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Cambodia is hot, energy sappingly hot. More so than anywhere I’ve ever been. What makes it hotter is that there’s no widespread air conditioning or fans in different places in museums or restaurants. I found out that this is because electricity in Cambodia is ridiculously expensive because they don’t produce it themselves- they buy it from Vietnam. So the first night we were here the heat was intense for the first few hours even with the ceiling fan on. The showers are cold and (while those who know me know that I like my showers scalding hot) are refreshing. The thought of a hot shower here actually makes me sweat.
Yesterday was spent more or less exploring the city. I say more or less because we were taken around by Debbi’s uncle’s (Mr. Song) driver which meant that we really just saw the city from the back windows of the car. I’m not complaining about that, I’m just trying to make the point clear that it was very different from anything I’ve done in recent years and gave me a different view of the city. I can’t really say anything about the people because I didn’t meet anyone other than the ticket people at the different museums.
We started at the killing fields of Choeung Ek which is where Pol Pot sent tens of thousands of people to be buried in unmarked graves. When you take a walk around it takes a moment to fully realize that all of the ditches are former mass graves and then you’re just filled with horror. The monument at this memorial is a large tower containing the bones and clothing of 5000 victims, each killed in a particularly gruesome way. The skulls are at eye level and the rest of the bodies are near the top. It’s a beautiful monument and the juxtaposition between the gorgeous area and the horror of the genocide is striking.
Our next stop was the former prison Tuol Sleng which is where people were sent from all over the country to be tortured before being sent to the killing fields for execution. Anyone could be sent there, and oftentimes having lived in a city was enough because you were thought to be a capitalist whore. The prison is a former high school that had all of the rooms converted into holding cells and torture chambers. There are four buildings- A, B, C, D- and as you move down the alphabet you go from cells to the torture chamber. It’s quite possibly one of the more disturbing museums I’ve ever been to. A lot of what is so disturbing is that Pol Pot managed to kill a quarter of the population in about four years completely unmolested by any foreign power and then was placed under house arrest by the Vietnamese while all of the colluders were left free. Not that I advocate vengeance, more that there needs to be accountability for these crimes.
It was a slightly depressing day. But it was good in that it was an education. It also provided context for why Cambodia is as bad as it is. They pulled a China and killed all of the doctors, teachers, and educated people. Unlike China, it took being occupied by the Vietnamese until 1990 to oust the Khmer Rouge from power. Even then, my understanding is that there were pockets of Khmer Rouge fighting until close to 2000. I know this is sounding like a lecture but it’s to give a bit of background for the rest of my thoughts about Phnom Penh.
The city itself is phenomenally dirty. There’s trash everywhere. It doesn’t stink, but it’s more like there are plastic bags, bottles and papers littering the side of the streets and heaped in piles. When you go by the market there are pigs and cows just chilling out next to food stalls which are sometimes pulled by oxen. The main mode of transportation is the motor bike like much of Southeast Asia but there are no traffic rules. People drive down the wrong side of the road all the time, traffic lights are considered a guideline and people think nothing of driving straight through them, and when you want to cross the street you just start walking. It’s insane. We passed several different moto accidents and one where a girl had been pulled out from under the bike, but the funny thing was she just dusted herself off and looked around for another moto to take her where she wanted to go.
I think I wrote about the poverty last time, but it really is kind of incredible. Even in Phnom Penh, not all of the streets are paved. Some are really just dirt roads because there’s no money. According to Debbi, the reason U.S. dollars are used here instead of the local currency is because it fluctuates to widely. In fact, I think ATMs give you money in dollars (for small change they use their own currency). Things are cheap here and a dollar goes pretty far. You can have a large meal that feeds four for about $20-30. And I do mean a large meal. Think several main dishes. While we were driving back, we saw a group of at least ten boys disrobing and Mr. Song explained that they just sleep on the streets so if you see a black shape on the sidewalk at night, it’s probably a homeless person. And there are a lot of homeless people in Phnom Penh.
I’m actually on a bus right now to Siem Reap and the road we’re on is considered a good one because it’s paved. That’s its only attribute. Other than that it’s a nightmarish road. There are potholes everywhere and this bus has no shocks. I passed out for about an hour before being jolted awake by the driver who was trying to get around carts pulled by horses and narrowly missed getting hit head on by a bigger truck. Seriously, it was scary! But this is normal and didn’t faze anyone on the bus except for the worried Western girls.
Fingers crossed we get there in one piece…
So it was fun. Really.
We started off at an Italian-Thai fusion restaurant which was really good. We started off with what the menu called “Complicated Noodles” which were lettuce cups with flat noodles and a spicy pork paste. It was so good. I had liver pâté spaghetti in a spicy tomato sauce which sounds icky but was actually really good. Kate had this awesome sun-dried duck with spicy sauce and a mango salad. It’s funny that we have yet to have a bad meal in Thailand. That probably explains why I’ve been able to gain 5 pounds and still be so happy about it.
