Phnom Penh, The City With No Sidewalks

I recently traveled to Cambodia for a work trip to help put together a proposal to improve nutrition service delivery to women in rural villages in Cambodia.  Don't be too impressed, I don't actually have any part in doing any of that, I just crunch the numbers and nag people for information like audits and accounting manuals.  As uninteresting as my daywork sounds, the opportunity to travel to such great places (oh, and the fact that I'm, albeit indirectly, helping to save the children) is my favorite part of my job.  

The Journey
If you know me, you know I LOVE flying.  Something about being in the airport, people watching, cramming myself in to those spacious international economy class seats and hoping to God my row companions don't want to make friends with me for the next 8+ hours...well...I just can't get enough of it.  

This particular trip was my first opportunity to experience Korean Airlines from Dulles to Seoul for 14 hours, then Seoul to Phnom Penh, the capitol city of The Kingdom of Cambodia for another 5 hours.  I was excited for this trip, one because it was going to rack me a cool 20,000 miles on SkyTeam, though unfortunately not Medallion Qualifying Miles because apparently Delta and Korean are in a SkyTeam family feud so they're taking it out on their customers.  Yeesh, problems of an international traveler.  

The first flight to Seoul, South Korea was a bit of an odd experience.  It was a 14 hour flight leaving DC at 12pm (noon) and arriving in Seoul at 4pm the next day.  A few things about the flight that were different is that they feed you three full meals (that's a lot of airplane food), the flight attendants bow multiple times as they interact with you, and the plane had a little rest bunker for the flight attendants to go take naps throughout the trip.  

Also, something really strange is that they manufactured it to be a "nighttime flight" even though the flight departed in the afternoon and landed in the afternoon.  By "manufactured", I mean that after take off, all passengers were required to close the window shades and then dinner and drinks were immediately served.  After dinner service, the cabin lights were cut off and the flight attendants came around and gave you stickers to wear to indicate for which events you would like to be woken up for.  The choices were "Meals" (clearly catering to the American market), "Duty Free Shopping" and  "Before Landing".  Therein summed up the only three things that Korean Airlines decided I needed to worry about for essentially the next day of my life I'd be sharing with them and 150 other of my closest friends on this 777.  
I wished I had kept the stickers to find a future alternative purpose, like donning one at my next staff meeting, or perhaps using them as lint paper like the woman next to me.  "Take that, Korean Air, you can't put me to sleep just because you turn the lights out!".  

My plan seemed relatively simple and logical: stay completely awake for both the 14 hour flight to Seoul and again for the 5 hour flight to Cambodia so then when I finally land in Cambodia at 10:30pm on Saturday I can crash and go right to sleep.  Flaw: Not accounting for the fact that assumed me staying completely awake for 26 hours once all was said and done. 

So, that didn't really work out as planned.  After a few bad movies, a few snoozes, some bibimbap on the airplane (which the flight attendant gave me a laminated instruction card to guide my consumption), I arrived in Seoul just in time for the afternoon Royal Family processional through the airport.

Fast forward another 7 or so hours and I'm landing in Phnom Penh.  Raining cats and dogs and my airport driver informs me that its an after effect of Typhoon Haiyan.  Kind of a weird feeling realizing that I had traveling within a region just hit by a natural disaster.  

My Week In Cambodia
As I mentioned, I was on a work trip to help save some babies.  It was a fairly last minute planned trip (as most of mine are) and as such the trip was taking place over Cambodia's National Holiday, the Water Festival.  This holiday marks the beginning of the fishing season and the change in the Tonle Sap River's current.  Historically, this holiday is celebrated with long boat races along the river along with a carnival in front of the National Palace along the riverfront.  

National Palace

Unfortunately, the boat races haven't occurred for the past few years.  In 2010, there were crowd control issues at the event and it resulted in a stampede so the event has been contentious ever since.  The following year, floods country-wide caused the the festivities to be cancelled and in 2012 the nation's King Father Norodom Sihanouk died, causing a cancellation again.  This year, the water festival was again cancelled for two reasons: again flooding in some of the areas outside of Phnom Penh but also rumors of fear of potential political protest as a result of elections held this past July.  So, even though I barely found a hotel room in the whole city because of the national holiday, there were no boat races to be seen along the river.  I did catch another race though...

I was able to spend some time down at the river, though.  It was a nice spot with lots of restaurants, bars and coffee shops.  Also was the jumping off point for what seemed to be a huge backpacking seen in Cambodia.  

Top: Some old men relaxing by the river before sunset. 

Bottom:  Muscle beach  Cambodia  style.    This  is an  open air gym on the river walk which kids and adults spend time exercising.  

Another attraction of the riverfront is the Night Market.  It happens on Friday, Saturday and Sunday is a big hangout for local city folk.  The shopping wasn't that good, mostly novelty stuff, but there was also a main stage with local performers, a Cambodian "open-mic", if you will.  There was also big section of street food.  

The Night Market street food experience was pretty cool.  Basically there tons of stands and stalls with all these different types of skewered selections (bottom-right) that you pick out and hand to the fry ladies behind the table (top-left).  They will deep fry it and then voilá (middle-right), piping hot fried everything! Now, just have a seat (take your shoes off first) on the communal mats and you're in a makeshift outdoor Cambodian equivalent of a food court (top-right).  

Here are some other pictures I snapped during a Sunday stroll around town when most are out for they day doing their shopping for the week...

There isn't really any public transit in Phnom Penh, nor (as the title implies) any sidewalks, so its not a very pedestrian friendly place.  So, my mode of transport everywhere was a Tuk-Tuk.  Tuk-tuks are motorcycles with buggies attached to the back of them which will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go for $1, but if you're foreign you have to negotiate down from $3.  Say tuk-tuk really fast pretending as if you're driving a motorcycle and you'll quickly see why they're called tuk-tuks.

I happened to catch a wedding processional in the middle of the street at the Russian Market (not run by Russians nor were Russian items for sale).  I thought it interesting that guests were bringing fruits and cakes as gifts.