Category Archives: cambodia

Accidental Tourists

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“Never forget… every driver is trying to kill you.”

That was a tip in one of the tourist brochures we picked up in Siem Reap last year, in an article about Cambodian road safety. According to the article, Cambodia has 10 times the traffic deaths per capita than developed countries.

Abet and I were extra careful, of course — we always are when we’re away from home.We realised though that you can only be too careful, and that there are just some situations that are out of your hand.

Like the bus accident we met en route to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam:

Our bus hit the van in front of us, and that van threw the wagon in front of it off the road. I saw one woman fly, and I honestly thought at first that there would be casualties. There weren’t, but the people from the wagon — all of them elderly — had to be carried off in an ambulance.

It was our bus’s fault, and it was such a hassle for everyone involved. I’m willing to bet none of the drivers were members of any roadside assistance club. It took three hours before the bus sent in by the tour company arrived to take us to Vietnam. We were on the road for 15 hours instead of 12.

I was able to take pictures of the Cambodian countryside and some of the locals.

And this is why I’m so paranoid on getting travel insurance whenever we go abroad.

The Killing Fields/Choeung Ek Genocidal Center

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The Killing Fields
The Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, located 17 kilometers south of Phnom Penh, is the most popular of the sites known as The Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge executed about 17,000 people between 1975-1979. 8,895 bodies were discovered in the mass graves in Cheoung Ek.

The center point of the site is a Buddhist memorial stupa with acrylic glass sides.

The Killing Fields

The stupa is filled with more than 5,000 human skulls.

The Killing Fields

The victims’ clothes were stored in the lowest level of the stupa.

The Killing Fields
A sign inside says that the victims’ clothes were cleaned after excavating the mass graves in 1988.

The wooden buildings that used to stand on the killing grounds are no longer there. Instead, there are signboards to indicate significant spots inside the grounds.

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields

Scattered within the grounds are mass graves.

The Killing Fieldsmass grave of 450 victims

The Killing Fieldsmass grave of 100 women and children, majority were naked

The Killing Fields
mass grave of 166 victims found without heads

There were two disturbing trees. This killing tree:

The Killing Fields

And this “magic” tree:

The Killing FieldsA loudspeaker was hung here to drown out the moans of the victims as they were being executed.

Some of the victims’ bones (and teeth) were also on display.
The Killing Fields

There are still human bones all over the site, but we didn’t find any. We really didn’t bother to look for some. Being in the fields was depressing enough, even if it was green and peaceful and quiet on those grounds.

The Killing FiedsThese aren’t your ordinary fields.

Fancy Guest House, Phnom Penh

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Fancy Guest House in Phnom Penh is a TripAdvisor find, it is among the top-ranked bed & breakfasts in the city.

Making reservations was easy, I just inquired directly with the owner, Mr. Phannak, via email months before our trip. He offered three types of rooms:

the singleroom with one kingsized bed in the middle without window costs 15usd/night,at the backside with large window costs 20usd/night and in the front with private balcony sitting in the armchair for Lipton tea and coffee costs 25usd/night.

All my rooms are with A/C,multi channel cable T.V,cold-hot shower,fridge,telephone,free drinking water..etc,and the bathroom inside.

We chose the best room, and here is what it looked like:

Fancy Guest House

Fancy Guest House

Fancy Guest House

There really wasn’t anything fancy about Fancy Guest House. The room was basic and sparsely decorated, but it was good enough for $25, even if we didn’t bother with the balcony/armchair/coffee & tea that we paid extra for. We don’t even have and idea of what the balcony looked like, it would just have a view of the street in front of the hotel. Fancy Guest House was located in a residential area that was far from fancy (Abet described it as “parang Malabon lang”), but we felt safe, and it was just a few minutes’ walk away from Sisowath Quay. Location was good.

What I liked best about the guest house was the friendly and efficient service of the staff and the owner. Mr. Phannak was easy to deal with and made things hassle-free for us. He arranged airport pick-up for $10 (same as taxi) and for a car and driver to take us around for a day for $30. (Actually, it was his brother who drove us around, but hey, whatever works for us.) He also took arranged our bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and had the bus company pick us up right at the guest house. And before we left, he called up our hotel in Siem Reap to advise them that we were on the way and what time and where they would need to pick us up. We appreciated the convenience.

Here are more pics:
Fancy Guest House
There were convenience items for sale in the lobby like toiletries, drinks, chips, and beer. (Mr. Phannak proudly recommended Angkor Beer, their national brew, but it wasn’t our type.)

Fancy Guest House

The façade. See that guy reading the newspaper? That’s Mr. Hana, our designated driver, Mr. Phannak’s brother. We’re not sure about the name, but that’s what he said when I asked what his name was. I don’t know if he understand the question as his English wasn’t very good. Nice guy, though. He kept calling my “Missy” in a sing-song voice. That’s Mr. Hana’s Camry in front, our ride during our stay in Phnom Penh.

