Saturday, 20/10/2012 – 128 A.D.
[The scenery doesn't vary much from the above shot!]
Chill out day #2 was spent doing a huge amount of admin at the hotel in Siem Reap. There are far worse places to do admin – I really think I will miss the Angkor Pearl when we leave. The reason for all the admin is China and its visa application process. They want to know everywhere we will be and on what days. So much for the ride the wind, happy-go-lucky approach! Anyway, it forced us into planning our schedule a bit more stringently and into making the following decisions:
· We don’t have time to go to Japan or South Korea. Another time…maybe another life.
· Trying to get to Tibet will be far too much hassle and cost far more than we expected. Once again, the Chinese make life difficult for us.
· We will go to Xi`an in central China to see the Terracotta Army.
And so we booked a few hotels and bought a few bargains down the night market. Nothing much to tell, but that’s not a problem when all is well. Cambodia is okay by us.
Sunday, 21/10/2012 – 129 A.D.
All aboard the Mekong Express!
We were up nice and early for the final breakfast. They always play the same CD – power ballads done on slow piano – and it’s starting to grate a little hearing I miss you like crazy every morning when I’m munching my toast. But that’s the only thing that did grate about the Angkor Pearl. I feel as though we have hit a peak and will never get this high a standard for this low a price. And I’m sure it was purely accidental when they tried to charge me a second time for the bus tickets that we already paid for in cash the previous day.
A small bus arrives to take us across town to the bus station. The driver gets his vehicle down alleyways that I would shy away from in my Ford Focus, and probably in a Smart Car as well. Siem Reap bus station is a bit dingy, but it’s what we’ve come to expect. In fact, it’s more like a market place than a major national transit hub. The toilets are the most dingy part of all, and there is a price to enter them (not uncommon). I find myself haggling over the cost of taking a piss, but get nowhere with the old woman on the door. Oh well, 1000 riel it is – can’t put a price on having an empty bladder, especially when you’re me.
The Mekong Express does not look like the greatest bus, but the staff seem to be reasonably organised. They take our luggage and attach tags – just like in the good old Greyhound days of old [fond sigh!] We get on board and leave on time. It is my turn for the window seat, but there are these stupid tassley-dangly things that rub against the side of my head (no one else on the coach is tall enough to suffer this annoyance). The legroom isn’t great either, but we are given a wet wipe, a bottle of water and a snack, half of which is a tasty bun, the other half of which is an oniony pastry thing. I take a bite and discard it immediately. Aren’t peoples’ tastes supposed to change every seven years? I turned 35 and I still cannot stand onions! Oh well, I might care for them when I’m 42. The attendant on the bus takes the mic and speaks in both Cambodian and English, but seems to say three times as much in Cambodian. Despite it only being about 10:00, I fall asleep soon after leaving the city limits.
Halfway on route we stop in a dustball of a place to have a quick lunch. It’s rice with pork, though it could have been rice with chicken, or that other classic favourite, rice with beef (we don’t risk anything with seafood unless we’re right on the coast). Every town of any size that we pass through (i.e. more than a simple collection of shacks) has a procession passing through the centre in memory of the King. And rather more disturbingly, every series of fields that we pass has a landmine warning sign at the edge.
Soon after re-boarding the bus, I fall asleep again. Such decadence is not usually tolerated. I blame the mix of heat from the seat and semi-reasonable aircon from above. A little later I awake and Tim goes to Slumberland. I get some great video footage of his head falling back and forth. You think that’s cruel? I’m just getting him back for capturing me mid-snooze on a Los Angeles bus once upon a time. To be honest, I’m surprised he managed to sleep at all as the latter part of the highway was barely a large gravel track, with not an ounce of tarmac in sight. If there’s one word that sums Cambodia up then it’s “dust”. We see far more people wearing face masks than we’ve seen in any other country. One guy even wears one on the bus, only taking it off to tuck into his snack.
After six hours on the road, the outskirts of Phnom Penh come into sight. It is a city that I frequently mispronounce and often misspell. At first it looks like a disaster zone, rather than a capital city. If you’re a regular reader of this blog then you’ll know that I’ve already mentioned pretty much everything about the Khmer Rouge, but here’s some more – when they came to power they effectively emptied Phnom Penh of its citizens and sent them out to forced labour camps in the countryside. Any grand old buildings that still exist from the days when the French were here tend to have a big wall around them as well as armed guards. There isn’t a great deal to see here, but we already knew that, and it might be nice to stay in a place that isn’t crawling with tourists. But we’re staying here for five nights! Why so long? Ask the Chinese.