We left and went to this gourmet supermarket and picked up tons of dried fruit for the next few days. Thank God for Ta because she helped tell us what different things are and helped us get smaller packages of the fruits when the prepackaged ones were too big. We found this fruit called mangosteen (which Debbi has likened to ambrosia and does taste like heaven) and another fruit that’s delicious but I don’t remember what it’s called. Then we hit Forever 21 because we didn’t have anything to wear and apparently it’s the biggest Forever 21 in Southeast Asia. It’s huge. I was impressed. I wanted to stay and shop all night and I don’t even like the store. I found a cute top, in jersey, that I would actually wear again so life was good.
We went to this restaurant on the top of a hotel called Sky Bar and it was really cool. It’s outside on the rooftop and you get this amazing panorama of the city. The only jarring note was this one couple with two cameras who kept taking pictures of themselves. It was so weird. Like they didn’t really their meal because they were too busy taking pictures of themselves weird. I thought that maybe they were spies or thieves casing the joint behind them for two hours but Kate called it “very postmodern” and I think I have to agree with that. Although I have to say that I like my idea more. It was much more inventive. And by then I think the mixed drinks were getting to me anyway.
So it was off to Jet, one of the more popular clubs in Bangkok. It was…. loud. And people were very drunk. And I was way too sober to be around that many drunk people. So Kate and I toughed it out before going outside to wait since the club closed like 30 minutes after we got there (clubs in Bangkok close around 2, then people go get food at a night market or a restaurant) and there we met the most persistent guys I’ve ever met. We said we were lesbians, and they wouldn’t believe us or go away. Ta’s friend finally had to go over and say in Thai (with the corresponding drunken hand gestures), “they’re a couple. 101%!” He earned major points. If he weren’t 19 and in school I totally would have made him come traveling with us just for the entertainment.
From Kate via Debbi’s thumbs:
After a relaxing day and a half in bangkok during which we did practically nothing cultural except eat excellent food, we headed off to meet Debbi in Cambodia on the 4 week anniversary of my arrival in asia. Getting out of bangkok proved to be much simpler than arriving; per Ta’s advice we just took a cab to the airport which took an hour and required nothing more than for us to sit and chat. This was infinitely less painful than the wandering from the train station that happened on both arrivals. We got to the airport with time to spare which meant that we could enjoy a lovely sushi and sandwich lunch at a gourmet counter. The flight itself was short and uneventful except for the talkative German man sitting between us who offered unsolicited advice on navigating Cambodia (and he spat-adds Mikey). All his warnings in addition to the horror stories that we’d heard over the last several weeks made us feel incredibly grateful that Debbi was picking us up from the airport with her uncle’s driver (posh much). Getting through visa and immigration was incredibly slow and disorganized (except for the part when they take your money), and my immigration guy even forgot I was there for a while as he took a call on his cell phone. Isn’t that illegal? I took it as a good introduction to Cambodian society (or at least their attitude towards rules). This impression proved to be reinforced on our car trip through the city during which I discovered there are fewer traffic rules than in Indonesia which I thought was as bad it could get. Indeed, cars (rather, motor bikes)- now Mikey’s thumbs-here don’t even get a chance to go until their light turns red. That is, if they can navigate all the people walking through the middle of the street.
Despite all the stories I had heard and warnings I had been given, I still wasn’t prepared for the reality of Phnom Penh. Admittedly, we saw it all from the safety of the car’s tinted windows but the sheer numbers of people, the dirtiness and the poverty were overwhelming. Coming from Bangkok and even KL which are major international business cities, Phnom Penh is like an industrial Midwestern town.
Back to Mikey:
I have to say that nothing prepares you for the poverty here. It’s depressing that there are children begging on the streets alone and mothers carrying babies begging for money to feed them. The worst is that there’s nothing you can do because there are just so many needy people.And I think it’s a countrywide problem. For example cops only make about US$15 a month and have to rely on bribes to see them through because it costs a dollar a day to eat even simple meals. Another example would be that the meat here is not good meat and yet because very few of the locals can afford it, when you can you’re considered wealthy even though it’s really not fit to eat. When we were driving earlier we saw oxen (or the Asian equivalent) in the middle of the street and even they looked malnourished. It’s just sad.
Phnom Penh is a very depressing city and I’m actually glad we’re only here for a day. I might change my mind tomorrow, but I doubt it.
OK. That’s it for now. It was a long day on very little sleep and I’m tired. Hope everyone is well!
Penang… Where do I start?
