Ok, from the beginning. Turkish
Airlines on the whole was amazing, Libby was a little shocked seeing a few of
the women in full-on burqa’s, but who wouldn’t be. I got to thinking what must
be going through their minds dressed up like boo the ghost while their man is
chilling in the open air beside them and came to the simple conclusion-probably
not a whole lot. I mean there’s little chance they know how to read, or write,
but after how many years in Iraq and Afghanistan it doesn’t seem up to us to
decide. Anyways, between the heated face-towels, homemade lemonade with mint,
slippers and toiletries kit, it seems that vestiges of the Ottoman Empire are
still alive and well in their hospitality. The 20+ hours of flight time flew by
(Libby & I slept for about 15 of those hours ha), and before we knew it we
were in Phnom Penh. A local was waiting
to give us a ride back to our Guesthouse and as we were walking in the parking
lot we saw a Lexus, a Mercedes, and tucked right in between the two was a tuktuk.
Libby whispered in my ear- “what if we took that thing,” which of course, is
what we took. Tuktuk’s are simply a motorbike with a cart attached to it, and
off we went. We had about a 30 minute
ride to the guesthouse which was a great introduction to Phnom Penh. Surrounded by a sea of motorbikes with the occasional
pickup truck or lexus SUV (the two most common vehicles) we alternated between
dirt and paved roads. We got to the guesthouse around 6 pm and immediately
looked for food. The concierge (term used loosely) gave us vague directions of
a “mall” which was some combination of straight and left 10 minutes away
walking. Whether we found said mall, we’ll
probably never know, but we settled on one of a dozen or so noodle stands,
which turned out to be a pretty good dish of noodles and beef. As I said, there
were numerous amounts of these stands, so our first idea was to go to the most
crowded one… well we hadn’t yet figured out whether you ordered at the stand or
sat down first. The most crowded one
didn’t seem to have any seats available anyways, so we just stood in the middle
of the seating area for about a minute or two as everyone was staring and no
one giving us directions till finally Libby goes, “I’m overwhelmed,” I replied “same”
and we ran off to our actual dinner spot-which wasn’t crowded. Our meal ended
up being $1.50 each with Tea (which we had yet to figure out what it was and
were warned about drinking with their ice, so we didn’t drink it.) We still don’t
know if that’s a good price for a meal, and the other problem with so many
eating options is that we have no idea if some are considerably better than
others. Anyways, we finished our meal and walked into a random restaurant bar
on the way back to our guesthouse and tried the “Angkor” beer and the “Cambodia”
beer. The Cambodia beer was much better
and actually quite good, but at 80 cents it seemed a bit pricey since blogs
used to say 25 cents for a beer was normal, but maybe Cambodia is simply
developing, only time will tell and I’ll keep you updated as it does. For the
sake of entertainment + positive audience ratings, I’m going to border on the
TMI realm. The smells in Phnom Penh range from the good, the bad, and the very
ugly, and it’s common to have all three smells in the span of a minute or two,
needless to say, my s***s, and I use the term very loosely (no pun intended),
somehow smell like the very ugly of Cambodia, but they have yet to be debilitating,
so cross my fingers! Libby is proud of her iron stomach but with all these
monks around, I hope Karma is alive and well here in Cambodia, we shall see.
The next morning we walked around
the open air market, which was across the street from our dinner spot, the
previous night. We also went to get a fresh juiced smoothie for breakfast. There were many stands next to our dinner
spot, but they all seemed to disappear, and we had to settle for noodles (with
frightening looking meat still on some sort of bone which neither of us elected
to try). We’ll see if they only pop up
at nighttime, but smoothies sound better & better as my stomach marches on.
Crossing the streets haven’t been difficult; we were warned numerous times
about the difficulty in this, but maybe we were properly warned + plus used to
seeing people all the time standing in the middle of the road crossing the
street in Memphis. Anyways, as long as you are assertive and plan on stopping
halfway, it’s never too hard to cross the street, but we’ll see if heavier
traffic in Saigon adds a new level of difficulty!
Back to the market, the market
consisted of a fruits section (don’t know half to 3/4ths of them) and a fish
& meat section. The latter being sort of that “very ugly” smell and covered
in red tinted liquid on the ground. Again, there were all sorts of fish, eels,
lamprey, brains, livers, hearts and who knows what else in this section. At
least the meat section was like fully shaded for the most part, but seeing all
that meat out in the HOT weather made me realize just why my stomach isn’t the
happiest with me right now. Have yet to check the exact temperature but
needless to say it’s HOT, sure the meat looks amazingly fresh, but still...
I knew Phnom Penh was going to be
off the beaten path, and that I was going to be surprised no matter what, but I’m
still surprised (Libby, the self-proclaimed “world traveler” is also culture
shocked), we’ve seen a total of two other white people in our two days here so
needless to say, there’s usually a chorus of “hallooooooo” & “ladyyyyyyyy”
followed by giggles or smiles, but on the whole, everyone seems nice and
friendly. We have our first scheduled activity as part of our TEFL program in
about 20 minutes-a general tour of the palace and other main attractions in
Phnom Penh, and at this point I think both of us are ready to see some more
white people. I’ll add pictures from the above post as well as the tour later.
