I asked my minibus driver if there was any accommodation in town, and he told me to turn left from the customs buildling and head along the road and I’d find the casino and a few guesthouses. Well I turned left but it must have been the wrong road because I walked for ages and found nothing at all. Well not nothing – I found a bunch of Cambodian kids who all wanted to say “Hello!” to me. I felt like a celebrity, and I got the feeling that not many tourists actually set foot in the town except to jump off the bus and onto a boat.

Finally I realised I was on the wrong road and went across one street to the main road and there in the distance I spied what looked like it might be the casino. The scenery on the way there was spectacular. The whole area here grows corn, lots and lots of corn. They don’t eat any of it in Cambodia, they export the lot – US$250 per ton.

I was just walking in the gates of the casino when two other tourists were coming out. They told me that it was an awful place to stay, but that their bus driver had introduced them to a local guy who spoke a bit of English, and had a little concrete “guest room” attached to his house. Sounded good to me, so I they led the way and introduced me to Hen Henry Jim Song. He turned out to be a great guy and I had a huge chat with him about Cambodia and about his town. It costs US$50 to rent a property in the town for an entire year. I’m thinking about going back and setting up shop for a while….. Oh, except they have no power and no internet. Hmmmm….

Hen Henry Jim Song

According to Jim, I could get a taxi all the way back to Phnom Penh for $1.50, and it would take half the time of the bus. That sounded like a much bettter option, so I decided to stay until the next morning. Best decision ever.

I wandered around town with my new camera and tried out the different functions. Holy crap it is amazing to have a proper camera!! I had so much fun with it, I’m actually thinking I might get alright at this photography thing.

I stayed out until the sun set, and got this beautiful photo of a guy returning home from work.

I wandered back to the “guesthouse” and Jim rocked up and said let’s go grab some dinner. I went with him down a side street to a house with some friends of his and we started hoeing into some food. There was a lot of laughter and everything was mostly Cambodian with a bit of English from Jim and his friend Long. I was having an amazing time and they taught me a whole bunch of Cambodian words and phrases. We were drinking Cambodian rice wine (both white and red) and all the food was incredible.

After dinner someone turned on a generator and started up the music and we all started dancing on the dirt floor. It was a mixture of contemporary hits and crazy Cambodian karaoke, and something I won’t soon forget!

The only power in town

Life is completely unexpected and I’m really happy that I decided to stay in the middle of nowhere on a whim and actually get to see something of the local culture. That’s what it’s all about, and definitely a highlight of my trip so far.

Now to wait out 5 more days and try the border crossing again….

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Human teeth on the ground

Skulls in the stupa

 S-21 was by far the most emotional of the two places. The Killing Fields had all the original building destroyed after the Kymer Rouge were removed from power, so the audio tour just takes you around the sites where they once stood.

But S-21 has everything preserved as it was when the prison was liberated. Including the blood stains on the floor.

One of the rooms in S-21 where prisoners were chained to the bed and tortured

A blackboard in one of the classrooms

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I missed Andre’s message in the morning since I was sleeping off a hangover, so instead of catching the bus with him I got my own sleeper bus overnight. This is what the “beds” look like.

The sleeper buses were not designed with a 6′ tall man in mind.

This is literally all the room I had. My feet were crammed up into the back of the person in front of me. Bet they enjoyed me rolling around at night and grinding into their lower back…. They didn’t provide blankets which was unexpected, so I took the curtain off the window beside me and wrapped up.

After a very painful and evasive sleep, I arrived in the beautiful city of Phnom Penh. Well, not really. Compared to Siem Reap this place was quite a letdown. It’s massive, cramped, dusty, unfriendly, and every street looks the same. Every 5 metres you walk there’s another guy asking “Tuk tuk?”, and the various hawkers, touts, and shop assistants were so much ruder than the ones I met in Siem Reap.

It really didn’t improve my impression of the place when I almost had my passport stolen at the first guesthouse I tried to stay at.

I already had a place to stay in mind when I got off the bus at 6am. I stepped into a crowd of about 20 tuktuk drivers all yelling and pushing and trying to get our business. I knew where I was walking to, so I just politely ignored them while I waited for my bag to be unloaded. I’m standing there staring into the middle-distance while three guys stand on either side of me constantly asking where I’m going and offering their services. Polite refusals do not deter these professionals. I pull out my book and start reading, and still this does not sway them. Surely if they just keep asking, I must eventually see what a mistake I was making by not enlisting their services…..

The hostel I was planning on ends up being just a 5 minute walk away. But when I get there, it’s full!! This is the first place that’s been even remotely full in low season. No matter, I decide to just walk around and find another place. Turns out there are a ton of guesthouses down by the river, so I just pick one at random and walk in. This is when the trouble starts. I look at the room, it looks nice, so I decide to take it. I’ve given my passport to the guy for him to take a photocopy (this is standard practice everywhere I’ve been), but when I pull out my wallet to pay I realise I forgot to get some more cash out. Not a problem methinks, just a short trip to the ATM. If I could just have my passport back…? The guy refuses to give it back until I get cash out. This is not standard practice, this is dodgy as hell. What starts as a polite request develops into a full blown argument. The tuktuk driver comes in to take the guesthouse guy’s side. He calls his boss who comes in as well. Now I have three angry Cambodians yelling at me for some imagined crime of wanting to hold onto my own passport.

