Phnom Penh

Phew! Phnom Penh.  I'm not sure I've got the words or pictures to describe it.  It's busy and bustling with ramshackle shops and markets cheek by jowl with colonial buildings and new glass and steel.  There are also fantastic temples and the royal palace in red and gold splendour.  The river front throngs at night with food stalls and the lights and music from the bars and restaurants.  But more than all this, what hits you is the traffic and the dust it causes.  The roads throng with mopeds, cycles, tuk-tuks and cars with rarely a gap between them.  It seems like chaos with nobody obeying any rules except maybe a general trend to drive on the right, but as you get used to it you realise that rather than everyone fighting each other for space, they're all making allowances for each other with use of indicators and hand signals to give guidance to others as well as say what they are going to do.  You soon learn that to cross the road you have to just walk calmly and firmly across and let the traffic adjust to you, scary though.  All this creates a tremendous amount of dust, with lots of people on mopeds wearing masks.  I'm sure the only reason a few wear helmets is to keep the dust out.

We made the mistake on our first day of thinking we'd have a walk around the area near the hotel to get our bearings.  It soon became clear that pavements are for parking on, not walking.  You're also offered a tuk-tuk every few minutes.  That, indeed is the way to travel, door to door for just a few dollars and with built-in natural air conditioning.   Did I mention that it is hot - 36-37 degrees in general. 

Our first excursion proper was a cyclo tour of the city.  Here's us being picked up outside the hotel.

We'd expected to just be taken round a set route seeing the main sites, so were a bit surprised when they asked where we wanted to go.  But we soon got the hang of it.  We could go to all the sites we wanted to see, get out and look round, then move on as we wanted.  It was great fun, although it must have been hard work for them.

Here's some street scenes.

First stop was the central market.

We also went to the phnom Wat temple on the original hill around which the city was founded and with a temple to the woman credited with starting the city.  It has a large clock on the ground.

Birds you can release to gain merit and a big drum.

The steps are guarded by seven headed snakes called Nagas.  By the way, we came across our first real snake in the wild today, but that's several posts ahead :-)

Finally, a couple more bits of architecture.  I was particularly please with the second photo.

We want to various other sites including the Royal Palace, but we went inside that the next day so I'll maybe do a separate post on that.  

The day ended with cocktails on the balcony at the Foreign Correspondents Club, shown below together with the view, and a great dinner at a Khmer restaurant whee we had Fish Amok and Chicken Curry Khmer style.  Probably my second favourite Cambodian meal so far.

To put you in time context again, as I'm getting behind with these again through travelling.  I'm writing this from a lovely treehouse bar at the end of our first real day in the country, can't wait to tell you about it, but must have dinner now.  Next post - genocide (probably).