Phnom Penh

With most of the family having been here before me, it is going to be difficult to come up with anything particularly new to say about Phnom Penh.  Over the past couple of days I have done all the usual stuff, including the Royal Palace, National Museum, S-21 museum, and the Killing Fields Memorial. This has been interspersed with lengthy periods spent on the Internet trying to sort out my ever changing travel arrangements, which has soaked up much of my time here.   The only consolation is that this can be done whilst in a bar, so rather than just drinking, I can drink and surf.

Having completed the usual tourist’s tour, I have to say that Cambodia, and Phnom Penh in particular, is one of the few places I have been to that I would not particularly want to revisit.  The city is a total shambles.  The traffic here makes Delhi driving look positively organized in comparison. I believe that Cambodia inherited driving on the right from its French colonial masters.  However, no one seems to have told the locals about this system, so they drive on both sides of the road.  At the many traffic-light-free crossroads the flow of vehicles would make the average motorcycle stunt show look tame.   Nevertheless, it all seems to work somehow. Actually (and Jessica may know more about this), I recall reading somewhere that the latest urban traffic flow theorists are actually proposing doing away with traffic lights as this paradoxically results in greater traffic throughput and lower accident rates.  So the Cambodians can claim to have got there first!

One of the few positive things I can think to say about this country is that the people are some of the most friendly that I have come across anywhere.  OK, there are a lot of beggars, and many of the casual workers are trying to extract the maximum number of dollars out of you, but I guess you can not blame them for that. But in general, they seem to genuinely be happy to see you, and their standard of spoken English I found to be surprisingly good.

My travel situation is changing by the hour.  In spite of Bangkok Airport supposedly having reopened for service on 4^th, my flight from Phnom Penh to Bangkok has been cancelled.  But no problem, because the BA flight from Bangkok to London has also been cancelled!  A nice lady from BA tells me that the earliest flight they can put me on departs on 10^th December.  I tried to get a flight from Phnom Penh to Singapore, from where I could pick up an earlier BA flight home, but these are all fully booked for several days.   Having escaped from Thailand, I now find myself about to get on a bus for a 13 hour journey back to Bangkok.  I can’t face any more nights there, so I will be looking at flying on to Singapore somehow.

Killing Fields

Royal Palace

Wat Phnom