Into the Heart of Darkness

Friday 3 October 2008

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Phnom Penh

So we get up early for the bus from Saigon to Cambodia and its capital Phnom Penh. It takes seven hours or so and although there's air con it's still pretty hot. At the border we're shifted around to various places and lose passports as the tour leader takes them to sort out the visas. We're put into a holding cafe while we wait for everything to get sorted and eventually the guy comes back and we're off again.

So we're now in Cambodia, and the main difference is that there's no buildings, just jungle, countryside, palm trees and the odd wooden shack. I start reading the history of the place in the guidebooks - it's probably a mistake. This is the country that suffered the worst genocide in percentage terms ever - around a quarter of the people were killed and almost all of the ethnic minorities. I get into very dark place. I listen to my iPod on shuffle and some appropriately dark tracks come up. Minimalist techno. Dark rock. Even Richard Cheese's version of Holiday in Cambodia comes up and the irony is bittersweet. The bus arrives at a ferry and we're stationary for about an hour as vehicles are slowly shuffled on and off. If ever there was a need for a Vietnamese style construction project it is here. Also it's clear that compared to the Thais and Vietnamese, the Cambodians are much darker skinned and more Indian-looking.

Finally we end up on some random street corner of no particular interest in Phnom Penh and we offload from the bus. Of course there's a tuktuk there to take us to a hotel we've picked. It's a stinker but dirt cheap. We go out for a bit in the evening but we're tired from a long day and an early start.

The streets are full of land mine survivors with missing limbs. This place is very poor. There are children constantly begging or selling every five yards. Compared to the chaos and high-rise commercialism of Saigon the poverty is a bit of a shock, especially for James who gets a bit wary of the people. But as before the poverty here puts a lot of things in perspective for people in the West.