Tuesday
Tuesday morning and we are up at 5am to get a tuktuk to Siem Reap airport. It’s our original tuktuk driver again which means we don’t get driven at breakneck speed to the airport and we are able to give him the tip for taking us to the temples on Saturday and Sunday that we weren’t able to when he didn’t show up yesterday.
Siem Reap airport security takes all of five seconds to clear (Manchester: please note) and we are all set for breakfast. Kate sits in the departure lounge and Facetimes her daughter. It’s 11.30pm in the UK. I try to Facetime Bill but he’s about to have a bath and messages me back to suggest that we try another time.
Kate and I fly to Phnom Penh. It’s a 50 minute flight compared to a seven hour bus ride. Tackling carbon emissions and reducing the number of flights you take isn’t going to be easy if you’re a traveller on a tight timescale.
We walk out of the airport. We debate whether to get a tuktuk or a taxi. I suggest a taxi as it’s quite a distance to our hotel. The taxi office says the fare will be 18 dollars. Kate says, ‘No you’re all right. We’ll get a tuktuk.’ The fare drops to 10 dollars. It’s a five mile taxi ride to the hotel. The traffic is terrible, with it being the rush hour and us not electing to take a tuktuk that could easily weave in and out of the lines of cars, vans and buses.
Phnom Penh is the sort of place name that you should be allowed to use in Scrabble as it would get you plenty of points. We are here to visit the Killing Fields, a grim reminder of Cambodia’s past. The Khmer Rouge killed 25% of the population of its own country, with the aim of eliminating the professional middle class and returning Cambodia to a predominantly agrarian economy. Whilst this was happening the world just watched.
Phnom Penh doesn’t have the glitz or obvious overseas investment of Bangkok or Saigon that is sending skyscrapers into the air everywhere but there are signs of economic growth. Our hotel is one of them. It’s only just opened.
Kate decides that the taxi driver ‘is going the wrong way.’ She’s been here half an hour and he’s been here all his life and has asked for clarification as to the hotel’s address. My money is on him knowing what he’s doing and where he’s going.
We arrive at our hotel. The taxi driver did know where he was going after all. It turns out that the hotel is brand new, having only opened the day before, so actually him finding it is quite an achievement. Kate is sufficiently satisfied that I am handed an extra $1.50 with which to tip him.
We are amongst the first guests ever to use the hotel and may indeed be the first ever occupants of Room 1002. I use the shower and compile a quick snagging list for the management – hot and cold feeds need reversing in the wash hand basin, towel rail loose, water to shower pulsing, the absence of an extractor fan.
I join Kate at the rooftop pool, which has been designed to look like a stretch of Venetian canal, complete with a bridge over the swimming pool. It’s too hot for a delicate English flower like me.
We spend the day hanging out by the pool on the top of the hotel. Come the evening we are ready to explore Phnom Penh. We decide to walk to the river. This involves crossing more than one road.
The guide book helpfully warned us that pedestrians don’t have a right of way in Cambodia. Even if they did, several thousand motorcyclists, tuktuk drivers and car drivers haven’t read the Lonely Planet Guide. Crossing the road is a matter of judging the right time to step out into the oncoming traffic and heading a straight course for the other side of the street.
It’s not far to the river but the heat is such that we find it hard going, even at 7pm. By the time we’ve found our way there, we stop at the first vaguely decent looking restaurant for something to eat. Kate orders fried chicken thighs. Sitting looking out across the Mekong River, I have a four cheese pizza. As you do.
We take a tuktuk ride back to our hotel. Kate isn’t feeling well and wants an anti histamine. Fortunately I have travelled with the contents of a small field hospital in my washbag, including enough anti histamines to treat an infantry division.
Tuesday
Our hotel room is air conditioned. It would be impossible to sleep without it. But whereas Kate in the past would always complain that it was too cold and that I should turn the air conditioning up – or off – she now wants the room cold and I’m the one shivering. Today I wake up and switch the A/C off as the room is like a giant fridge.
We go to a cafe at the end of the street for breakfast. Kate, who has been charm personified towards the staff at the hotel, decides that the waitress ‘is really pissing me off’ when the woman doesn’t come to take our order the instant we are ready to place it. I say that I am staying put and that if Kate wants to go somewhere else and come back in ten minutes after I’ve had my breakfast that’s fine. I don’t have any money to pay for breakfast without her, so if she accepts my challenge and goes off to get breakfast somewhere else I’ll be in the kitchen doing the washing up to pay for the bill. Kate decides to stay put. After a few minutes a male member of the waiting staff appears and comes to take our order. It seems the waitress who was pissing Kate off by not taking our order perhaps lacked the language skills to do so. Getting our order wrong would undoubtedly have pissed Kate off more, and her pissedoffedness is dissipated by the consumption of a sausage and bacon butty.
We have decided to visit the Royal Palace and the National Museum. Our journey anticipates taking us past the Pencil Superstore, if the tourist map we have is to be believed. Sadly, we can’t find the Pencil Superstore. We do find the National Museum and take refuge from the heat there. The National Museum of Cambodia has a fair sprinkling of foreign tourists, all of whom seem to have been equally willing to hand over ten dollars in return for an escape from the blazing sun and the endless noise of the toing and froing of tuktuks and motorbikes. It’s not the most exciting museum in the world, but we have somewhere to sit and it has lavatories. Cambodia is actually right up there on public lavatories. They’re good. Clean. Plentiful. And free. Like Britain’s bogs were 50 years ago. If you are of a certain age and worried about being caught short whilst out and about, I can recommend Cambodia as a place to visit. I should perhaps submit a travel review to Saga magazine on this basis.
We kick our heels for a couple of hours until it is time for the Royal Palace which is immediately next door to open for the afternoon session. The Royal Palace, to be frank, isn’t much more exciting than the National Museum. Or as Kate puts it: ‘If someone had told me it was just a load of old temples like you get in Thailand I wouldn’t have bothered.’
We adjourn to a bar overlooking the Mekong River. It is playing what sounds like a Cambodian version of reggae and I find it rather enjoyable. The sun is due to set in an hour or so and we walk down to the river where a clutch of boats are offering sunset cruises on the Mekong. We take a cruise and watch the sun go down behind the city skyline.
We walk alongside the river. All human life is here – families enjoying the slight breeze coming off the river, someone running a dance class, people walking their dogs. Pavements don’t really exist in Cambodia and where they do they are occupied by street vendors, motorcycles, tuktuks and cars, so proper public open space is fully utilised.
We have a quick look around the night market, which sells mainly clothes including the world renowned ‘Adidos’ brand. It’s much heralded in the guide book but we are not buying and, after a quick shufti, head back to the hotel for a final drink of the evening.
Thursday
We have breakfast at our hotel. I order the American breakfast because it comes with two eggs. It comes with sausage and bacon but also, it transpires, meat in the hash brown and the accompanying salad. Kate has ordered the continental breakfast. She gets meat in her omelette. We trade breakfast ingredients with each other, bartering toast for sausages.
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