Phnom Penh
Anisa has been showing me all around town and I’m definitely learning a lot. I really expected to be able to speak more French here, but it is quickly dying out and being replaced with English. I am a bit disappointed. Today Anisa took me to the big market in town: Psah Thmei where we bought loads of exotic fruit. Anisa decided I needed to try everything and I did not protest. The fruit selection was amazing. The market itself was amazing too. You really can get everything there. I saw pigs legs with hoofs attached, five inch high Christmas trees that light up, live crabs, more shoes than I have ever seen in one place, cases of huge jewels and watches, dried fish staring at me, bunches of bananas bigger than me, dainty liqueur glasses and anything else you can imagine. After Psah Thmei we went to an actual grocery store, which was culture shock and time warp all in one. What I needed was flour, butter and eggs so I can make the American food that I know Anisa loves and misses: pumpkin pie! I brought spices and cans of pumpkin and Carnation milk from the US. It’s my surprise present for her!
Speaking of food, my favorite Cambodian food so far is amok. It's like curry, but has a distinct flavor that makes it very Cambodian. The sandwiches at Psar Toul Tom Pong are also great, they are simple baguettes with satay meat (I have no idea what kind) and pickled vegetables inside. Market food is so good here! I feel sorry for people who never get to try street food when they're in Asia. Restaurant food is good, but it's just not the same. Somehow it all tastes so much better when you're sitting on a little plastic stool in the market or on a sidewalk.
Phnom Penh itself is very interesting and the logistics of living here fascinate me. There are some conventional gas stations in Phnom Penh, but there are also two other kinds. You could buy gas from a barrel that had a little pump sticking out of the top. People position these by the side of the road and sleep by them until a customer shows up. The other option was the “everything stands” which sell everything, including gasoline in 1 and 2 liter Fanta or Pepsi bottles.
Phone booths were also a mystery to me at first. Before I arrived, Anisa had emailed to me that if she couldn't pick me up at the airport (although she did) and if I needed to call her, I should just go to a "black box with the number 012 on it and give money to the person behind the box". Even after I have seen many "black boxes" they still don’t look like phone booths to me. It turns out that 012 is the prefix for Anisa's cell phone and the numbers on the box indicate the area codes of the cell phones that the person "behind the box" has. You tell the person which area code you want to call and they hand you a cell phone, then charge you after the call for however long you use the phone for. Convenient and modern, yet so confusing at first.
It's easy to feel rich in Cambodia, and by most people's standards, I am rich. In the US I'm a poor college student who just graduated and am broke. In Cambodia, where $10 goes a long way, I am very well off. I am still continually surprised by how much they use US dollars here. Every person at every little market accepted them. There was no preference for the Cambodian currency riel over dollars, it was all the same. It definitely made me feel like I had an advantage over the other tourists. Nobody accepted Russian or New Zealand money, or even euros.
After a couple days in the city, Anisa and I went for the morning to Phnom Odong, which is just west of Phnom Penh. We decided to check it out because one of her tourist books recommended it, though we weren't exactly sure what we would find there. As soon as our taxi arrived we were swarmed with children. Six of them attached themselves to us, despite our insistence at 'no guides'. Two of them spoke fairly good English: Nem and Jai. They followed me for the entire day and the other four hovered around Anisa, so close that she almost tripped over them several times. As the day wore on, they became more useful and polite, although at first they were rather annoying.
Phnom Odong is basically a hill in the middle of incredibly flat land. There are several stupas, each in varying stages of reconstruction. The Khmer Rouge destroyed so much and it’s hard to rebuild everything. There are even the remnants of a small mosque, though it seems abandoned. The Buddhist temples are being worked on, though the one I entered was a makeshift tent in the middle of four crumbling walls. At the center of the altars and small Buddha statues was an enormous nose. A Cambodian tourist explained to me that the nose is all that's left of the Buddha statue that used to be in the center of the temple. I was tempted to take a photo of it, but it just felt wrong.
After walking up and down all the stupas and temples on the hill, we went back down towards the tourist trap area. We were the only white tourists. Several children asked if we had come in a taxi and when we answered yes they pointed us toward our driver. The kids were all watching out for us. We sat on some platforms in the shade for lunch. We were very lucky that the day was breezy. I would have wilted in the heat and from hiking in the sun, without some wind. Our entourage all had palm fans and fanned us constantly. This would have made me very uncomfortable, with all of the colonial history, but it was so hot it just felt good.
Lunch was a big treat for me. Anisa introduced me to street food and I found a new favorite toy: lunch in a bamboo pole. I would never have picked it out as food when the vendor walked by, but for 700Riel I got enough sticky rice and beans (soy?) to fill me up. Anisa ordered a whole roasted chicken, which came with a large pot of rice. It was far too much for her to eat, but our entourage happily finished it up for her and even cleaned up the dishes for us.
Odong was a fun place, partly for the historical and religious significance, but also for the people watching and the beautiful view of the countryside. It was nice to get out of the city and see some small villages for a change.
