March 4, 2014

Cambodia – Day 1

Welcome to our second stop on our travels across Asia. We headed to Cambodia! As I mentioned before we originally planned to visit Bangkok, but there was lots of political protests going on, so we switched our destination. I had no idea what we would find in Cambodia, I did some brief researching when we decided to change our destination 1 week before leaving. In pictures it looked very pretty with its ancient temples and sprawling untouched lands. That was enough to book our new flights!

Day 1

Flying into the Phnom Penh Airport and looking down at the landscape everything just looked brown, then we started seeing more buildings, and closer to the airport it looked like a normal built up city.

Our first order of business was to exchange our money over to the Cambodian dollar, the Riel. The conversion rate was crazy it’s about $4000 Riel to $1 USD. So that pile of money in the window is only about $100 USD. We eventually found out that it wasn’t really necessary to convert our money because everyone took USD, but you live and learn, right?
After getting through customs and exchanging our money, we made our way to the front of the airport to the taxi line. Right outside the airport doors there was a KFC, apparently it’s quite popular there. We got our taxi and were on our way to our hotel.

On our cab ride to our hotel we noticed that everyone here drives a motorbike. It’s unlike anything you would ever see in the States, they will fit as many people as possible on one bike. Some bikes had about 5 people on them, a few even had mothers carrying babies on the bikes. Our second observation was that there are close to no traffic rules. Everyone just kinda drives wherever, either side of the road, on the side walks, doesn’t matter. This makes crossing the road quite stressful.

We choose our hotel online and when choose a hotel online from just reading reviews you’re always a little scared of what you will find when you actually get there. We were pleasantly surprised! From the outside you would never guess what you were about to walk into. It felt like we were at a tropical resort and you almost forgot you were in the middle of such rural city. The best part was that it only cost $50 a night.

Our first stop was the pool bar for lunch before heading out of our first day of exploring. It was really pretty eating next to the pool. They had a little swim up cabana for lounging. It felt very tropical and the food was quite good. They also have Coke Light instead of Diet Coke.
After lunch we headed to the National Museum. This wasn’t a very big museum and 75% of it was Buddha statues and figurines. It was interesting still. It didn’t take too long to go through, so luckily it had a very pretty courtyard in the middle where we could wait until The Grand Palace opened for the afternoon.

Once the Grand Palace re-opened at 2 pm we made our way over there to get in line to enter. The Palace sits right along the river and there’s a very pretty open field between the Palace and the river.

After the palace we went back to the hotel to rest and shower before heading out to our first nights adventure of seeing a play back at the Museum. The play was put on by the Cambodian Living Arts association. It was all students and they did a great job! It was all in Cambodian so we didn’t understand any of what they were saying, but luckily they had the English translation on a screen above the stage. The costumes and the play were really good!

 We fit so much into our 2.5 days in Cambodia that I will have to continue with day 2 next since this is getting long! There was so much Culture in every stop on our trip. It’s so fascinating to see how people live in other parts of the world. It makes you appreciate the advances we have in the States and not take all our privileges for granted. Make sure to check back for more of our adventure!
If you’d like to read about our other stops you can do that here: Singapore, Cambodia Day 2, Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center Tour, Vietnam.
Hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventures and maybe we’ve inspired you to take a trip to somewhere adventurous! Make sure you’ve joined our email list over there on the right! We send out periodic updates and reminders!
Til next time!!

Author:
Tags: , , ,

1,685 thoughts on “Cambodia – Day 1”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *