Cambodia!

Ok so we are currently in Cambodia! We spent 2 nights in Phnom Penh (the capital) before taking a bus to the beachside town of Sihanoukville for Christmas.

The bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh seemed to take forever. Plus they decided to play Asian karaoke dvds the whole way, which made me very very sad. The border crossing was fun as usual. So so sick of crossing borders and all the customs and procedures that go with it. The Cambodian visa process was a bit weird because rather than us providing a passport photo for them to use, they took our photos with a webcam (and without telling me too, so I wasn't even looking at the thing!).

There really isn't much to Phnom Penh. We had the charismatic (and somewhat cheeky) tuk-tuk driver, 'Mr Lucky', attach himself to us as soon as we hopped off the bus; so he was our driver for our stay. He was good because he spoke very good English and knew where to take us to organise our Laos visas etc. He tells me that apparently my skin is too pale for me to be an Aussie. Nice guy.

The story goes that one day a woman named Penh was just going about her business, when a couple of buddha statues float by in the river. She pulled them up and laid them to rest on a hill (or 'phnom' in Khmer/Cambodian) and that's how Phnom Penh got its name... Hill of Penh/Hill where Penh left some Buddhas. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but that's the story, so we thought we'd better visit this Phnom. These days there's a wat (temple) on the top.. so it's called Wat Phnom. Really nothing spectacular. It's a very small hill, and because we're tourists, we were charged US$1 each to go up.

The touts/beggars here are way worse than the countries we've been to so far. In Ho Chi Minh City they'd come up to your table while you were eating with their goods to sell, but all you'd have to say is 'no thanks' and they'd keep moving. Here, they go for the heartstrings. At dinner on our first night in Phnom Penh we had a little boy come up to the table selling roses. We immediately said 'no thanks' (we try not to buy from the touts or you just get more and more coming up) but he hung around with his sad face on, nudging Steve on the arm and saying "you buy rose, you buy rose" over and over in his little sad quiet voice. Well.. I know we probably shouldn't have after we'd already said no, but we're soft and eventually gave in (mainly because he wouldn't leave!) and bought a rose (it was only about $0.50AUD afterall). We've seen so many amputees (presumably land mine victims) begging in the streets. Women come up to you carrying their young dirty child/children trying to get money. I wish I had an inbuilt bullshit detector so I could tell which ones really need the help, and which are just doing it for profit; as well as which ones are actually going to benefit from the money you give them, compared to the ones who are 'managed' by someone who takes most of the profit (when Steve was in Thailand last time he saw an amputee who had been begging for the day getting wheeled away in a wheelchair by a man in a suit!). Tourism has brought with it an attitude of expectation rather than gratitude. When we were walking home from dinner that night in Phnom Penh we saw a cute little boy with his mother. We paused to smile and say hello, but when the little boy saw us looking at him, the first thing he did was put his hand out for money. Cheeky little bugger.

So yesterday we took a bus to Sihanoukville so we'd be at the beach for Christmas. It's quite nice here; very relaxed, beachy atmosphere. The beach is lined with 'restaurant'/bars on the sand with sun-lounges out the front. There's no empty sand, just sun-lounges, and then ocean; it looks like something from the movies. The only thing ruining the relaxation of lying on a sun-lounge less than a metre from the ocean under a big umbrella with a cool drink is the constant front of women and girls wanting to sell you bracelets, wanting to make you bracelets, wanting to massage you, wanting to give you a pedicure, wanting to remove your leg hair etc etc etc etc etc. I mean you just have to take it as it comes, we are in their country, but it's when they won't take no for an answer that it gets a bit much. We had a bit of trouble with a couple of young girls who got increasingly rude and wouldn't leave, but that's a long story.

We went out to the strip of bars on the beach last night. There was huge Christmas Eve festivities going on, complete with fireworks, fire twirlers etc etc. Really fun.

We're staying at the 'Monkey Republic' guesthouse and we have our own little bright blue, thatched roof bungalow. The restaurant next to us is putting on a full Christmas lunch (turkey, ham, prawns, roast veg, apple crumble) so we're going to go there!

Anyway, I promise I'll post some photos either this afternoon or tomorrow.
Merry Christmas! Amiee xox