tramspotting: Cambodia debrief #2: Vietnam to Phnom Penh

So where to begin? Between my brother and I we took some ridiculous number of photos between us so this will definitely be another gratuitous photo-fest. But hopefully they are at least of passing interest to my loyal readers (all 2 of you) ;-)

We left Saigon on Friday 2 September - which warrants a photo in itself cos' all the people in the city had disappeared and been replaced by Vietnamese flags. The quietest I have ever seen it - apparently Tet Festival is the same.

Unlike Noo Zulland, which is at the arse end of the universe, the countries in South-East Asia are all conveniently close by - so, 45 minutes later, we were in Phnom Penh. We met up with a Cambodian mate who works at the French embassy - and, within 4 hours of arriving in town, found ourselves having an extremely messy (but entertaining) night, gatecrashing the farewell party of one of his colleagues. Was yet another twilight zone moment, dancing to old French pop songs with pissed Frogs in the middle of Phnom Penh!

Amongst other things, we did the obligatory tour of Toul Sleng (aka the S-21 prison where the Khmer Rouge got up to some pretty atrocious shit) which was pretty hard going but well worth seeing in person. Nothing like several rooms full of people's photographs staring at you to personalise genocide.

Our touristing in Phnom Peng got a little more light-hearted when we were travelling on motorbike with our mate (the ones in Cambodia are extended to take 3 people and are brilliant fun) and the famous Cambodian rain started up. We had raincoats on but they were a little irrelevent when our bike died in about 80cms of water outside the royal palace and we ended up wading through the COMPLETELY flooded street.

Apparently one legacy of French occupation in Cambodia is a seriously shit drainage system - Phnom Penh regularly floods but by everyone's reaction you would think it was the first time. So, we abandoned ship off the bike and waded to slightly higer ground and stood with a bunch of wet monks (whose email addresses we got when they requested copies of the photos) and watched small Cambodian children swimming down the road and people pushing stuck vehicles through the floodwaters.

All quite entertaining really.

At this point anyone remotely sensible would have retired to a cafe or something but no, we carried on touristing in the rain.

So, one royal palace and an abortive mission to the national museum later we had just about done Phnom Penh...except for dinner. Our mate took us out to the suburbs to a fantastic place called Hen Lay. I don't really know how best to describe it - maybe an aircraft hangar with food and live bands would be a good start. This place, on the river, was absolutely massive.

And, not content with one band or piped music, there was the house band and a full-on cabaret of about 6 singers who did songs with backup dancers and costume changes and everything. This place was so big that there were concert-type video screens at either end for those people who couldn't see the stage!

My brother, who was still a tad jet-lagged and disoriented after flying from Paris the previous day, got even more disoriented when mobbed by the 'beer girls' when we sat down - their job is to thrust a card with the name of their beer brand in front of your face and say the name of the beer as loudly and insistently as they can. Not too bad when there's only one of em' but when there's about 10 the effect is quite entertaining!

We spent a little while hanging out on the waterfront in Phnom Penh as well - watching this dude who was doing his best South-East Asia Ray Charles impersonation...