It takes $5 to get it back. Lesson learnt. No one is ever holding my passport again. If they want to see it, they can look at it in my hands, no exceptions.

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In my off-time between benders, I’ve been tuktuking round the enormous Angkor complex. It is incredible, seriously an impressive feat of design and construction. Since it’s the low season there are hardly any people around and I got some wicked photos.

Front entrance to Angkor Wat

The one bummer about this place is that there isn’t any information at the temple locations. No signs, no helpful handouts, nothing. There are guys hawking this book that explains everything very well, but I didn’t need a whole book about Angkor Wat. I did manage to get a guy to drop the price from $27 to $2.50, so not too bad.

I hired a tuktuk for the day with my good mate Andre who saved my life at the border. He is brilliant, a real low-key type of traveller, easy to hang out with. It only cost $12 for the guy to take us round all day, and he turned out to be really cool, giving us the full tour-guide experience at each of the locations. He was actually more informative than the Angkor National Museum that we went to….

I was there!! – at Angkor Wat

I’ve also decided that I need a fancier camera. I have a really good point-and-shoot, but I can’t quite get the true feel of the amazing sights I’m looking at, and with the smaller sized sensors in the compact cameras the photos take on a much more 2D feel than with a more professional camera. I also spend a lot of time post-processing in Picasa to get the shots looking like that. I’m looking at the Sony NEX-5N, the reviews on it are fantastic.

Preah Khan

There were some amazing ruins at Ta Keo with these huge trees growing over the rocks. They start out as a tiny little seed dropped up the top, and then over hundreds of years they shoot out massive roots all the way to the ground – incredible.

At every temple there were people selling rubbings of the stones, or bracelets, or incense etc, but there were also a couple of guys doing very beautiful paintings. If I had somewhere to put it or go home to, I would have definitely bought one.

It’s 6pm, and I’ve finally stopped feeling hungover from last night. I’m on the midnight bus to Phnom Penh and not a moment too soon. It’s $10, but I’ll save on paying for accommodation for tonight.

Life is good.

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Strike out for Aran Garden; back to reception for a refund, and then off for a walk. Randomly wandered into a really nice place which I can’t even remember the name anymore, and booked a ritzy hotel-like room for my last night in Thailand.

They had a restaurant of sorts on site so I went there for dinner. There was some local guy playing acoustic guitar for the diners. Much unlike Cheers where everyone knows your name, this was the establishment where every ‘L’ is an ‘R’. It made for some hilarious tunes with the guy belting out Hotel Carifornia, Stairlay to Heaven, and so on. Great dinner I have to say.

I got up early in the morning with plenty of time to get to the border to beat the lunchtime rush. Went down to the bank to get my US$20 for the visa, and then caught a tuktuk to the border.

The scams were easy to avoid if you’d read the guide on Wikitravel, but the one thing I wasn’t expecting was when I opened my wallet to pay for the tuktuk, some random guy came in from behind, grabbed my $20 and ran. Just like that, gone! The tuktuk guy thought this was quite funny.

Not a problem thinks I, I’m sure there will be ATMs somewhere or I’ll be able to use plastic to pay for it. Feeling sure that everything will work out fine, I exit Thailand into the no man’s area between the two countries. This is my big mistake, I freely admit this. In the land of “Meh, It’ll Be Fine”, I am the foolish king.

I spend about 40 minutes wandering round looking for any way to get some money out or to pay for this visa. I meet a local who tells me that about two weeks ago, both the ATMs in there got taken out for some reason. Not even the casinos will help me out! Finally some more backpackers start arriving and I meet a great guy named Andre who offers to spot me the twenty. One visa stamp later and I am free!! I felt completely sketchy borrowing off this guy, like I was yet another scammer, but right outside the border is an ATM dispensing American dollars, I pay him back, and all is right with the world.

Oh yeah, except for the fact that when I was filling out my official form in the official building, some official guy in an official uniform comes past the desk, picks up my sunglasses, puts them on, and just walks off. Cool as you please. He disappears into the employees only part of the building and starts walking up a flight of stairs. Oh no you do not, Mr Self-Important border guy. I chase him up the stairs and into some office. People are yelling at me that I’m not allowed in here. Too bad, I walk up to him and literally remove my glasses from his head myself. What the hell??? Weirdest thing I’ve had happen to me yet…

We find two other tourists and split a taxi fare to Siem Reap. It’s only $10 each, so pretty cheap for a 2 hour air-conditioned journey, and a whole hour quicker than the bus is.

This country is fantastic! I’ve only been here for one day but I’m already in love. I’ve met so many awesome people already and beer is only 50 cents!! I am living the dream.

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