31 July 2018, Tuesday
After my very brief stint in Ho Chi Minh City, it was time to move on again – to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. This would be the 17th country of my trip. At 7:30am, I went for a quick breakfast at the common dining area located on the rooftop of my hostel. It was a very simple meal of instant noodles and a fried egg. The hostel I stayed at during my last visit to HCMC in September 2017 offered a much better breakfast. But then again, I paid only S$7.68 for my stay here, including breakfast, so I can’t really complain too much.
At 7:55am, I checked out of my hostel and walked for about five minutes to the Giant Ibis office at 237 Phạm Ngũ Lão. I booked a day bus from Giant Ibis after reading some good reviews online. I paid US$19 (S$26.64) for the ticket.
After experiencing the deck bed/sleeper-style buses three times in Vietnam, I was quite relieved to see that the Giant Ibis bus was a conventional one with normal, upright seats. The seat was comfortable and there was ample leg room. There was also a power socket at the side of the seat, which was useful for charging my mobile phone on the go. The bus also came with complimentary Wi-Fi, a bottle of water and a snack box comprising a slice of banana cake and a small pastry.
A male bus attendant then came on board and handed out immigration forms. He also assisted the travellers who required a visa to enter Cambodia. Overall, the service was very satisfactory and it was a comfortable ride.
The distance from HCMC to Phnom Penh is about 240 kilometres and the journey would take about six hours. I had already endured an 11-hour bus journey yesterday so six hours was nothing. At 8:30am, we moved off and made our way northwest towards Phnom Penh.
At 10:45am, we reached the Vietnamese side of the border. Our bus attendant collected our passports and told us to take our hand carry luggage and alight the bus. We went into the immigration hall and put our bags through the scanner. After that, we were momentarily lost as we couldn’t see our attendant anywhere. We were also without our passports so we felt quite vulnerable. Thankfully, we spotted him at a special lane on the left side of the hall. I noticed that the other tour buses also did the same thing, where the bus attendant consolidated all the passengers’ passports for processing at the same special counter.
The immigration clearance took quite long because it was just one officer handling several stacks of passports. I thought it would have been faster if we had done it individually using the normal lanes. There was also no proper area for us to stand or sit, so we just crowded around the counter while waiting. Eventually, our attendant returned. He called out our names one by one and handed us our stamped passports. We went back to our bus and moved off at 11:20am.
We then stopped for a lunch break at Prestige Duty Free building located in no-man’s land before heading to the Cambodian border. We moved off again at 12:06pm and arrived at the Cambodian side of the border. Here, we cleared immigration individually, which was much faster than the group clearance earlier. However, we were held up by the travellers who required a visa.
We finally cleared immigration and moved off at 12:43pm. From there on, we had one more toilet break for 20 minutes before we arrived Phnom Penh at 4:20pm. Thus, the entire journey from HCMC to Phnom Penh took 7 hours 50 minutes, longer than the expected six hours.
The Giant Ibis Phnom Penh bus terminal was located near the National Library. Google Maps informed me that my hostel was about 1.4km away…not too far, but not too near either. I decided to save money by walking instead of taking a taxi. At 4:40pm, I arrived at the doorstep of Onederz hostel (click here), located at No. 151 Sisowath Quay.
Just like HCMC, I would be staying only one night in Phnom Penh, so I booked one of the cheapest accommodation options available. My 4-bed mixed dormitory room cost US$8 (S$10.50), excluding breakfast. The bed lacked a privacy curtain but the room was quite spacious and clean so it was still acceptable. The hostel also had a rooftop bar with a nice view of Sisowath Quay and the Tonlé Sap river below.
My last visit to Phnom Penh was in April 2012 during my 30-day backpacking trip of Asia. I had already covered the key attractions then – the Royal Palace, Central Market, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the killing fields of Choeung Ek. The visits to Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek were particularly grim as I learned about the horrific mass murders committed by the Khmer Rouge under the command of Pol Pot.
