Ok , its been more than a week since i've come back. Guess its time to tell stories here. I know i've been complaining abt going there on my previous post ( was just afraid of the change i guess...).
Now thats i've returned without a scratch ( trust me it was nothing to be afraid of ), I can share the experience here ( with whoever reading this post now, Thanks btw.) So, here it goes .
Day One , we landed in cambodia arnd 10.30 Cambodian time ( which is 11.30 in Malaysia). The flight was good , owh ya, did i mention that was my first flight! the take off was a bit shaky not to mention the high altitude pressure that knock you off your balance ... but it didn't last long after a while ( it took some getting used to) it was fun , everything seemed so small ... ( it was on flight i realized that my camera has ran out of battery ... Dang , i knw i should have checked it before heading to bed )
Upon reaching cambodia , we settled the minor imigration stuffs and then i saw a thermal image of myself ( am refering to the H1N1 scanner of course ) !!! Soon , we were introduced to our tour guide , Venny thats the name , a swell guy and he sang Hotel California. The first few Khemer words we learned were , Hello , thank You and two magic words that can have things your way ... " Its too expensive " and " gimme a discount". the exact words were " Chum Reap Sua" , a nice way of saying hello, "Or Kun" to show your gratitude , "Klainah" ... for overpriced goods, "chotklai" DISCOUNT !!! hahaha ( thanks to Venny , our walking Khemer Dictionary cum Translator )
We left the Phnom Penh Airport, and headed to our first destination. A temple located in the heart of Phnom penh called "Wat Phnom". We were also informed what were the meaning of the names are, for i.e "Phnom" means Mountain and "Penh" means lady , and " Wat" means temple. Venny also mentioned a brief history lesson on how the names came to be , it happens that it was a lady chief who ran a village in Phnom Penh before it was named after her, wich literaly translates to Mountain lady.
Wat Phnom was actually a cross between a park and a temple they had this nicely costructed park and gigantic clock on the slope and the temple was a stupa located on top of a small mountain. It was in a sourvenir shop that we found a very special Liquor with a preserved snake and a scorpion in it. Kinda gross, but people do drink it! The main attraction in this temple is the amount of beggers ( some are families of beggers ) that will swarm you asking for cash , and they ask for Dollars not Riels !!! The surprise is that 70% of the beggers here are Kids , yes KIDS !!! and the oldest will be 12yrs old. The moment they lay eyes on you , they will make a subtle snif and make puppy eyes ( to gain simpaty ) and hold out their hand for money. We were all warned by other traveller's logs and by our tour guide , Not to give any cash ! No matter how compelled you feel , never ever give them cash. The moment u give one of them , you will also be targetted by others and you don't want that to happen. We experienced that ourselves, it didn't involve money but we handout chocolates (MAS provided Ferero's ). One of the guys decided to get soft and he started to hand out choc to one of the kids , guess what another 5 more joined asking for more, and later all I can see was us being surrounded by atleast 30 of them and they were fighting for a scarce supply of chocs. We actually scramped ... Ok, Cambodia wasn't your average growning country , the poverty level is still high. Imagine Malaysia 50 years ago ... ( if u want the technology , it was Malaysia 15 years ago )
Second Stop: The Royal Palace ( nothing in cambodia stands taller than this building, this includes the airport terminal) it was a place of art , and this is also where the parliament will commence once in a while when its close to public. You'd be surprised to see the amount of local people pouring to visit their monuments ... this is because not everyone in cambodia can afford the tour so , they safe money and bring their families for a lil visit to the Royal palace.
After Wat Phnom , our following destination was LUNCH!!! we had lunch in Hotel Holiday Villa... it was a good meal . Then, we made our way to the Museum , it was like any other museum filled with age old stuffs , but the ineresting part is that the whole museum spoke of their ancient believes ... Hinduism. Being a Hindu myself I could tell the similarities as well as the differences and it proved my theory on how religion can be manipulated by people who interpretes it. Its a different version alltogather with one common goal.
