a confused conclusion to our cambodian adventure.

hello phnom penh. you're nuts.

that was more or less our response on arriving at the bus terminal, located down a nice closed alley and filled to the brim with crack-head moto and tuk tuk drivers who sprinted the length of the alley, jumping over one another and hitting repeatedly on the windows of the bus, pointing at us with glee and generally looking at us like we were made of gold... we were growing accustomed to this happening at the bus stations in cambodia and experience had not made the whole thing any more enjoyable for us - we CAN read our map, we KNOW it's not really 50 kms to the nearest guest house and if you don't like me (as you've just been saying) then why are you still following me. horribly tough because you don't want to be rude but when your answer of no thank you is met by "great, i'll be over there" then when you're walking off and saying "no thank you, we're fine - we only have 20 metres to walk" and they are grabbing your arm, blocking your way and calling you a liar... well, there's not much you can do but just try to keep smiling and walking.

anywho, this time we made it out of the alleyway relatively unscathed and wandered off to the lakeside backpacker ghetto after grabbing a bite to eat and i did a quick bit of recce on the area. khao san road it was not - this place was really ghetto and surprisingly fully booked in a lot of places. there were plenty of places over the water but they were filled with mossies which, to me, wasn't promising. in the end we took a small room in a shady building and vowed to leave the next day for the centre of town - that worked out a lot better for us, but we had to make it through a night of manic noise because the roofs and walls seemed to be made of ill-fitting cardboard.... i felt kinda guilty for my choice of abode!

in phnom penh it is difficult to walk  because the pavements are used by motos for parking, catchment zones for passers by, as workshop areas for motos and generally for taking quick moto shortcuts at the expense of those walking the narrow winding path between all the static bikes. all in all, you get a bit fed up of motos quite quickly. therefore, it is not surprising that the presence of at least six moto drivers outside each hotel and guest house who lounge there all day waiting for you to leave and to come back so they can give you a battery of propositions is, just a tad, wearing. add to that the presence of groups of ten or twenty moto and tuk tuk drivers on every corner who will laugh, point and shout who-knows-what if you politely refuse their offer of transport and you actually begin to feel a bit intimidated. and that's not even including all the drivers who just pull up alongside you and keep driving slowly, staring at you and shouting "hey!ey!" repeatedly.   it was a real shame because i didn't want to be too hard on the guys but it increasingly felt like every single person in the city was a moto or a tuk tuk driver and there was very blatantly not enough business to go around. as a result, we got some very unpleasant treatment by a couple of them who'd obviously been told no too many times already that day but, frankly, i couldn't see any reason why we should want to be driven everywhere we go.... that's not how i want people to think of westerners anyway.

after talking to some NGO workers (of which, in cambodia, there seem to be an unprecedented number) a little clarity was added to the picture. first of all, the pay in many of the "proper jobs" is so low that a driver who gets even just two unwitting tourists to part with a reasonable number of their dollars will, in a day, outdo the monthly pay of a worker.... that's the incentive for all the guys right there. then it must be taken into consideration that, between the negative impact of the pol pot regime making people scared of doing anything they've not been told to and the dubious virtues of excessive NGO involvement, we were told that basically nothing gets done unless it is funded, organised and worked through by foreign groups. reportedly that's the main reason why cambodia is way behind laos in terms of infrastructure and development. we were very grateful for the insight that the NGO chap we met gave us although, as we walked through town and were passed by multiple landcruisers and hiluxes of various other foreign organisations we really did wonder whether that is the best way forward for the country.

our attempts to get our indian visas were thwarted by the embassy having moved and then by the worker in the visa office talking his way out of giving us them, claiming it could take longer than a week and he couldn't promise anything and we should just go to bangkok or ho chi minh to apply... ho hum.

the royal palace was quite an interesting visit but, again, a curious (ab)use of what they had was taking place in the silver pagoda: the main attraction for most visitors. because photography is forbidden in here, you're unlikely to have seen a picture before you arrive but, undoubtedly, you'll have a notion in your head of what it'll look like. mine was a gleaming, carefully polished and mostly cleared floor of silver tiles with a narrow area for walking or even just some kind of viewing platform at the entrance end of the building. alas, no. what they've done is to plonk a carpet over most of the central tiled area and additional carpeting to form a walkway around the temple which is filled with all manner of cabinets containing buddhas and jewelry inter alia. the key fact is that the cabinets are all just on top of the silver tiles - no protectors or matting and it was clear they'd been slid around to position them a fair bit. between the wear and tear from furniture and visitors and the general exposure to the elements the silver did not resemble silver at all and i was convinced that keeping so much of it under carpet was just going to result in, years down the line, a discovery being made that a number of tiles had been stolen. it was all rather upsetting - once more the grandeur of the nation had been, in the tourist guides, attributed to what was essentially a fairly neglected site. we just felt it could have been so, so beautiful and that that was surely the only point in using a few tonnes of silver to floor a pagoda, why treat it so? ach... maybe we just weren't getting the point.

perhaps we were just unlucky with the timing of our visit to phnom penh or perhaps we'd just been too enchanted by laos but i was really surprised by how upsetting it was to have visited the temples of angkor and to read in guide books about how proud the people are of their country and the various guidelines for dressing yourself to make sure you don't offend their cultural sensitivities, only to see on every street a tuk tuk driver relieving himself against the wall of a building - from the palace to your own hotel - or people forcing themselves to be sick on buses into plastic bags which they then throw out of the window, then eat some more and repeat the whole process... it was all just a bit disillusioning. undoubtedly cambodia is a fantastic country to visit - especially if you fancy something a bit more rugged than you may have encountered elsewhere in south east asia - but for me, the cities were quite unhappy places to see. much preferable was the countryside in the north which, whilst still more manic and much harder to navigate, retained a great deal more innocence and felt somehow safer than the capital. i hope one day to go back and visit some of the other regions we didn't make it to and hopefully to change my opinion of the country but, at present, i feel it may be a prime example of what can happen if too much foreign involvement takes place too soon, and that's a regrettable thing.