My Overland Trip To Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Now to the fun part.

Once I was settled in to my hotel and showered I went back out for a look around at the nightlife, cities by day tend to bore me. People working, markets, looking at temples.... yawn....

At night time you get to meet people, see what the local attitude is like, what the locals do for fun, how they act, if the place is friendly, if the place is friendly to foreigners, etc.

I went back out to Sharkys bar and met some new people, a fellow on a business trip with his Phillipino wife. I chatted with some of the local girls - almost started a fight between a couple of the local girls, had a few beers and took in as much info as I could.

I found out that rivalry between the lighter skinned Vietnamese and the darker skinned Khmers was still very volatile.

Cambodia used to be located in Southern Vietnam, successive wars pushed the Khmers inland to around the current location. After the Vietnam War, hostilities between Cambodia and Vietnam increased until Vietnam invaded and took control in 1979, this was probably a good thing as Pol Pot was killing millions of his own people (about 1.5 million people - Cambodian but ethnic Vietnamese were high on the list) during this time. The UN did nothing. The US and China supported genocidal manic Pol Pot - good one guys .

So rivalry between the ethnic groups is still prevalent. I made the small mistake of talking to one Khmer girl for a while then talking to a stunningly beautiful Vietnamese girl with a short temper. When the Khmer girl walked back past and said something the Viet girl exploded - and I was in the middle.

In the bars you could see it in groups of Vietnamese girls sitting together and at another table a group of Khmer girls sitting together. Next time I visit I will look into this a lot more, I am interested in the cultural differences in these two groups of people too.

Mostly throughout that night and the following 5 days and nights I spent in Phnom Penh I spoke with Khmer girls.

The situation there is similar to Thailand with the girls moving to the city to find work and support thier families back home, and often to pay for schooling for their younger siblings so they can get a good job later - the self sacrifice these girls make for the good of their families is amazing. You do not get anything like this in the West.

This night I had a look around at most of the nightspots. The one that caught my eye was a late night club called "The Heart Of Darkness". The place was full and pumping, there were many out of control tourists being complete idiots.

About 12 times a year a tourist is shot dead at close range in Cambodia, mostly nightclub attacks I believe. Seeing how these fools act I can only say they ask for it.

The place was littered with young, drunk, guys out harrasing the local women.

Yes quiet a few of the women are interested in meeting foreigners but there are social rules and customs these tourists do not even look into before they bull their way into someone elses culture. Groping girls on the dance floor, trying to stick your tongue down your new found friends throat and other gross behaviour is looked down upon rather severly in SE Asia, more so than at home, in India you'd probably be stoned to death for trying it... it is also damaging to the girls reputation and is a loss of face for her - not acceptable. The equivalent would be your father coming into a nightclub pulling your pants down and giving you a spanking in front of everybody - highly embarrasing.

Being from a wealthy country and from a physically large race of people does not give you the right to throw your weight around. It does not give the right to bully and intimidate the locals who are a lot more dangerous. It also does not give you the right to treat other people's local girlfriends and wives with this same disrespect.

This sh*ts me, cowards do this at school to smaller boys, I am the biggest guy out there yet I don't need to go around being an ass.

Sorry for the rant, but you see this too often with some young drunk westerner bad mouthing and pushing the smaller locals and wondering what he did wrong when 10 guys jump him with metal poles later in the night. 

Or when an angry ex-pat stands up and belts the living sh*t out of him for touching up his girlfriend in public and treating her like a street hooker. 

I myself have stepped in several times in Thailand and told the Thai it was OK I would handle it and then told the Westerner in no uncertain terms that if they wanted to prove thier manliness by fighting a smaller Thai then they would have to fight me first. The transformation to grovelling weasel is amazing - it is also a complete loss of face in Asiatic culture so the guy is actually humiliated in the worst possible way as well to the Asians, which is much worse than a beating.

In total I spent 5 days in Phnom Penh, I partied for most of this time. Alcohol was cheap, the people friendly and the laws and restrictions in the west (or even in Thailand) do not exist or are not enforced here, you are free to do just about anything you want.

I hesitate to mention drugs as I hate to send a new bunch of idiot tourists into the country on my recommendation - an out of control druggy WILL get into trouble. Smoko esp seemed freely available with joints sparked up in clubs a couple of times (not sure if it was locals or tourists though).

To be safe don't do drugs or carry drugs in a country like this - you are likely to end up in local prison for life. In Thailand it is known (often) that a drug dealer will sell his stuff to a tourist then call the police to inform them of the drugs the tourist is carrying. The dealer gets a reward and the police catch another bad foreigner. And no the police don't care that their informer sold you the stuff in the first place.

If you want to read more about Cambodian nightlife just search for Phnom Penh nightlife, clubs, bars, etc. I will not go into too many details of my private life but you can be assured that I had a ball and do plan on going back there as soon as I have the time to party again. Any of my close friends reading this will have a fair idea of what I say when I say it was FUN, and I could not wait to go out each night, except when the night blurred into day blurred into night again :)

The only thing that really annoyed me was the locals overcharging for everything, often 10 times the price for food, etc. This becomes very tiresome very quickly, I am not stupid and I know the rough price, I do not mind as in Thailand paying a little more (10-20%) and am fine with that, but 100% or 1000% more that is just being rude. This is the one thing that drives me out of a country faster than anything else.

Also having to count change continually. As Cambodians take 3 currrencies - the Cambodian Riel, the US Dollar and the Thai Baht, you are constantly calculating costs and change with approximate exchange rates.

Food was more expensive in Cambodia than in Bangkok too, this is ridiculous. Cambodia is far poorer, the cost of living is less, yet they charge more for most things than I pay in the capital of Thailand. This is similar to an American going to rural Mexico and paying more for buritos there than in New York City. Something is wrong there.

So after 5 days in Phnom Pehn I leave. The road out to Ankor Wat and Siam Riep is tarred (sealed roads) - YAY! So time is good and we arrive at the main tourist trap of Cambodia. I did not even bother, I stayed the night and left first thing next morning. Everything seemed to be geared towards tourists - prices, trinkets, rubbish, annoyances, and nothing of the real Cambodia at all to see.

I will take the time to explore more deeply next time I visit though, I am sure there is a lot of interesting things happening if you can befriend the right taxi driver and reward him appropriately.... next time for sure.

After that we had but little distance to travel to Poi Pet, the main land border crossing into Thailand, the problem was we were back to dirt roads. 400km took us about 8 hours to traverse.