Only after visiting the two places , we headed to our shelter ... Hotel Puncak ( it never lived up to its name). It was just comfy enough to sleep and shower ... and the service was below average , i dOn't even want to mention the food. The only reason it was chosen is because its Halal. Earlier , we were told to get down by 6.30pm so that we could head out for dinner and its a place called Mak Mak corner ( pronounced this way by our guide , when it was actually a Overpriced MAMAK corner ! yes it is a Malaysian owned mamak restaurant in the land of wonders) one cup of teh tarik sells for one dollar !!! ( so is milo and other drinks , guess its opened for the foreigners, but how many of them would want to try smtin Malaysian in Cambodia??? )
We come to realize that there will be a night market just a few blocks away from the Hotel. First night in Cambodia , We went out. It was easy actually just ask the Hotel maintenance lady to fect us a Tuk Tuk ( smtin like the beca , but bigger ) we decided on 6 dolars for a return trip. Its so happenes to be that the driver can't understand a sigole word we're talking about , we asked him to bring us to the Mekong river Waterfront and then a tour around the city after that drop us off at the night market. And all he did was bring us on the direction less tour of the city and when we asked him where were we heading all i could see is nothing but absolute blurness, good thing he decided to stop and ask his fellow tuk tuk riders to translate. Glad that has happened and with proper route we did what we want to do and headed for the night market. While on the road, I realized that there was not a single traffic light in the capital city ... and people are driving ( and riding without any casualities ) surprising huh ??? guess when it involves the survival , people could tolatere each other , I wish it can be implied here in Malaysia ( not the traffic lights but the tolerance )
the night market was nothing like ours in malaysia, 95% of the stalls there sold things , unlike here, we get 80% food stalls . It was almost 12am and we decided to head back. We felt bad for the rider and tot if he asked for 10 dollars , we just give him . All because we felt satisfied ... we've got a long day ahead the next day ( another day filled with tours and yes! a visit to the cetral market ... a bargainer's heaven )
The next day , I was shocked to find out that a friend of ours only paid 3 dollars for a same ridfe as ours ... felt really stupid for that. We were only group that paid 10 dollars ... well, atleast the guy could feed his family well for a while. 10$ is huge for a cambodian family. Now , with my camera battery charged ... I was able to take pictures that day!!!
Day Two , First Stop : The Killing field ... we're not alllowed to make any loud noise or be happy ( laughing included ) here, just to show respect to all the souls that were lost there ( according to Venny it was close to 30% of Cambodia's people ). Even to imagine the way people were treated here its just unbareable ... What the new Cambodian Gov did was to erect a stupa and now its housing over a 3000 skeletons of people. ( Now thats a real Skeleton house). Don't be surprised if you suddenly found yourself standing on a peice of bone or a thooth , because the area is widely distributed of human skeletons ... yes guys, its all over the place!
After lunch at the Mamak's corner , the highlight of the day ... THE CENTRAL MARKET! we were given 40 mins to shop, all i did was looking for survenirs for friends and family back home and some time to self indulgence.I got myself the things i wanted ( knwing that we will be back here before heading back, safed some stuffs for the next visit) it was here i tried a type of sweet drink called Johoi ( ok, its like cendol minus the palm sugar and added ... well prettymuch whatever u want, I asek for jackfruit , hazelut , sago mix )Man, that was simply awesome ... And after that its Tarantula and cricket time , yea peeps fried and spiced up delicacies. And that was it 45mins gone , venny came looking for us and ushered us to the bus.
We're to go back get changed into smtin formal. Next stop , The Royal Phnom Penh Universitiy , Linguistic division. It was short visit and the students there were to wear uniforms and they were good people but guess we spooked them with the formal attire ... after that was a visit to a rundown village in the riverbed. It was a real eye opener , to actually meet people who live in huts that has ground for floor . Every single person we met greeted us with a smile and shaked hands. One thing i realized here is that we should always be glad and appreciate what we have in life. There are people out the struggling even for the basic necessities for life. I could't finish the the long walk to the deeper part of the village , plus it was getting dark and there was no street light. So, i headed back to the bus.
