Phnom Phen, Cambodia

Finding Thailand such a mad place, we decided to run away to hopefully calmer shores. We live in a city of (officially) 20 million people and wanted a place where we could get away from the rush and the crowd - esp the Western crowd!! Bangkok was not that place. (Never seen so many Westerners in three years).




Landing at Phnom Phen Airport, our spirits were lifted. It looked like we would find peace and quiet here!!

It reminded me of some of the smallest International Airports I have had the pleasure of landing at, like Windhoek, Namibia. Like everybody else, we had to buy a visa upon arrival at the airport for US $20 and then we were inside the country. We immediately found a tuk-tuk driver to take us to any hotel he recommended. The 7 km drive was $7, the night in the hotel $8 ..... go figure that one out, lol!

The first thing that struck us was the relative poverty and also the traffic. Mostly motorbike based, it is quite mad!!


The second thing we learnt was that everything in Cambodia is charged in US dollars (note, not half dollars, but full dollars) .... leading to us soon dubbing it the One Dollar Country! A boy even tried to sell the Phnom Phen Times to me at $1 despite the price clearly stating 25c. Cute move!

To our great relief we immediately learnt that the people here are not like the ones in Bangkok and are as friendly as we have come to expect from this part of the world.


Some very interesting transport in Phnom Phen. Will post more later when I am back home.