On the nineteenth of November, we completed our beach trip in Sihanoukville and headed back to Phnom Penh. At this time of year, Phnom Penh is packed because it is the weekend of the annual water festival, and since we were staying near the river, tourists were in town in hordes.
Once again, we arrived in Phnom Penh in the afternoon and didn’t have a lot of time to do things that we wanted to do. As soon as we arrived, a few of us left for lunch and then headed to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. With the exception of S-21 and the Killing Fields, which I wrote about a few days ago, these are the most famous landmarks in Phnom Penh.
The palace and pagoda complex contain numerous buildings, some dating back to 1866, and have housed the royal family for the most part since that time. I’m still not sure what happened to the palace during the period of rule of the Khmer Rouge, when Phnom Penh was evacuated, but it seems to be in as good shape now as it was before that period.
We didn’t spend a lot of time at the palace complex because the day was waning and we still wanted to go to the Russian market. The Russian market is called what it is because Russians were the primary tourists who shopped at the market back in the 1970s (if I remember correctly) even though almost all of the stores in the market are run by Cambodians.
I think I can say that the Russian Market in Phnom Penh has been my favorite of all of the markets that I visited in Southeast Asia, and every city seems to have at least one, so that’s saying something. I bought some t-shirts and other souvenirs as well as some DVDs. I bought 44 Woody Allen movies for $8. He’s probably not going to be happy to hear that, but I was pretty pleased with it.
I seem to recall that we had dinner and a relatively early night on our second night in Phnom Penh because, once again, we had to get up early the next morning for another bus to another Cambodian town. This time, that Cambodian town was Kompong Cham.
The bus ride to Kompong Cham was one of the most eventful bus rides we’ve had on this trip, primarily because of the cuisine. About halfway between Phnom Penh and Kompong Cham, we stopped for a happy house break at a place that our guide called “Spider Town.” At the place we stopped, there were many delicacies for sale, including pineapple and mango. Oh, and there were also crickets and spiders, deep fried, for purchase. I tried a cricket and it was pretty good except that I got a leg stuck between my teeth. I also held some spiders; I think tarantulas, but I’m not really sure. In any event, they were large-ass spiders. I ate the leg of a dead one. Once again, the thing was deep fried and crunchy and tasted mostly like the sauce in which it was cooked.
Unfortunately, the bus ride was the high point of the trip to Kompong Cham. We only stayed there one night and that was primarily to break up the trip between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. There was a market, but there wasn’t much to it. We had dinner at a man’s house in the outskirts of the town. It was very good, especially because much of it was fried (pork, eggplant), but that was short. After dinner, some of us congregated at a makeshift bar that a woman ran on the sidewalk across the street from the hotel. Once again, though, an early night was necessary because of an early-morning bus. After that, it was on to Siem Reap.
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