The next two days were filled with seminars and talks ... and we mingled with the local students as it was part of the program. Tho the whole things seemed like a marketing ploy by a certain college ... but its was kinda fun having to go thru the whole thing. i was surprisedby the cambodian student's eagerness to join us and their will to learn. The first part of the presentation conducted by Us and the second part was by the cambodian students and we were to guide them to do so. It was a sucess indeed. I felt like i accomplished something by helping them. The only part that made me go crazy( bad, crazy) was that last minute notification on the 1st presentation. They informed us two days before the day and choose a person to present, and I was to Co-present the slot! and the best thing is that there was no internet connection in the hotel !!! somehow the presentation went smooth ... Thank God.
The Third night , after for of the people had their passports stolen ... we were srictly advised to not go out on our own and stay put in the hotel. But we were already devised a plan to be rebels we gathered about 16 of the adventure junkies to embark on a cambodia street food Mission. ( Mission Possible.. lolz! ). We walked out of the hotel when in pairs and walks a block away from the hotel to ferry a tuk tuk. Went to a 5 star restaurant called Khemer Surin ( dunno what it means) whose kitchen will be closing in 15mins. The accepted us anyway , we tried 3 dishes ... Fish Amok , Seafood tomyam Cambodian style and a maggo glutenous rice dessert. the food was awesome !!! I was really determined to try out the wierd stuffs that I usually see on TV , 1st stop Balot ( a 3/4 formed duck egg , boiled and fried seasoned with lime and few other stuffs I couldn't recognize) then one whole stall dedicated to absolute wild crawlies ( to list down a few , fried snakes , fries tarantula, crickets , worms ( a few different species), grasshoppers and Cicadas ). I tried the tarantula , crickets and the grasshoppers. The eight legged creature tasted like a crab , but the grasshoppers and the crickets had a fishy taste. The best part was the time when we met another group of Malaysian tourist ... they were absolutely horrified with ourt antics eating the crawlies, I clearly remember the lady telling us "I hope you guys dun crawl back to Malaysia, or grow wings or produce webs when u wake up in the morning " Funny lady ... and we were able to put up a show for them by poping in a couple of crickets.
As usuall , it is olny when we get comfortable with the new environtment , we have to leave the place ... it then i was able to get friendly with the locals and i get to knw a few of them. I the afternoon we went to the central market again this time with reinforcement ... we asked the cambodian students we met earlier to join us. hahaha.
It was rather quick , I started feeling homesick and wanted to back in the first part of the trip , but now its the last night and I was asking for another day there,which is impossible. We had dinner in another restaurant ( think its called the "Bubble Tea restaurant" ) after dinner we went back to the hotel to pack our stuffs and devised another plan to head out.
The headquartes - Room 303 , puncak Hotel ( my room ... hehehe ) almost all the team street pack has gathered here. The plan was to go to a local bar and hang out. The problem Was , all the Datuks and the organizing commitee was at the lobby. Think Transformes 2 was playing on the TV ( dun ask me how ) , watched the show for a while and decided t just head out ... upon reaching the lobby, we chickened out and asked for permission ... Guess what it was granted.
we're tired so we didn't go far , walked a while and picked a bar ordered some drinks and played cards untill 3am ( we did have fun ) head back, only to find out the aint over yet. we chatted for about an hour , and I dozed off .
The next morning , had a sucky breakfast with the pack and said our goodbyes to each other and to cambodia.
I'd say , it was a good oppurtunity and a good change of evironment ... with all what I experienced the I learned not to take things for granted and apreciate life the way it is. Will definitel go agin if given the oppurtunity.
Woah ... Thats a lengthy one!
-B-
The movie set in the year 2154 where mother earth has lost all her beauty and humans started looking for new resources. Pandora was on Top of their list , its just a moon but almost as vibrant and lively as our very own earth. It was all about protecting what is right and the balance of nature. I would not think twice to watch it again ( wait, I already watched it twice ... still goin for thirds! hehehe) . Trust me , you would not be dissapointed with this one. 