As I only had one night here in Phnom Penh, I didn’t venture too far from my hostel. The first thing I did after checking in was to go to the Old Market (Phsar Chas) to exchange some currency. The Old Market was located nearby, only about three minutes away on foot.
The money exchange shop was simply a small booth with a glass cabinet displaying blown-up pictures of different countries’ currencies. I approached the two ladies manning the booth and told them I wanted to exchange Singapore dollars for US dollars. I handed over S$150 and got back US$105, which meant an exchange rate of US$1 = S$1.43. It wasn’t the best rate but it would do.
I didn’t exchange Cambodian riels because in Cambodia, US dollars are widely accepted and perhaps even more welcomed than riels. Anyway, I was staying in Cambodia for only a few days so it would be more useful to have US dollars rather than riels, as I could carry the leftover US dollars over to Bangkok or just keep them.
Next, I went to the Smart Shop nearby to buy a local SIM card. I paid US$4 for it, and it came with 10GB of mobile data, valid for one week. I had become so accustomed to having mobile data that I would be severely handicapped without it.
With the two official bits of business settled, it was time for dinner. I found a local restaurant nearby and ordered a plate of seafood fried rice and a can of Angkor beer. The bill came up to US$4.50 (S$6.44) altogether, which was reasonable.
Empowered by my mobile data, I searched for a secondhand bookshop in the vicinity. I had run out of reading material after the long commutes of the past few days. I got lucky and found a shop called Bohr’s Books. I fired up Google Maps and navigated myself to the used book store, about 10 minutes’ walk away.
Bohr’s Books was a very simple shop with a large selection of secondhand English books. As I browsed through the many shelves looking for the perfect book, I was reminded of Harry Potter when he visited Ollivanders to buy his wand. Mr Ollivander said to Harry: “The wand chooses the wizard”. As I took out each book from the shelf to read the synopsis, I imagined myself as Harry going through the dozens of wands in Mr Ollivander’s shop, trying to find The One. I tried to sense the special magical feeling as I held each book in my hand.
After about half an hour, I finally found it. I pulled out a copy of Long Way Round by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. Yes, that’s the same Ewan McGregor who acted in Moulin Rouge and the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The book chronicles the 20,000-mile journey undertaken by the two best friends as they rode their motorbikes through Europe, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. It reminded me of my own round-the-world adventure so I very happily paid US$5 for the book and left.
As I walked along the row of shops at Sisowath Quay, I came across a Blue Pumpkin shop. It was my favourite confectionery and ice-cream shop during my last visit to Cambodia. I popped in to buy a chocolate mint ice-cream and an almond croissant, amounting to US$3.90.
A peculiar thing in Cambodia is that when you pay for your items in US dollars, you sometimes get your change back in a mixture of US dollars and riels. The widely-used exchange rate by most shops was US$0.50 = 2,000 riels. Even though I didn’t want any riels, I inadvertently ended up with some.
At 7:30pm, I visited the Phnom Penh Night Market, located just a short distance away from my hostel. I remembered being here in 2012 and having my portrait sketched out in pencil, capturing the 30-year-old me. I still have that portrait, rolled up and stored in a cupboard somewhere at home.
The shopping at the night market wasn’t fantastic. I still prefer the street markets in Vietnam and Bangkok as I find the fashion choices there more suited to my taste. Here, the stalls selling clothes and other accessories were generally quiet as I noticed that most people came for the food rather than the shopping. Towards the back of the market, there was an area with straw mats laid upon on the ground. Many locals bought food and sat on the mats, as if they were having a picnic at night. I bought a cup of sugarcane juice (2,500 riels) just to sit on the mat and soak up the atmosphere.
At about 8:00pm, I was done and I went back to my hostel. Just like yesterday, it wasn’t a particularly eventful day as I spent most of the time travelling. I must admit that the thought of catching a flight home from here was very tempting, rather than to endure more long bus rides as I continue to make my way home by land. However, when I looked back at how far I had already come in my adventure, a voice in my head told me that it would be a pity to abandon my plan at this moment, so I knew I had to persist. Time to rest before another long journey to Siem Reap tomorrow!