Day 33 Ho CHi Minh City, Vietnam to Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Day 33 – Hers.

We were up at 6:30 to have breakfast before meeting the group at 7:45.  We loaded ourselves and our packs onto cyclos and headed for the bus ‘station’, a few blocks from our hotel.  I say ‘station’ – but there is actually no station in HCMC – the long distance buses just line up along one particular road.  You find the one that matches your ticket, stow your luggage underneath and climb aboard.   – It was lucky that we had kept back a few dong for this morning....tips were required for doormen and cyclo drivers.  A couple of our group seemed to have forgotten this detail – their cyclo drivers, in particular, did not look happy.

The bus was very similar to the Peruvian buses.  There was air conditioning, a loo and a dvd player. (They showed ‘Transformers’ and then some Cambodian singing and dancing – a strange thing – the men and women don’t touch they stand a foot or so away from each other, shuffle backwards and forwards a bit and waggle their hands at each other. Our guide tells us it’s very traditional.) A hostess welcomed us aboard, handed out boxed snacks (Pizza – with CHEESE –how I’ve missed it - and banana bread) and water and described some of the key sights on the way.  One twist to her duties here: if you didn’t get your visa in advance, (We did – so no problem there...) for $25, she will sort it out for you before you get to the Cambodian border. 

One and a half hours of westward travel through the Mekong Delta area, we reached the border.  We climbed off the bus, went through Vietnamese border control, climbed on the bus to drive 200 metres, climbed off the bus, went through Cambodian border control, climbed back on the bus and it was done....20 minutes in total.  (We are told it can take over 3 hours if you don’t get there until noon.)

We stopped just 20 minutes later for lunch.  It was 11:00.  Rob and I hadn’t even eaten the boxed snack yet.  We watched children playing with the cellophane from the tourist boxes (They made little balloons and then stomped on them.) and the various vehicles passing (A moped with a double mattress strapped to the back was one of the highlights.) – and commented on the differences in architecture immediately noticeable.  Cambodian houses are made of wood with tiled, bamboo – or occasionally corrugated iron – roofs.  Many in the flood plains are on piles.  They don’t have the same penchant for narrow, deep houses – and one way to spot the million or so Vietnamese living in the area is to just look at the houses.

Back on the bus, we drove for another hour through lush countryside, passing houses on stilts, colourfully typical Cambodian temples and a few Buddhist cemeteries (These are Vietnamese – the Cambodians practise cremation.).  The landscape and vegetation are, of course, very similar to Vietnam – but much less of the land is cultivated in Cambodia.  We then had to cross the Mekong River.  Intrepid’s safety requirements are that we get off the bus and don lifejackets for the short ferry crossing.  We duly obliged – feeling a little silly as no one else on the bus or in any of the other vehicles got out – and making us targets for the begging children (quite cute, really – and a blow on the whistle of my life jacket seemed to please one little boy as much as anything else) and sellers of fruit and fried crickets.  Yes, fried crickets.  According to the guidebook, the philosophy here is that if it is available and has nutrition, eat it.  I suspect that a recent history of war and famine has contributed to this philosophy.

We climbed back aboard the bus as the ferry docked and set off for the last leg to Phnom Penh.  In the outskirts, we passed two American schools, a load of construction sites and many, many of the little roadside businesses common to all the countries we have visited.  We knew we were nearly there when we spotted a huge and beautiful temple complex.  We pulled into the bus station (Phnom Penh actually has one) and transferred to a minibus for the short drive to our guesthouse.

On the way, Limny – our guide - pointed out the National Museum and the Palace with its Silver Pagoda.  He didn’t have time to point out much more – because our hotel is located right across the street...what a location!  We retired to our rooms for a couple of hours to wash off the grime and fatigue of the journey – then off to explore.

Day 33 – His.

Patti likes it here. I think she is thinking of moving here for a year to teach. If we do move here I am buying a motorbike. It is essential here and the people use it for everything. I have seen furniture moved, whole families balancing on the back and a farmer with about 20 piglets on the back in a huge bamboo pen. Really, if you live here you need a motorbike. The only other option is a bicycle. They use them a lot too and the cyclos are everywhere. It was Limny’s idea of fun to organise a cyclo tour of the city and he was right it was huge fun. We set off after the afternoon downpour (which was about 5) and zipped in and out of the traffic visiting various monuments and sights at which Limny would stop the cyclos and we would all climb off to hear him tell us a little bit about each one.

Phnom Penh was one of 8 capitols for years (apparently the king just loved to move the capital almost randomly). It became the first became the capital when Ponhea Yat, king of the Khmer Empire, moved it from Angkor Thom after Angkor Thom was captured and destroyed by Siam a few years earlier. Phnom Penh remained the royal capital for 73 years-from 1432 to 1505. It was abandoned for 360 years-from 1505 to 1865-by subsequent kings due to internal fighting between the royal pretenders. Later kings moved the capital several times and established their royal capitals at various locations in Cambodia.

It was not until 1866, under the reign of King Norodom I, that Phnom Penh became the permanent capital. In 1870 the French Colonialists turned a riverside village into a city where they built hotels, schools, prisons, barracks, banks, public works offices, telegraph offices, law courts, and health services buildings and the city is still littered with them. Our hotel is right by the river and the river walk is certainly one of the prides of the city. By the 1920s, Phnom Penh was known as the Pearl of Asia, and over the next 80 years it continued to grow. So, now the city is an eclectic mix of the old and new with an interesting multicultural mix of peoples milling about the streets.

During the Vietnam War, Cambodia was used as a base by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, and thousands of refugees from across the country flooded the city. By 1975, the population was 3 million, the bulk of whom were refugees from the fighting. The city fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975. All of its residents, including those who were wealthy and educated, were evacuated from the city and forced to do labour on rural farms as "new people". Tuol Sleng High School was taken over by Pol Pot's forces and was turned into the infamous S-21 prison camp, where people were detained and tortured. Pol Pot sought a return to an agrarian economy and therefore killed many people perceived as educated, "lazy", or political enemies. Many others starved to death as a result of failure of the agrarian society and the sale of Cambodia's rice to China in exchange for bullets and weaponry. The former high school is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where you can see Khmer Rouge torture devices and photos of their victims. Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields), 15 kilometres (9 mi) away, where the Khmer Rouge marched prisoners from Tuol Sleng to be murdered and buried in shallow pits, is also now a memorial to those who were killed by the regime and we are due to visit tomorrow.

The Khmer Rouge were driven out of Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese in 1979 and people began to return to the city. Vietnam is historically a state with which Cambodia has had many conflicts, therefore this liberation was and is viewed with mixed emotions by the Cambodians and a lot of Vietnamese are still in Cambodia and they live in a kind of uneasy peace. I guess it all adds spice to life.

After the cyclo ride we ended up at Friends restaurant (which is the same idea as the koto restaurant we went to in Vietnam). The dinner was good despite the fact that I feel we have done nothing all day but sit on our backsides and eat. The rest of the guys went off for a beer but we were up early this morning and we are up early again tomorrow so we returned to the hotel to write the blog and get some sleep.