Backpacking in Cambodia — Day 1 — Phnom Penh
Day 1 — Bengaluru <- > Phnom Penh [November 19, 2022]
eVisa and Visa on Arrival for Indians
For Indians , the two options available are Visa on Arrival at major ports like Siam Riep and Phnom Penh International airports apart from the couple of land borders at Vietnam and Thailand. Whilst there are odd cases of high handedness by border officials on the land borders, the expectation being you have atleast $1000 on yourself when you enter via land. Though we didn’t face any issues at the Phnom Penh airport. Also we ended up going for the eVisa which is about $6 expensive than VoA but arrived via email within 2 working days from application. It saves you the time and trouble at the airport as there are instances of long queues for Visa on Arrival.
Kuala Lumpur Transit
Decided to take an Air Asia flight (Bengaluru — Kuala Lumpur — Phnom Penh) with Jagnoor also landing in Kuala Lumpur a couple of hours after my flight. After landing early morning in KL in a Star Trek inspired terminal with 4 piers, all the crowd on my flight headed towards the Bali gate whilst I was the only one in my pier of the terminal with what seemed like short distance / local flights. There wasn’t much to see around in the terminal and just one restaurant which Jagnoor and I gave a shot after the embarassing few minutes of “can you swipe our card first and check if we can pay before you take our order” since we didn’t want to break our crisp $100 bills for Malaysian Ringgit in change.
A vegetarian backpacker in South East Asia
Knowing that traditional Khmer cuisine is not meant for the faint hearted non vegetarians, let alone a strong stomach vegetarian, I had brought along the gujarati travel food kit of khakras, theplas and bhakris as back up options for the long trip incase I couldn’t even find fruits to keep the fuel going (Fortunately I didn’t have to use them). First ominous step though was at Kuala Lumpur airport in my terminal itself where there was literally nothing vegetarian except a sketchy plate of spring rolls but I had pre-ordered the only vegetarian option on my Air Asia flight of vegetable biryani (pulao more like it) for both ways knowing that I’d be blessing myself when that meal comes my way.
Money… Money… Money…
After a quick 50 minute odd flight, we landed in Cambodia around 1:30 PM CST. After a quick walk through immigrations where they took one copy of the printed eVisa and stapled onto the passport an entry document. I decided to break the first $100 bill and get $50 in equivalent Cambodian Riel currency. The Airport exchange was 1 USD to 4000 Cambodian Riel whereas Google mentioned 1:4100 conversion rate so about 2.5% charge. The unique thing about Cambodia is that everyone in the country will readily accept USD (though has to be in good condition) generally at an exchange rate equivalent of 1:4000 though some touristy places do charge at 1:4100 rates too. The challenge with that is the baseline unit has become $1 so cheap things like a bottle of water would cost $1 or 4000 riels hence food turned out to be our most expensive expenditure with each meal at a regular restaurant costing around $10 per person per meal. There were no coins in circulation and the smallest denomination was 100 Cambodian Riels. 1000 riels truly felt like 25 cents equivalent in terms of buying power so get used to those extra zeroes in brushing up your mental math here.
Touchdown Phnom Penh
Right outside in the airport courtyard are 3 cellphone network providers — comparing the prices for the fact we’d be there for 7+ days, the 1997 started “BSNL vibes-giving” Cellcard seemed the best option with a $5 sim with one week validity and 14 GB data and we could add on $1 after that for additional data. Now how would the network hold up in the different corners of the country we were visiting, that’s a gamble we’d try to take.
The food court had quite a few options but also prepared me for my worst nightmare — nothing vegetarian or exorbitantly expensive salad. So whilst Jagnoor grabbed a bite at Burger King, I thanked Air Asia’s veg pulao to keep me going.
Travel to the city
Biggest tourist hack — Get the PassApp — their Uber equivalent for tuktuks and remorques. The price differential on the app is around $4.50 to the city whereas the ones at the airport entrance would charge you upwards of $10 if you bargain hard and average of $15 if you go with the flow. We decided to try the remorque — primarily a bike with a trailer carriage attached that allows it to become a 5–6 seater versus tuktuk (Indian autorickshaw equivalent) which is a 3 seater tops. Our destination was in the backpacker district (relatively closer to the city centre from a tourist perspective) in a hostel called the Mad Monkey which was about 12km away and a 45 minute ride.
Hostel Life
Accomodation in Cambodia suits a lot of pockets — from dormitories at under $5 per night to five star extravagance. We decided to do rooms in hostels which honestly were reasonably priced even though they’d fall under the premium category. Jagnoor had done the bookings beforehand on Agoda so that saved us from having to part with our cash for these heavy transactions. Mad Monkey is a (Three star) premier chain of hostels across most party places in South East Asia frequented by primarily European backpackers with a sizeable British contingent. We landed during their Saturday Sundowner pool party and the entire ground floor was abuzz with major frat party vibes. Fortunately the noise didn’t carry till our room on the 2nd floor. The location of the hostel is very convenient — couple of kilometres away from the river front and most of the tourist attractions.
Saturday night vibes
After freshening up and charting a rough plan of action for the evening, we stepped around 7 PM to check out the sights and sounds in the vicinity. A couple of night clubs seemed to be getting ready, a salsa and a jazz place seemed to be still waiting for the vibe to pick up on the way. We finally reached the central square area which has multiple tourist attractions apart from large manicured lawns and open spaces for the locals to come together and interact as a community. From team sports , lovestruck couples to dance offs on the latest K-pop songs by large groups of teenagers. About 3 blocks down, we first hit the Wat Botum park which is an extension of Wat Botum (The temple of the lotus that the king built) with a fountain before we crossed over to Neak Banh Teok park which acts as the gateway to a number of monuments clustered together in one line. The weather was pleasant with a cool breeze keeping us company making the stroll an enjoyable one.
