Week 23: Cambodia (Phnom Penh, Koh Rong Samloem, Siem Reap)
I arrived at Phnom Penh in the evening after a bus ride filled with podcasts and a decent amount of nodding off in uncomfortable positions. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the city, heavily polluted in terms of both its waterways, roads, and air quality. Its chaotic nature felt more sinister than charming compared to India or Vietnam, and I found it hard to breath or relax during the 48 hours I was there. I’d only be spending one full day in Phnom Penh, so I set out to make it a culturally dense one.
I visited the Killing Fields (one of many mass graves turned into a genocide memorial) and S21 (a high school turned secret torture prison). I learned about the brief reign of Cambodia’s extremist communist party that lasted less than five years but resulted in the death of over three million people across the country during the late 70’s. The mood was appropriately somber in both places, but I’ve been to so many genocide/war/torture museums during my travels, studied so many examples of state violence around the world, and think so much about how it’s taking place at home in the states today, that my reaction was to disassociate. I signed a guest book at the end of the S21 exhibit, apologizing on behalf of the U.S. for my country’s eight years of secret bombings that set the stage for the extremist takeover that would eventually lead to their genocide. I decompressed back at the hostel after a thoroughly depressing afternoon. I’d be heading to the coast the next morning.
I met an Italian woman named Caratrina on the bus to Sihanoukville. I hadn’t booked a hostel yet, so I tagged along with her to see if there were any spare beds at hers. I lucked out and got the last one. We had dinner and a few beers along the beach before calling it a night. Our conversation was a bit slow, both of us tired from the day’s drive, but we livened up once we got into Italian politics (stories of drunken kleptomania from our university days).
There was nothing to do in Sihanoukville but wander the pub street or be solicited by escorts. The only landmark nearby was a giant traffic circle adorned with a sculpture of two comical lions (a beautiful, national park was located a few miles east out of town, but I didn’t have time to visit it unfortunately). There was an attitude of being shipwrecked here that was shared between all of the backpackers I saw or interacted with. Many of them simply hid in their hostel rooms for the day, killing time until their ferry the next morning. I was stranded at the hostel for a full day, waiting for my laundry to finish since it’d be harder to do on an island.
Catarina and I boarded a speedboat early the next morning and skipped our way over the water to the small island of Koh Rong Samloem, just south of the more touristy Koh Rong. I stayed at “Old Souls” hostel. No wifi, just dorms thrown together from repurposed scraps under a roof of corrugated metal. The hostel was run by a couple that met on the island a little over a year ago before deciding to drop their lives back home and give the island lifestyle a shot. I spent the day watching movies I’d downloaded, eating, and wading through the mellow waves of a beautiful beach a little further down the road. Catarina booked a separate hostel, so I was mostly on my own for the day. I appreciated having some time to myself but felt a bit lonely as the evening came around. Coincidentally, I bumped into Mercedes, a friend I’d met in Egypt a few months ago! I know it’s trite to say this, but talk about a small world. I accompanied her to another hostel where we met with some of her friends and caught up over drinks.
The island cuts its electricity around 10pm leaving the island pitch black. All the tourists who were still awake and sober enough for a night swim got together and made their way to the beach. Every step and stroke through the dark sea was illuminated by the bright neon green of glowing plankton and we all shouted in delight as we waded and passed goggles around to get a better view of the natural phenomenon. My feet were ablaze with clouds of sparkling light and sand with each step through the water and I moved through small galaxies each time I dove beneath the surface. I called it a night after an hour of playing in the water.
I killed time watching the waves with Catarina over a few beers before saying goodbye the next day. I had only spent a day and half on the island, but time seemed to stretch out there. My brief stint on the island felt like three days by the time I left. I met a volcanologist-in-training named Watto while waiting for our afternoon ferry. He was also heading to Siem Reap. Watto and I sat in the back of the speedboat, getting getting completely drenched by saltwater as the ship bounced on waves back towards Sihanoukville. We killed a few hours back at the hostel from my first night in town before heading to the bus station. Cambodian sleeper buses are my favorite so far. Not as flashy or high-tech as the reclining-seaters in Vietnam, but comfortable with wifi, outlets, and completely horizontal bedding that provided me a decent night’s rest by the time I arrived in Siem Reap at 6:30 a.m.
I could breathe easier now. I booked my return ticket home from Siem Reap months ago in India making the past two months had been an exercise in exploring South-east Asia while making sure I made it to Cambodia on time. Watto and I had a few hours to kill before check in after our bus ride, so we opted to explore the city’s famous temples today (known collectively/colloquially as Angkor Wat), so we could relax for the remainder of our stay in the city.
I’d been avoiding photos of the famous temples for months. I wanted to see them with fresh eyes and without expectations. I was not disappointed. We visited three temples that day, the first being Angkor Wat, the largest and most well known. Nearly 1000 years old, nearly every surface is covered in intricate stonework that felt surprisingly contemporary. Next was Bayon Temple, which is arguably more famous than Angkor Wat, with its enigmatic stone faces carved to face each direction. Bayon Temple was less preserved (to its benefit), making it feel even more ancient, like something you’d see in an Indiana Jones movie. The last temple we visited was Angkor Thom, which may have been my favorite. Built in the memory of the late king’s mother, Angkor Thom is surrounded by forest with large, almost surreal trees growing in, out, between, and through many of the crumbling structures located at the temple’s center. Watto and I were practically cooked after a long day wandering temples in the sun. We checked into our hostel, went for a swim, and joined some hostel mates for drinks and a late dinner, getting our feet nibbled on by fish along the way to blow off some steam.
Unsure what to do with my last full day in Cambodia, I solicited two hostel mates from Argentina for any recommendations and they kindly invited Watto and me to join their tour of the local “floating” village. We hopped in a tuk tuk 30 minutes later, where our talkative driver gave us a brief history lesson about Angkor Wat filled with American phrases like “long hair, don’t care.” or “Hakuna Matata” or “Happy Wife, Happy Life”.
We arrived an hour later, boarded a wooden boat painted blue, low to the water with a propellor and rudder that jutting out back. We snaked through the murky, brown river through a neighborhood of houses hoisted up two stories on wooden stilts for wet season flooding. Small children played around the houses as their parents tended to their errands. Our quiet skipper moved through the polluted river at a steady pace, lowering the speed of his propellor when a boat came in the opposite direction to avoid splashing the other person. Midway through the tour, we moved through a delta and into the massive lake that occupies Cambodia’s northwestern quadrant. We ate lunch on a floating restaurant/home and watched as small children piloted their own boats to and from their homes. Some of them couldn’t have been more than seven years old. After a long and quiet tuk tuk ride home, Watto and me called it a night early and got some rest.
My final day in Cambodia was spent binging on movies, music, and articles at a local cafe with Watto, killing time before my flight to Shanghai in the evening. We had a few drinks afterwards along with a fun discussion on the relationship between authenticity and nostalgia. We tried some crocodile meat later that night, which I can only described as tasting like chicken with the consistency of pork and an ending flavor of fish. I made some small talk with Watto and Lance (the cop I’d met in Dalat!) back at the hostel before parting ways with both to head to the airport.
This was it, the final stretch. I’d be flying home, but I had to make it through a 15 hour layover in Shanghai first.