Overall, I enjoyed our stay at Fancy Guest House. I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a place to spend a night or two in Phnom Penh.

I do have to mention, though: Abet said that he felt that there was mumu in our room. He woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and that’s when he heard our plastic bags of pasalubong rustling as if someone was going through them, and he swore that it couldn’t have been the aircon. I guess this is not for scaredy-cats, but if you aren’t, then Fancy Guest House will be just fine.

–=-=–

Fancy Guest House
169B, Chan Reachea (St. 15), Phnom Penh 12205, Cambodia
http://www.thefancyguesthouse.com/
fancyguesthouse@yahoo.com
(855) 23211829

Krup-krup

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En route from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, our van stopped over at Kampong Thom, a province two hours from Siem Reap. A stall on the sidewalk had crickets…

crickets in Cambodia

and beetles (or what I hoped were beetles and not roaches):

crickets in Cambodia

I don’t really care about edible insects, I was more interested in the persimmons and pomegranates in the next stall.

persimmons and pomegranates

Abet, however, wanted to get the crickets. He sampled some and liked them, so we bought a small plastic bag for 7,000 riel–around P80–for pulutan in our hotel room later that evening. They weren’t too bad, actually. Perfect with beer.

crickets in Cambodia
Please excuse the girly fingernails–he’s a guitarist.

crickets in Cambodia
Yum!

On the way back from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh (towards Vietnam), we passed by Kampong Thom again. This time, we bought a tarantula for 500 riel (P6). Neither of us ate it. We’ll stick to the crickets next time.

Back from Backpacking

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travel souvenirs

Abet and I are back from an 11-day SouthEast Asian adventure across five cities in three countries: Kuala Lumpur and Malacca in Malaysia, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia, and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam. We had the time of our lives.

We ate hawker food, went up the Petronas Towers Skybridge, ate at Nando’s Peri-Peri Chicken, Carl’s Jr. (which we sorely missed), and Baskin-Robbins, found the books we were looking for (Stiff by Mary Roach for me, a book I bought years ago and lost, but want in my library; Hemingway’s For Whom the Bells Toll for him), lugged our backpacks all over KL’s train stations, visited the Batu Caves, experienced vibrant Jonker Street in Malacca, got lost, visited the Killing Fields, Genocide Museum, and the Russian Market in Phnom Penh, ate crickets, ran out of clean clothes and underwear, toured the temples of Siem Reap, got sunburned, got insect bites, enjoyed a Khmer buffet, watched an Apsara performance, saw the sun rise over the Angkor Wat, saw how fine handicrafts were made, ate ice cream at Swensen’s, figured in a bus accident that left several people injured (who had to be carried off in an ambulance), spent 15 hours on a bus, met other backpackers, met fellow Filipinos, became millionaires (P2,700 = VND 1M), ate a ridiculous amount of fruit, ate a ridiculous amount of French bread, drank beer almost nightly, squeezed our ways through one of the Cu Chi Tunnels, visited the War Remnants Museum, survived a sea of motorcycles, enjoyed bowls of pho, haggled at the Ben Thanh market, bought even more books, ate even more ice cream, got items for our future home, bought coffee, nuts and dried fruit for pasalubong, suffered from upset tummies from too much streetfood, and slept at the airport because our flight got majorly delayed due to typhoon Santi (we were still lucky, PAL and Vietnam Air flights were cancelled). We took a bunch of great photos, and thousands of crappy photos. It was a great adventure, and I can’t say enough how happy, thankful, and lucky I am that I got to experience this with Abet, just the two of us. Travel is one of our ultimate favorite bonding activities.

My recent trip validated two things:

1) There really is no place like the Philippines. After seeing the different sights in Malaysia, Cambodia, and Vietnam, I realized that the sights, the food, and the people of the Philippines are the best. We have three trips abroad planned for next year, but I’ll make sure to squeeze in some local destinations.

2) Abet and I make a great team. Ü I’ve known this from the very start, but travelling puts our team and our relationship to the test, and I’m glad that for this one, we passed with flying colors. Being alone in a foreign country makes us cling to each other a little tighter than usual and makes us more patient and understanding. We were each other’s world for eleven days, taking care of and being responsible for the other. We feel closer than ever, and I learned so much about myself, about him, and about us as a couple. Actually, I’m currently experiencing withdrawal symptoms from my boyfriend–we were attached to the hip the entire duration of our vacation, I think we were apart only during trips to the restroom.

I have lots of stories and pictures that I’ll blog about in the next few weeks or days. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help out someone planning a similar trip, just like how travel blogs have been helpful to us during our planning. More travel posts coming up!