The city bus station is about as large as a wardrobe and very claustrophobic. The attendant has arranged a tuk-tuk to take us to our hotel for $3 – maybe we’re getting stuffed on the price, but who cares at this point. Unfortunately the tuk-tuk driver thinks we’re up for going on one of his tours of the city, despite the fact we’ve got all of our luggage with us – no, mate, just get us to the Diamond Palace II! ‘Angkor Pearl’…’Diamond Palace’…they give them grand names here don’t they? You’d think with a name like that the driver would be able to find it. Nah, he doesn’t have a clue where it is and we’re back to squinting at the snapshot of Google Maps saved on Tim’s phone. While driving aimlessly around the streets with eyes peeled, he leans back and says something. It could have been a request for more money or some other kind of ruse, but I told him I didn’t understand and sat back stony-faced. He got the message, and after asking a mate the way to our hotel, he got us to our destination.
The Diamond Palace II is okay, but nowhere near as good as the Angkor Pearl. Plus we only opted for the room because the website claimed it had a balcony and a seating area…there is a balcony and seating area, but they’re in the communal spaces. The location seems alright though, just across from the Royal Palace and on the edge of the old French Quarter, though there’s probably nothing very French in it anymore. When our friends across the channel made Phmon Penh into “the pearl of Asia” they built big, wide boulevards for easy walking, but now these have been swallowed up by market stalls and extra traffic lanes. Speaking of traffic, the usual rule applies here, i.e. the largest vehicle has right of way by virtue of its size. Traffic lights are few and far between (as is street lighting) and it’s anything goes at crossroads if there are no police directing the vehicles. The guidebook said that “traffic in Phnom Penh is chaotic even by south east Asian standards”. Relax, mum, we won’t be renting any mopeds while we’re here!
After about half an hour of settling into the room, I sit down at the desk to check email. Things are fine until I look to my left and see…ants! Hundreds of the bastards! Crawling across the wall! This is definitely not cool, and we trace their path from the top corner of our door in a diagonal procession down the wall, behind the desk and wardrobe to the bin in the far corner. Looks like a tried and tested route for them in the past, though all that’s in the bin right now is the packet my wet wipe came in and Tim’s empty bag of peanuts. Upon further investigation out in the hall it looks like they’re coming from the room next door, which we presume is unoccupied.
I give the front desk a call and ask one of the Diamond Palace’s staff to come up to our room to see the ants for themselves. The Diamond Geezer arrives and makes some low umm and ahh-type noises, then leaves, promising to return with some ant spray. I half-heartedly mention that it might be best for us to move to another room, but either this was lost in translation or he wasn’t going for it. Besides, the next one might be infested with a plague of locusts! A couple of minutes later the Diamond Geezer phones us and says there is no ant spray, but he’ll get some in for tomorrow, is that okay? Guess it has to be. I grab some of my mosquito repellent lotion and smear it in a line on the wall, right in the middle of the ants’ invisible highway. Seems to work – they really don’t want to pass through it, and those on the left side of it retreat out of the room, while those on the right are slaughtered mercilessly by Tim and his towel. Diamond Geezer reappears as the carnage is ending and has a closer look at the few survivors kicking around. He laughs and says it’s okay because they are the kind that don’t bite. Sure, but do we really want an animated tapestry of non-biting ants on our wall? And what if they leave the wall and crawl all over us when we’re asleep? Diamond Geezer has this one covered as well – he reckons the ants are “afraid” of the marble floor and won’t walk on it. Not only can this guy take room reservations, he can also give David Attenborough a run for his money!
The only thing we could do after all that excitement was go out to eat, but we hadn’t done our homework as to the best place to go. Instead we wandered blindly, literally in some cases where the street lighting was non-existent. Not having much luck, we settled on a bar and eatery complex a few streets away, the best of a bad bunch. There were lots of old Western blokes hanging around, either sitting alone with eyes scanning the passing pedestrians or playing pool with their shirts off. We kept our eyes firmly on the menu – one dish in particular stood out: Cambodian fried rice with red ants (house speciality). Hmmm, maybe another time…
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