Phnom Penh Travel Blogs | Travelogues | Travel Journals

Update: Yay! Staples fixed my memory card, I finally got Youtube working, so the video of me shooting the AK47 is now up! ******** Everyone in Cambodia thinks I'm Japanese. Nay, are convinced I'm Japanese. I'll walk down the street and they'll be all "Konichiwa!" to which I smile and respond "No, no, USA". They'll nod and say "Ohhh, USA, hello", then pause and add sweetly, "I think you Japanese." It's pretty easy to get around without speaking the language in Cambodia, because tourism-orie...

  I considered the two-day boat trip from Ho Chi Minh City back to Phnom Penh like I took last year. That was a memorable journey which alternated between a variety of small river boats and busses through the Mekong Delta. The $22 fare included all transportation, an overnight hotel room, and side-trips to visit a floating village, a fish farm, a coconut candy factory, and a Vietnamese Islamic mosque. Most of the route snaked through dense jungle past remote fishing villages and primiti...

During one of the days I was in Phnom Penh, I headed out to Stueng Meanchey on the outskirts of town. I've already seen many pictures of the conditions of the people living there, but I just needed to witness it for myself.As I arrived, the stench of rotting food and decaying rubbish in general made me hard to believe that the locals were literally working and living in this waste land. It was trully a depressing site. I only hope that one day the government and other NGO's will assis...

On my second day in Phnom Penh, the same tuktuk driver came to fetch me for our morning's destination which was the Killing Fields.  I had no idea of what to expect there and I was so affected by what I saw.  They had this memorial where thousands of skulls were on display.  Until now, if I think about it, I get depressed.  It was so eerie ... No one would ever understand why this tragedy happened.  Millions of Cambodians were killed by the evil regime of Pol Pot...

S-21The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum was the first place we visited. The site used to be a high school and it was turned into a secret prison during Pol Pot's regime and referred to as "S-21". Many parts of the site have been left more or less the way they were in the 1970s. The somber atmosphere will probably always linger there no matter how many years pass.There is a room full of hundreds of pictures of people who were members of the Khmer Rouge and victims of the Khmer Rouge. A sign has bee...

We thought you'd enjoy some things we've experienced along the way that have made us look differently about how we've grown up, or simply made us say ''Huh?" In Thailand, soda's aren't worth a whole lot.  As a matter of fact, the soda in a glass bottle is worth less than the glass bottle itself.  If you buy a glass bottle of Coke, you can rarely leave the establishment with it.  So you have a couple of options.  1) you can bring your own container for it, or 2) they will ...

The road back went without a snag. It’s always easier to retrace your steps than to stamp out new ones. I was listening to random emo on a nano-pod that Izzy had pawned to me. “To pay for hospital fees for one of my boys” he moaned “He got macheted by some local gangsters” I didn’t really care what these hooligans were up to. His “friends” were kids of Cambodian refugees in the USA who were deported for gang activity they were finding out they weren’t so “bad” back home....

That bus to Phnom Penh wasn’t exactly what I expected – the seats were too stiff and undersized. There’s a boy that keeps peeking behind me as I watch Family Guy episodes on Wayne’s iPod plus kids and oldies barfing everywhere which was absolutely nauseating I had to keep my nose covered! To make things worse, just when we’re nearing Phnom Penh, the bus’ engine began to choke up and feel like dying! So we’re too close, yet so far. A 2km distance felt like forever! Because I was ...

Suas'dei my darlings!one day down and 27 to go.. We got to Cambodia safely after a VERY long flight via Phuket and Bangkok, and despite the fact that it may not be the cleanest nor the most beauf iful city i've ever been to, it certainly has it's charms..okay, so charms might not be the best word.. The complete and abject poverty is ghastly. And it's everywhere. apparently something like 65% of the population lives well below the poverty line, with the majority of families only earning a maxi...

Day 8.The day we'd all been waiting for finally arrived. We were gonna leave the village for 2 days, 1 night.. to go to Phnom Penh for a short retreat. We left the village at 6am.. made a stop at the Russian market. didn't do much shopping there. we lunched at some coffee shop and had some local food, after which we visited some souvenir shops. apparently most of these shops sell things for a good cause.. (e.g. they create jobs for the poor/lower income by letting them hand-make these souveni...

    Waited in the morning for 1 more friend to fly into town, then the 5 of us were off to Siem Reap.  But first we had to stop and get some food..... you never realize how hard it is to order until you are in a restaraunt where there is no english menu and no one speaks English.  Well... we managed :)There are various methods to get from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (air, road, sea), so we choose the most convenient.  We all chiped in USD25 and hired a van with a dri...

Cambodia experienced one of the most hellish revolutions the world has ever seen.  The Khmer Rouge had a vision of utopia much different than most.  Pol Pot declared it to be "year zero" in 1975 after the complete evacuation of Phnom Penh in a mere three days marking the beginning of the KR rule.  Cambodia was to become a peasant dominated agricultural cooperative.  The educated people did not fit the profile.  2 million of Cambodia's most educated people were k...

Mein Zimmer hatte kein Fenster, daher habe ich auch keine Ahnung, ob es draußen schon hell war als ich früh morgens mit heftigem Durst aufgewacht bin. Ich habe mir schnell etwas angezogen und mir in der Rezeption eine große Flasche Wasser besorgt. Mein Magen war bisher asiatischem Essen immer gut gestimmt, doch heute, bald nachdem ich das Wasser getrunken habe, wollte er wohl nicht mehr so recht - die Folge war heftiger Durchfall. Nachdem ich mir gedacht habe, daß es unklug wäre, auf die...

It’s frickin’ hot here and lots of mozzies. The traffic is mental - they swap sides on road according to no rules that I can discern. Been to a couple of markets, that I’m sure you could get lost in, if you didn’t keep an eye on things.There is, like the rest of Cambodia I've seen, a lot of poverty and subsequent begging. Being tapped on the arm by a mother with a suckling baby is not the nicest of experiences. There are also some very rich people in Phnom Penh - their houses are surr...

9/26/06 This morning before catching the six hour bus to Phnom Penh, we went to a very slow Internet cafe to check email and find a place to stay. I launched Yahoo Messenger and the next thing you know, I have three conversations going with Dave, Harjot and John - technology can be so cool. The two monks across from me were smiling, probably trying to figure out why I was laughing as Dave and I IM’ed about monks on the Internet ("It's the best monking movie you've ever seen!"). We took th...