Another evening we headed down to the lakeside where the backpacker crowd hang out and there are loads of bars and restaurants. We couldn’t find the restaurant we wanted and ended up eating in the highly recommended ‘Lazy Gecko’, a Brit owned place that does lots of good work in the community. The food was ok, but once again we were seriously taken aback by the rudeness shown by the local staff. This seems to be prevalent tin everywhere we went. They’re just plain rude. Even when you’re friendly to them they treat you like an idiot. We even tried speaking in Cambodian to them (usually at least trying to speak to someone in their native tongue helps strike up some kind of rapport) and were met with contemptuous stares. The final straw was when we ordered a beer which they gave us, and then turned all the lights off about 30 seconds later and stood staring at us. What? Sell me a beer and then expect me to down it 30 seconds later? If you’re not going to let me drink it then don’t f***in sell it to me. In case we hadn’t quite got the message she then put the bill down in front of us and stood there. At no point did she even say we’re closing. Or would we mind paying the bill. We sat back and took as long as possible drinking it (it was still only 10.30 when we left). For her part she sat tapping her feet and sighing while we did it. We were so pissed off that we didn’t even bother going to the world famous Heart Of Darkness which was our original intention. I’d have probably ended up getting shot.

This rudeness/contempt seemed to be the way everywhere in Phnom Penh. At one place one of the girls working there pointed at me (while stood right in front of me it has to be said) said something to her friend and laughed. Not happy with doing it once, she did it again later. What the f***?

I’ll be honest and say I absolutely hated Phnom Penh. I found the place generally to be a filthy s***hole. Everything was more expensive than in Vietnam (yet people keep telling me it’s a poorer country) and everything was worse. The people were rude and I have never felt so abused and tired of a place in my entire life. Not even when we left Tetouan in Morocco. We hated it so much that we decided to change our itinerary and cut our time in Cambodia even shorter in case everywhere was like that. Hence the reason we didn’t see any of the other sights in Phnom Penh, like the Palace and the Silver Pagoda. We simply couldn’t be arsed with it. Ah well, f*** em. We were off to Siem Reap, which would hopefully prove a bit more friendly.

Laters all

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