Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We changed our plans a bit... we had AirAsia tickets (yes a plug for our favorite airline!) from Phuket to Bangkok and the plan was to take an over-land route from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia. However as we researched this option further while we were in Phuket, we realized that this trip was going to be quite a bit more difficult than it needed to be.

The trip from Bangkok is complicated by several things:
- a border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia that reduces the cooperation of the sides in crossing the border
- dirt roads on the Cambodian side of the journey, greatly reducing the speed and comfort of the trip
- since no buses/taxis do not cross the border, we would have to negotiate with drivers there on the border... who do you think is in the stronger bargaining position: a local driver or a foreign family with three small girls wanting to get to Siem Reap before it gets too late?
- and finally, the Cambodian border guards are corrupt and collect "extra" payments to process visas to cross the border, even if you already have a Cambodia visa... frustrating

So what was supposed to be a simple bus ride from Bangkok to the border, a transfer, and a bus ride from the border to Siem Reap had become much longer and more of a hassle than we had planned for.

We knew that flying from Bangkok to Siem Reap was not an option because there is only one airline, Bangkok Airlines, that makes the flight and it is a flat $300 per ticket... ouch! We then went to our friends at AirAsia.com and they had nice cheap tickets for us from Bangkok to Phnom Penh.

So in exchange for a cheap flight to Siem Reap we had to take an extra bus trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap since we were already planning a bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh.


This is Tim at the airport in Phnom Penh... can you tell that he's frustrated? We had to fill out three forms for each of us after we had arrived. We were the last folks to get processed, it took a little longer for us to fill out our forms.

Arriving at the airport was weird to begin with. Our plane was the ONLY plane at the airport with the exception of two unmarked white airplanes that sat on the other side of the runway.

The first evening/night and morning were quite weird for us. We had "done our homework" and read up on the State Department's webpage about travel adviseries/cautions/warnings for Cambodia and had come across the following, among other things, in the crime section:

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CRIME: Cambodia has a high crime rate, including street crime. Military weapons and explosives are readily available to criminals despite authorities’ efforts to collect and destroy such weapons. Armed robberies occur frequently in Phnom Penh. Foreign residents and visitors are among the victims. Victims of armed robberies are reminded not to resist their attackers and to surrender their valuables, since any perceived resistance may be met with physical violence, including lethal force. Local police rarely investigate reports of crime against tourists, and travelers should not expect to recover stolen items.

Pickpockets, including some who are beggars, are present in the markets and at the tourist sites. Persons visiting Cambodia should practice sound personal security awareness by varying their routes and routines, maintaining a low profile, not carrying or displaying large amounts of cash, not wearing flashy or expensive jewelry, and not walking the streets alone after dark.
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Were we really going to this place with such warnings? How were we going to "maintain a low profile" with three little girls? As for going out at night, obviously not.

Our hotel arranged for a driver to pick us up from the airport. By the the time we arrived at the hotel it was dark. We were hungry, tired, and we had no idea where we were. With all of the cautions that we had read about Cambodia and Phnom Penh, we worried about going out that evening in search of dinner.


I asked the driver if he could just take us to a McDonald's or something real quick after we had checked in. His response? "What is McDonald's?" What? Yup, McD's hasn't made it to Cambodia, yet. We told him "fast food" and he said that there was a new American restaurant that opened... "KFC." So he took us there, we picked up our order, got back in the car and at our first dinner in Cambodia... KFC in our hotel.

The next morning after a wonderful rest and a great breakfast (we highly recommend our hotel) we were off to go explore the city. Tuk tuks were outside of the hotel waiting to drive us... These tuk tuks are nothing like the tuk tuks in Thailand. These are motorcycles with a wagon attached on them... yikes!

Here's Morgan doing the safety inspection!
A little on edge about the safety of this thing, we boarded and the driver proceeded to put on his helmet... what about ours?!

Here's our view of the driver...

Do you notice anything wrong with t he picture above? Take a moment and look...

Did you see the blue sign that says to keep to the right while we are drifting left into oncoming traffic?

