Arrival in Cambodia

I have now been in Cambodia for 9days and already feel like local as Phnom Penh is less than half the size of London. Before writing about the range of experiences I have had, I thought I'd start by sharing with you the day I arrived, as that was a crucial day and is where first impressions of an area are made.

As you will know from my other post, I have incredibly apprehensive about this trip just because of the sheer length and distance it is from London. The only saving grace was the fact that I was doing with my friend.

We arrived from Singapore around about noon via the Ryanair of Asia; "Jet Star Asia". Which was in some ways better than Ryanair as there was no clapping on landing or scratch-card announcement every two minutes. 

In the Phnom Penh airport itself there are ATM and simcard facilities so we managed to sort out our basic jobs in airport itself. Surprisingly, they were able to provide Sim cards for iphone 5 and there was a Burger King!! 

This was the first shock as we were not expecting such development, especially if you read some of the economic journals about Cambodia. 

We dived straight into the Cambodian lifestyle once we arrived, by taking a tuk-tuk to our guesthouse. I guess I didn't find this too scary as from a young age I have been in Rickshaws and autorickshaws in India where they also drive on the wrong side of the road. What worried me though, was that my big 62litre suitcase was placed on the small space adjoining the motorcycle and carriage. It didn't help that the roads between the airport and guesthouse, at least for the first part, were quite fast. I was sure that any minute the suitcase was going to go flying off the road, but thankfully I was wrong!

Once checked in, we went searching for Sorya Mall which online and in the guidebooks is said to  be a 7 floor shopping complex containing a cinema, supermarkets, stores etc. However, we were taken to this deserted food market which was apparently Sorya Mall. We are still looking for this mall and if we find it we will let you know. 

We concluded the day by dining at a restaurant called La Table Khmer, a French bistro place serving oriental food. The food was expensive by Cambodian standards, but we didn't really know where we were and so decided to settle there. I was disappointed that the springrolls I ordered were not fried but were fresh and and the fried water spinach was extremely wet. However, nine days in I can say food elsewhere has much better tastes.

My initial reaction to Phnom Penh?

Well, I was extremely surprised to see how developed it is was. As mentioned before, I was shocked that they had iphone 5 sims, burger king, supermarkets and actually fairly decent roads for a developing country. It is nothing like Ghana. 

I found it weird that the currency here is US dollars and Riel. How it works is that everything is in dollars and instead of cents, as they do not have coins here, riels are given. $1 = 4000R, so anything less than a dollar is given in Riels. Although, now I feel like this system makes more sense as coins are such a pain to carry around and count. 

The weather isn't too bad. Yes it is hot especially when you come from London but its fine. The only time I have problems with the weather is when we are walking around for long periods of time and I haven't eaten enough, I feel extremely tired and dizzy on these occasions. Another difference to Ghana is here, is most indoor places are all AC-ed and fanned and so you barely feel the heat on some days. 

Arrival was interesting day. Another of my worries was discharged on this day as I realised wi-fi is a norm here and almost everywhere, so communicating back home and sharing photos etc is all fairly easily.

All in all, I was extremely happy on arrival day because I had expected something on the lines of Ghana and it turned out to be more on the lines of India which is a lot more developed. I hope to keep you all posted :)