The morning we left for Penang should have been a warning that the day would be anything but easy. We woke up ridiculously early to shower, etc before leaving. While we were repacking our bags, the buzzer sounded. We ignored it because we weren’t supposed to open the door to anyone per the owner’s instructions. But then it rings again and again and then there’s a long buzz. Finally someone else who’s up goes outside to see what’s going on and it turns out that someone had agreed to go on a jungle trek and their ride was there. But no one who was awake downstairs had any idea what he was talking about. And the owner wasn’t there and it turned into this ridiculous mess of everyone asking questions that no one knew the answers to and everyone in the hostel was woken up to see if they were the ones who’d asked for the safari but no one was. It turned out that the girl had only asked about details for the trip but that had quickly snowballed into, “oh! You’re going!” But it was entertaining and we met some new people like half an hour before we had to leave.
The bus ride was fine. Malaysia is a beautiful country from start to finish and one of the greenest places I’ve ever seen. The trouble came when we got off the bus and started walking to our hotel. First, we thought we were in a completely different part of town than the one we wanted, think other side of the island. Second, we started off in the wrong direction anyway because we were trying to avoid all of the people who were like “Teksi! Teksi!” because cabs in Malaysia are notorious for ripping you off. Third, it was boiling. Like, I thought I was going to melt into the ground like the Wicked Witch of the West. A lovely man finally turned us in the right direction and we started walking again, only to run out of sidewalk and be forced to go through side streets and up several hills. We were not pleased. At all. Then another lovely man told us we were better off taking the bus because we were kidding ourselves if we thought we wanted to walk. Fair enough. We’d been walking for 40 minutes by then and were over it. But we were on the wrong side of the road to catch a bus. And there were no crosswalks. And it was a busy highway and we had 20 pound packs on. We gave up and called the hotel to have them send a cab to get us since all the ones passing us were full. That didn’t work out too well since we weren’t sure where we were and were getting crankier by the minute. We finally found a ride and were so grateful to arrive at our hotel it was ridiculous.
The hotel almost deserves its own post since it’s been so nice here. We were at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel (the locals call it the E&O) which is this colonial era hotel where all of the rooms are suites and it overlooks the ocean. It sounds extravagant, but what’s interesting is that because it’s not high season we got a rate that’s less than what you would pay at a seaside Mariott. I kid you not. And the staff here is amazing. They’re so nice and so helpful.
The food in Penang is amazing. We went out to dinner last night and had the best meal I’ve had in Asia. And the people here are so much nicer than KL and so much friendlier. Then again, I guess you could compare KL to NYC where everyone is mean.
This morning was a misadventure all its own. Having learned our lesson yesterday, we caught a cab to the mainland to buy train tickets. Our cab driver was the sweetest guy and gave us a little tour as we crossed the bridge and told us not to take a cab when we went to actually catch a train because that was a lot of money. Instead, we should catch the ferry and he would show us how to do it on the way back. So we got to the train station at like 8:20 because we had called last night and they told us to be sure to ge there early because there’s only one train to Thailand a day. The ticket counter was closed. They were on a break from 7:30 until 9. But, instead of leaving us our cab driver said he’d wait with us since it was only 20 minutes and went and got us water and then told us funny stories about the different customers he’d had over the past few years. We got our tickets and came back to the hotel for breakfast- delicious, by the way.
I’m typing this on my Blackberry by the pool so I’m going to end this now. We go to Bangkok by overnight train in a few hours, so wish us luck!
So today was a bit better than yesterday.
On the hostel front, I woke up three times in the middle of the night because some idiot who was leaving at 4am tried to plug in his razor with the wrong adaptor and blew out the power for the hostel. Not only did this mean that I had to go to the bathroom in the dark, but the air conditioner was out as well. Oh my god our room smelled so bad by the time I finally got up to shower. Eeeww.
We decided to go to the National Islamic Museum today and on our way there we decided that Kuala Lumpur has the worst infrastructure ever. Either that or it’s just so poorly marked that it’s designed to frustrate you. It took us a good 20 minutes to cross the river because we couldn’t find an under/overpass to take us across. We finally wound up basically running across a highway and passing through a post office just to get there. Then, we couldn’t find the museum! But there was a lovely woman who pointed us in the right direction.
To get to the museum from where we were you have to cross through the National Mosque. So of course we got distracted and went in. You have to sign a registry and put on full covering including hair covering before you can explore the grounds. The sad thing was that the second we said we were from the US, we got the most evil looks I’ve ever seen. Holy crap I was not expecting that. But the mosque itself was beautiful and had some of the prettiest views of the city. The only downside to the mosque was the female guide who had recently converted to Islam and instead of answering my questions about the mosque decided to preach and prostelytize about how Islam had given her a new peace and we should look into it too and hey here are some pamphlets and a book because Islam can give you answers too.
