I wasn't quite too sure what to expect from Phnom Penh. I'd heard so many mixed reviews. First thing I was told was to hold onto my bag - tightly. It's not the kind of place where you wander down the road with your mobile attached to your ear. The begging is out of control but then that's to be expected in a capital city. I suppose I'd liken Phnom Penh to Brixton at night. Fine but you have to keep your whits about you.
Nothing quite prepares you for the reception you get when you arrive at the bus station. As soon as the bus pulled up the tuk tuk drivers started banging the sides of the coach and hard. There were about 100 tuk tuk drivers waiting to catch your attention to persuad you to go with them and/or staying at a particular guest house. It was a glimps into what it's like to be a celeb...a nightmare!!
I liked Phnom Penh though. Tons to do, pretty hectic but that was a nice change compared to peaceful Sihanoukville. We decided to 'treat' outselves and opted for an air con room, hot water and satalite tv. We stayed at Okay Guesthouse which was okay oddly enough. For 12$ you get all the mod cons. Words can't describe how happy I was when as Ashton Kushcher film came on followed by the 'wedding crashers' oh how I love Vince. It was bliss.
Vindy put us in touch with Mr Banana who was our guide/driver for the 3 days we were there. He was fabulous. Totally looked after us showed us all the sights and stopped Snowy from going home with a Thai prossie (who was pretending not to be) when he was half cut. A saviour then really!!
PP is where you get a true sense of the attrocoties the Cambodians have been through during Pol Pots reign. The images of all the poor people displayed at the Genocide Museum (where they'd take anyone who was deemed intelligent and torcher them virtually to death, if they were lucky) will stay with me forever. It's unbelievable that so many attrosoties happened so recently. No one knew about it until much, much later as journalists were all killed. No one was spared - men, women, children all horrifically treated.
The killing fields was sobering to say the least. There was a tree where they Khmers would thrash babies against to kill them. Mass graves of up to 800 people. As you walked through the area you could see clothes and bones which were just beneath the earths surface. Grim.
So there I was standing just above a mass grave, contemplating the attrocities that had taken place. When I look up and this guy is starring at me and smiling. Totally out of context I then realise it's a guy I met in Chiang Mai. You could say our eyes met across a mass grave. You could also say that 5 mins later we're arranging to meet for a drink yards away from a mass grave. Slightly unusual to say the least. It felt pretty strange so I consoled myself with the fact that we were embracing the new Cambodian spirit; life goes on....ahem.
Dates and mass graves aside I had some great nights out in PP - Forigen Correspondent Club with great views of the river was brilliant. Fabulous cranberry mojitos. Heart of Darkness was a club which as pitched to me as 'really quite rough' so naturally I had to go there. Rough it wasn't. Pick up joint it was. Reminded me of the Dog star in Brixton. Hilarious. Stumbled out of there a few times.
PP was were I dicovered Boom Boom Room - a life saving place where you can update your Ipod with the latest albums and movies. God, I was in heaven. Various must-haves including Marc Ronson, Barry White, Blondie, Timbaland etc plus movies including Goodfellers and Love Actually (didn't have how to lose a guy in 10 days or the godfather) were uploaded for a small price. I LOVVE TECHNOLOGY. and the fact I have two of my fav films loaded onto my Ipod makes the long bus journeys barable. That and a couple of vallium!!
I'm coming back to PP in a few days when Brooke and I fly back to Bangkok. We're going to Raffles for a few cocktails, FCC club again and I dare say a visit to the Heart of Darkness will be on the agenda too.
In the meantime we're heading to Siem Reap for Angkor Wat action and Battambong.
Heart of Darkness
FFC
Killing fields
Genocide museum
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