I just browsed some old(er) photos and felt the need to make this post, for no other reason than to post some pictures and hopefully to encourage some people to travel more.
Oh, Cambodia. Khmer Rouge is pretty much gone but the country is still in ruins. I'll never forget the sinking feeling I had on the border from Thailand to Cambodia. Thailand side seemed mostly healthy green, even somewhat prosperous, but after crossing over it all turned into wasteland. Houses, land, everything. Not a great first impression to get from a country, nevermind how accurate it is. Until later we got to see Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng. While I already knew the story of those places, seeing all that in person was still simply a soul crushing experience. And I absolutely, positively recommend visiting and learning about them to everyone, with absolutely no exceptions (at least past age of 10 or so, for smaller children it very likely will be too much)
Yes, these human skulls, and every one of them is victim of genocide started by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. I don't post the full story here, anyone interested can look it up as one more lesson on how cruel we humans can be. Just like Stalin and Hitler, and lately ISIS, just to name few commonly known names. At some point I thought that anything like this wouldn't, couldn't happen anymore, but lately I haven't been as optimistic...
To move onto little less dark topics. While at Phnom Penh on one night we chose to have a dinner at one of the places near Mekong river. Dinner itself was nothing exceptional (but not bad either) so no more about that, but afterwards we tried to look for local taxi service (or equivalent) to get back to our hotel was a bit difficult. For some reason we just couldn't fine any nearby.
We started to walk back towards our hotel (I think it maybe 3 or 4 kilometres so not too long walk anyway), hoping to find a ride near major roads. After a short walk we did find drivers, too, although we had some serious communication issues - they didn't seem to understand a word of English (French might have worked, which we didn't speak), but after some attempts I managed to pronounce a name of a marketplace near our hotel. I see one driver's eyes brighten (there were three very Cossack-looking men, each with their own tuk-tuks - Cambodian version is essentially cart pulled by motorbike), he knew where to go. So we negotiate price (they knew enough English for that, curiously enough) and while price sounded a bit high for me, it wasn't outrageously high so we still accepted it, hop on and there we go.
We drove a while. At some point I start to pick up familiar looking locations. Now I know where we are - on a major road that goes past our hotel. But then the driver goes straight past the point where we should have turned to a side street. I'll contact him and use pretty much gestures to indicate where we should go. "Turn back", "turn left here", "right here", "thanks, here's the fare". He looked very confused but at least we got back safely.
What I guess happened is that he though we wanted to go to "night market" (like I said, I mentioned name of some other market near our hotel). "Night market" is apparently somewhat shady place with a lot of bootlegged goods (by reputation, we never visited that place), and I just very lucky that we knew the surroundings of our hotel (and that driver chose to use major roads) so I could instruct him. This most likely explains bit high price (he thought we were going further away) and his confusion at our drop-off point, but I didn't try to haggle and just paid original agreed price.
I learned something here: always, with no exception, have you hotel's business card with you when you go out. Even if your driver don't speak your language, they'll generally at least have idea where the address on card is. And of course, have some knowledge of your local surroundings.
We also visited a smell village of Kep, at southern shore. We weren't originally planning to stop there but some local travel marketers boarded our bus (peacefully, and during scheduled stop) and managed to convince us to stay there for a while. I don't regret that a bit - it was a small, sleepy village, nothing more (although it apparently was a pretty hot tourist spot before Khmer Rouge). Absolutely perfect for brief relaxing stop.
All this was close to ten years ago now. I just looked how it looks on google street view now and I really don't recognize the place anymore. Beach resorts, bars, restaurants. Tourism is picking up, which is of course great for them, but like so often I feel that something is lost at the same time.
Above is from a boat trip on Mekong, near Phnom Penh.
All in all, I don't regret a second of just taking long time off and visiting that region. I just wish I could take another long time off again, but it doesn't seem very likely in near future...
Oh, and just to mention, we felt unsafe only two times during our entire trip; one time when we cut through a dark back alley at Bangkok and some dogs felt like they didn't like us, and another when monkeys at one nature preserve started to get too aggressive for our tastes. Dangers of these regions are often wildly exaggerated, and even little common sense allows you to navigate clear of most dangers. On hindsight, taking a shortcut through back alley mentioned above wasn't a good idea, and it only saved us few hundred metres of walking. Don't do that, stay on well-lit roads.
And to finish this, I give you sunset at Preak Tuek Chhu river (spelling from Google Maps), Kampot.
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