We left fairly quickly after that and went to the Museum. I actually had high hopes for it because I was really curious about Islamic arts and visually I wasn’t disappointed. The artefacts were amazing. There were a variety of textiles and metal works and just imagining the hours and craftsmanship it took to make them was mindblowing. They also had a jewelry exhibit which was very pretty and reading the history behind the different ways of working silver and gold was pretty interesting. That’s about it though. On the whole, the captions were slightly offensive. It wasn’t anything overt like, “Christians and Jews are bad” it was more subtle. Like they would leave out key areas of the history of Islam in Southeast Asia- like the fact that elements from the older religions remain in many regions. I also got the feeling like I was in the Vatican or the Sistine Chapel where they were attempting to convert me through an inappropriate medium. I understand that Islamic art is just that: religious art. But I don’t think that the captions that tell you the history of, daggers for instance, need to also contain a hidden message of the superiority of Islam in an art museum. I got mad. I know, obviously I was peeved.
Then it was off to try and get back over the bridge and over into Chinatown. We lasted all of fifteen minutes before the hawkers got to us and we ran away to the outskirts of town to find something to eat. It was kind of pathetic actually. You’d think we’d be better at this by now.
I think the higlight of the day has to be when we made it out to the twin towers and did some shopping in the mall (3 t-shirts was not enough and I don’t want to do laundry) before exploring the park in the city center. The park was so pretty and well-planned and we even passed a group of people doing dancercize which was so much fun! Dinner was CPK. That’s right, there is a CPK in Kuala Lumpur and I totally had a pizza there. And it wasn’t too bad.
The biggest accomplishment today has to be when we managed to find bus tickets to Penang without too much of a hassle and make our way uptown on the metro without being totally confused because the signs were actually clear! Honestly, that was when Kuala Lumpur redeemed itself and while not my favorite city by a longshot, is not my most hated. I’m really glad I came, but I never want to come back.
We head to Penang tomorrow by bus, wish us luck!
Oh! I forgot to mention the last time that I made it out to the Shangri-La Hotel for lunch, dim sum to be specific. It was delicious. I almost wish that I’d been hungrier because it was soo good. And it was a cute little area right off of Orchard Avenue (the place that reminds me of Beverley Hills) and a place I’d definitely return to.
So today was Malaysia day. We decided that it would be better to take the bus because not only is it cheaper than the train, it’s about 3 hours faster. Like it only takes 5 hours by bus but over 7 hours by train. So we left our hostels with our massive backpacks on and went off to find the bus station. We get there and immediately people are like, “Oh. Taking a train? Want to go to (insert destination)?” So we have to weed through people to find a bus that’s going to Kuala Lumpur before 4pm even though everyone swore that there were buses departing hourly. Yeah, total lie. We got there at 11:50 and most buses weren’t leaving again until 3. But we finally found one that was leaving about 5 minutes after we bought our tickets. Here’s the interesting bit: to enter Malaysia by bus, you get off the bus twice. Once to go through departure immigration in Singapore and once again upon arrival in Malaysia where they also x-ray your bags. It’s kind of a pain, but it’s fairly straightforward and since everyone knows you don’t speak any of the regional dialects, they gesture at you and speak loudly so you can figure out what’s going on. My favorite line today has to be the man who asked where we were from, then asked if I knew that by Indian tradition I was married because of the toe ring on my left foot. My immediate reaction was ‘Score! Now I don’t have to buy a fake wedding ring!”
So once through the border patrol I got my first glimpse of Malaysia and I’m not sure I can do it justice. The first thing that popped into my head was how green it was. It was a kind of lush, wet green and the nearest approximation I can think of in the US is the drive through Tennessee when you suddenly feel like you’re in the middle of a forest. Absolutely gorgeous. And I think the southern half is full of palm tree plantations so it was devoid of city planning and full of acre after acre of jungle and palm trees. It was beautiful until we were about 80km outside of Kuala Lumpur and then the city reared its ugly head. All of a sudden there was traffic and skyscrapers. We got off the bus at the main bus station and oh my God. I have never been hassled so much in my life. People followed us up the street even after we said that we had a place to stay and then stood arguing amongst themselves about our answers. But we found a really nice conceirge at a semi nice hotel who decided that he was going to take care of us because he’d just come back from the US and we knew NYC (where he’d lived) so that was nice. We made it to the train station after winding our way through more people trying to sell us stuff and pick our pockets and finally made it to our hostel.
I have to be honest that for the first hour, I thought I was going to hate this city. It was just such a bad first impression. But the woman who runs the hostel is really nice and we wandered around a bit outside of the super touristy zones and it’s actually not that bad. We were so mad when we first got here that we planned on leaving tomorrow, but once we got over our hissy fit we decided to stay for a few days. So. We’ll see how it goes!
Footloose & Fancy Free 