Neak Banh Teok park , King Sihanouk Memorial and Independence Monument
Down the park is Statue of King Father Norodom Sihanouk , attributed to his accomplishment of liberating the country from French colonialism back in 1953. The 4.5 m tall statue of the late king in a business suit placed inside a 27 m traditional stupa highlights the balance of progress and cultural past the country looks to balance in the modern era.
In a distance right behind the statue is the brightly lit Independence Monument — built in 1958 in a lotus shaped stupa to commemorate Independence attained in 1953. All the monuments are beautifully lit up really adding a sparkle to the skyline.
Got ourselves into a soup over dinner
Amongst vegan options, the Indian restaurants have done a brilliant job with SEO and topped the charts on most sites. We were in no mood to eat Indian food so decided to just walk down the park area and wager our bets on a random restaurant that seemed interesting enough. Having had a very low success ratio so far, we didn’t have high hopes for vegetarian food. We landed up at Master Suki Soup , which after reading up later , we got to know was celebrating 25 years of existence and was a popular joint for their traditional Suki soup. Every table had a hot plate and big pot of water and the moment we sat down, they switched on the hot plate. The staff couldn’t speak a word of English and turns out sign gestures also need some understanding to make sense of. After utterly confusing them with the concept of “vegetarianism” using Google Translate, though they seemed super confused with what can you eat if you can’t eat the long list you just showed us. The waitress called upon another 3 staff members to help her and in the utmost confusion, I almost agreed to not eat anything but whilst enquiring if something was vegetarian, that got translated to a placed order so we decided to go with the flow.
I would also discover my new found local love of passion fruit based drinks that would remain a recurring theme through this trip. Jagnoor ordered a mango based drink (Mango is in season there). Finally a tray of vegetables, noodles and mushrooms landed up on my side and a pot of boiling water. Seeing us clueless, the waitress decided to take matters in her own hand and dumped some of the vegetables into the pot of boiling water. Seeing us clueless looking helplessly at the boiling water pan jumping up and down for the next 5 minutes, she came in and slowed down the hot plate and asked us to serve ourselves and start eating. Jagnoor had it a lot more easier as he broke into traditional meat and rice based Khmer dish.
The seasoning kept on the table felt sketchy from a vegetarian perspective so decided to skip those and gulped down fresh vegetables and mushrooms in a boiled water broth. Another interesting concept was that water was basically glasses filled with ice (This country sure loves its ice) and the waitress came in every few minutes to check on the ice pack kept at each table and refilled accordingly. Surprisingly the boiled vegetables and noodles were appetising enough even without any condiments to go along. Quantity wise, it was pretty heavy and my stomach was full even though I technically just had soup. Paying the bill and doing the mental math with the change we received along with trying to figure out how much of a tip we should put in, we finally walked to the relief of the staff who probably had a story to tell their kids back home about these two Asian guys who spoke of an alien concept called vegetarianism.
Phnom Penh night skyline
Having eaten our fill and not in the mood to hit the clubbing scene, we decided to check out one of the highest places where you could get a good view of the city and that turned out to be the Eclipse Sky bar who go with the tagline of “Probably the best skybar in the world”. A cool breeze with gist of drizzle in the air greeted us along with a karoake night which got full marks for effort and I’ll stop at that.
Neon lit skyscrapers seem to be a common feature in South East Asia and Phnom Penh is no different giving an extrmely vibrant vibe on a Saturday night even though the skybar itself had a relatively slow night as we managed to get a prime deck seating in a corner without any hassle. A couple of families, a few single women seemed to be the only ones dotting the place at about 9 PM. You get a wonderful view of Street 93 that cuts across the city as a major artery.
Having taken in the views with a snack in hand, we decided to call it a night and walk back home. On the way we managed to find street food carts which is where probably most of the culinary action is. The Jazz / Salsa bar was still waiting to get a vibe going and most small restaurants had families and friends get together outside the shuttered places eating, laughing and drinking into the wee hours of Sunday morning.
Key Details
For eVisa applications: https://www.evisa.gov.kh/ . Cost: $36 . Make sure you carry atleast 2 print outs of your eVisa as the immigration in both legs of the trip need a copy to keep with them.
Conversion Rate: 1 USD to 4000 Cambodian Riels (Nov 2022).
USD can be used for retail purchases (lower denomination notes usually) and they’ll usually return change in Cambodian Riel though you can ask for USD and they’ll try their best.
Sim Card: Cellcard $5 for 1 week validity and 14 GB data. Add on $1 for data top ups of 2 GB.
PassApp: the Uber equivalent for tuktuks and remorques (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kh.com.passapp.passenger&gl=US&pli=1)
Airport to Mad Monkey hostel: ~11 km , $4.50 on PassApp
Mad Monkey (Phnom Penh) — single room with twin beds and private bathroom — $25 per night
Hotel Bookings: www.agoda.com
Master Suki Soup —$20 for a meal for 2
https://goo.gl/maps/U6pPvsv8yVn85e1t6
Eclipse Skybar — https://goo.gl/maps/1rfRB9BSmcvVbgLa6