Yup, instead of driving further and making a U-turn to get to where we were going, he just drove the wrong way into oncoming traffic and eventually made a left turn.

He did use his horn quite frequently during the maneuver to make sure that nobody wiped us out. File this into the "I can't believe we just did that" file.

But that wasn't the last tuk tuk ride, but just the first. We quickly realized that was just the way traffic flowed in this city.

Here's a better look of a tuk tuk...

Check out this supplemental gas tank!

I guess the floor could be used as an emergency exit if needed...

After getting over our initial apprehension the girls learned to love the tuk tuk rides... we just tried to keep them in the wagon. Tuk tuks actually aren't the the unsafest way to get around town. There's actually worse! Here are some pictures of crazy people on scooters...

Dad's driving, the boy is in the front "seat" and Mom's in the "trunk" with the rice bag...

Glad Mom's wearing a helmet...

Ok, looks like they enforce the law about drivers wearing helmets, but what about passengers?

Four people on this scooter. Can you find them all?

I could never imagine this... riding a scooter with three of my high school buddies on it?! Rick, Marc, Casey can you guys imagine hopping on a scooter with me to go play basketball?!!

Then there's also the environmentally friendly "cyclo" if you'd prefer. These guys would offer to get all five of us onto their cyclo... uh, no.

As for the higher-end of the transportation market, there is Lexus:

Did we mention LEXUS? Every Lexus SUV has the company name painted on the side just so you know...

Yes, that's a little girl sitting on her mom's lap in the front seat of the the Lexus above, and no, I don't think that's Britney Spears in the passenger seat.

Lexus SUVs were plentiful in the city. It almost made you uncomfortable to see... huge difference between the haves and the have-nots, much bigger than here in Shanghai.

Several of our drivers told us when asked who owned those beautiful cars responded by saying that corrupt government workers owned them from bribe money they make from the government, multinational corporations and even NGOs that are there in the country. I'm not commenting on where I think the money is coming from, but merely reporting what the perception on the street is of where the money is coming from.

However, in support of that perception of where the money is coming from. These luxury vehicles all have specialized licence plates that state what government organization they work for. For example the picture below, he works for the Royal Cambodian Air Force...

I need to work for another country's Air Force is that's how they treat their employees!

There were a few exceptions to the Lexus rule... the Range Rover above and how about a couple of Mercedes and a Hummer?

The security guard started really yelling at me after I took the above picture. We were in a tuk tuk and I knew there was no getting away from these guys if they wanted to track me down. Fortunately the guy didn't pursue... scary.

The Russian Market

The Russian Market is a very popular area for tourists. Since its become more and more expensive to make things in China, things have gradually been moving to Vietnam and Cambodia among other countries. Lots of the clothing sold in the US now comes from Cambodia... check your Banana Republic/Gap/Old Navy labels.

At any rate, here at the Russian market, despite its "shady" name, you can buy lots of name-brand clothing for between $2-3/per item... pants, jeans, shirts, jackets, etc. Unlike the knock-off stuff you can buy in China, this stuff is suppossedly legitimate "fell off the truck" from the factory stuff. One thing in support that it is indeed legit is you can feel that the material is on par with clothing you would buy in the States, unlike all of the stuff for sale in China.

So as long as you have some time to sift through the shops...

and sift through the clothes...

and the jeans...

and yes, through all the clothes...

you could find GREAT deals.

And if you needed something specialized, either modified or created from scratch, you could get that done here, too...

Pictures from around town

Here are some random street pictures, either taken while we were walking or hanging on to our tuk tuk...

Anybody hungry?

Popular place... look at the parking. They're packed in there four rows deep

The enterance to a high school

And then a glimpse of the more upscale area next to the palaces, temples and along the riverwalk area. This area was largely designed by the French during their occupation of the country and is a very pretty area today. We'll show some of those pictures later. Just wanted to show another side of Phnom Penh...

That's probably a good recap of our introduction to Cambodia and to Phnom Penh. Other places that we visited while here in Phnom Penh that we'll post about are the silk factory, the various temples/palaces, and the Killing Fields.