Phnom Penh is a fairly small city, but it is tightly packed. Every street has something going on and if you're not careful you will get lost so it's always a good idea to have a map on you. In our case we carried at least two at all times. As well as cold water. Cold water is a must. And sunblock. Lots of sunblock. I recommend a burka actually.
Anywho... where was I... oh yes, wandering about Phnom Penh.
We started off by heading out to get food. We sat down at a restaurant by the river and ordered. While we were sitting a kid came up to the table trying to sell us something. I was not in a good mood having been stuffed into a tiny little seat on a bus for 6 hours and I was really hungry. So having this obnoxious kid come up to our table displeased me. I told him to go away. I realize this kid is trying to make a living (with pirated copies of whatever it was he was selling), but he wasn't even friendly about it. He clearly didn't like foreigners because when I told him to go away he immediately said "you go away" back to me and then wandered into the restaurant (we were sitting outside) repeating that and after a minute wandered back out, still repeating and finally went away.
The kicker is the next day we walked past the same kid and he was all smiles and trying to sell stuff again. (I realize he didn't recognize me or care, but it struck me as funny).
Our food arrived and I started picking through what looked like a salad. I didn't order a salad, I ordered a pasta dish and a passion fruit smoothie. So I was picking through it trying to find the pasta and wondering why there wasn't any. I called someone over and asked about it and the waiter realized he made a mistake and said he would pay for it, which was not my intention, I just wanted the dish that I ordered. Then the smoothie came out and it was papaya and mint. I don't like papaya. I would never order something with papaya in it. When they brought out the correct dish I mentioned that my drink was also wrong and that turned out to be a big mistake. The waiter argued with me for several minutes insisting that I had ordered the number one (which I had and was the passion fruit smoothie) but pointing at the number two (the nasty papaya thing). I finally gave up and he went away. It didn't really register in my brain until after we had left that he had to pay for any mistakes he made and while my meal was not that expensive to me it was probably a lot of money for him.
If he hadn't been so obnoxious about it and explained the situation I would have been fine just buying another smoothie, but he fought with me and that just irritates me. The papaya smoothie was nasty and Tania wouldn't drink it either.
After the aggravating lunch we went wandering. We started off with no real direction in mind and had no idea where we were going or what we were looking at. Generally pretty entertaining. After awhile we got tired of just wandering and picked the direction towards a monument that we could see. After what felt like a really long time we came to this.
This is the Independence Monument. Isn't it nifty. It's for the people of Cambodia and there are stairs on four sides leading inside, but people are not allowed in (at least not when we were there). There's even a guard posted to keep people out. Craziness.Aside from biking through the city, which while slightly crazy, wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be(I was hot and tired and whiny, but it wasn't that bad), one of the more interesting things was watching the large groups of people that gathered in this giant open area and danced. There were speaker systems set up and leaders with headsets directing people through dances. It was pretty amazing to watch. There were different groups scattered all over the place and they were all playing different types of music and doing different dances.
Tania and I were sitting watching all this drinking Coke when a group of kids came up to us basically took our cups out of our hands. One kid went up to Tania and sort of asked her for her cup and before I really registered what they wanted another one took mine from me and put the straw in his mouth right away so I wouldn't take it back. Another kid wasn't happy that I didn't give it to him and hit me on the leg. Not hard, but I wasn't impressed.
The next day we rented bicycles and rode our way through the city out to the Killing Fields, which the guide book said was a pleasant ride once you got outside the city. They lied. There was a funky smell from all the garbage on the side on the road waiting to be picked up. I was not overly thrilled with breathing in all the dust, pollution and nasty vapors of garbage. The actual road leading to the fields was lovely. That road was pretty short compared with the rest of the ride though.
After we were done wandering the fields and being informed of all the atrocities committed there we were hungry and went over to what was basically a shed to see if we could have something to eat. I don't think it was a place designed for tourists so much as a place for all the drivers to hang out while they waited for people. One of the drivers offered to translate for us and sat us down and helped us out. He sat and talked with us for awhile and it was really nice. He was friendly and told us a bit about how he grew up during the time of the Khmer Rouge and how his family had to spread out to try to survive, but he still lost his father and brothers. Despite living through that horror he is a friendly man who loves meeting people and find out about them and the world in general. He was of course closely watching the world cup. Soccer. I'm telling you, every country but America is crazy for soccer.
We rode back to the city, managed to get the bikes back where they belonged without getting lost (yay) wandered aimlessly some more, had some food from street vendors that tasted good but had strange textures that were rather off putting and headed back to the hotel to prepare for the next stage in our adventure. The bus ride over the border to Vietnam.
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