Adventures in Cambodia (Just One Part aka The Coolest Girls in Cambodia)

The physical trip to Cambodia was short and sweet...not. Well, it wasn't that bad.

We got on the bus around 8:00 am and made it to the border about two hours later. The currency exchange was the most ghetto thing ever - it was literally women coming up to the bus and asking you to just exchange money with them on a back road!!! We were told there was no official exchange place at the border so we basically had to do it then cause we needed Cambodian Riel to pay for our visas.

After that dodgy deal we went through Vietnamese customs. This was even shadier as we queued for quite a long time as we watched the government officials blatantly pass other people's passports in front of ours with bribe money, I couldn't believe it! The wait and watching it was so frustrating but made me not want to give in and do it even more so we stuck it out.

We heard that getting a Camboadian visa was a pain but it was actually a piece of cake. After trekking our stuff over to Cambodian customs, we just paid for our visas, showed our vaccination booklets to the quarantine guy, and had our arrival cards stamped - wa la, we were done. By the way, isn't it weird that if you don't have a passport photo to give to Cambodian customs, you just give them a dollar instead? - And they don't even take a photo of you after that?!

We then headed a few more hours towards Phnom Penh. After arrival (we randomly journeyed with British Tom who Mairead and Lucy met in Kat Pa, who we then bumped into in Hoi An, and he also said he saw me and Laura tubing in Vang Vieng), the five of us went to some pizza place where it was cheaper for us to get two small pizzas instead of one medium, making our table of ten pizzas appear to have broken some type of Cambodian record for restaurant fat asses. It was pouring so we just drank some beers and played some dice back at the hotel afterwards.

The next morning we headed for The Killing Fields. The journey there was the worst of anything so far with us flying up and down so hard in the van we thought we were going to break our ribs. The river had flooded so we couldn't take the van all the way there, but didn't flood enough so we could take a boat. Therefore we ended up wading through muddy (and probably sewagy) water. I was sprinting through the gunk in my sneakers, but Laura and Mairead's flip flops kept getting stuck so it took a while. We then motorbiked it out to the fields which is basically an enormous mass grave that had been uncovered as it had held thousands of bodies from Pol Pot's massacre in the 1970s. It was really eerie to walk around, especially knowing that they hadn't uncovered several of the graves as of today.

After that we went to S-21 also known as Tuol Sleng Prison. The prison used to be a high school until PP's reign during which he converted each room into torture rooms/prison cells that the museum has bascially kept untouched for visitors to see. The creepiest thing was that a huge thunderstrom broke out while we were in there, forcing us to remain trapped in the prison for quite a long time which was so scary! It also was not funny when the storm had initially broken out - blowing the roof off of one of the buildings, knocking huge branches off of palm trees, and sending me and Lucy running which ended in me tripping over an iron bar in the doorway with me landing face down and scraping my knees (hey you, stop laughing!)

We went to the Russian Market afterwards which was nothing much. That evening we met up with Tom again and ate dinner by the water. Maybe this was what they referred to when they said Phnom Penh had been a hopping palce in the 1960s and it was starting to get better again cause the area was really cute with trendy bars and restaurants. At one point we sat at an outside place for drinks and an amputee came over and he drank a beer with us. His friend also came over (with his hairy pet spider) and told us that they were friends and were hurt by the same land mine. Not much else to say about that but shows that you still have to be careful of those things in Cambodia.

Post-riverside, we went to the most popular bar/club in Phnom Penh called Heart of Darkness. Really random was how the three hottest girls in the bar immediately befriended us and became our best friends for the night. They were pool sharks as well and I beat one when she got the 8 ball in, it was exciting for me cause they are regulars there at beating everyone. After Lucy got down with some Cambodian guys to some cheesy music, the dancefloor filled and we danced with the girls on stage and stayed till we wore ourselves out. It was fun being with the coolest girls of Phnom Penh!

The next morning we were off to Bangkok, with us bidding farewell to Cambodia and leaving them the required $25 departure fee at the airport, thanks again Kingdom!