Thank God, it's not Hanoi!

okay...some friends of mine are waiting for my sarcastic review about Pnomh Penh, the city which I visited for the weekend recently. I'll try my best to recall as much as I can since it was a short trip and nothing much exciting about this town anyway.

Upon touching down, I realised how small the airport actually is. In fact, there was only two flights including mine that morning. Passing through the immigration was actually a breeze. Upon reaching the visa on arrival counter, I was informed that Malaysian need not to apply for any visa. How nice. After getting my bag, I moved out and looked for my contact. The rest of the day was nothing much except visiting a few grocery stores, checking the layout, the merchandises...and since it was early in the morning, there was actually no customers. So we continue to move to more busy locations such as near school but still, the traffic was just slow that morning.

We moved on to the main town, where there's a row of small grocery stores. Despite being dim, most owners refused to switch on the light as the electricity rate is quite high there, I was told. Hence, ownership of refridgerator is also relatively low. While we got to observe more customers but it's not really what i expected.

By lunch, we move on to a local food store, where we had a local dish, a soupy morning glory dish, then ginger chicken and chinese kailan with beef. Not bad for lunch. Cost us around 200baht for three person. After lunch, we moved on to get out of the town and reach a Muslim village. Since it's in the afternoon, we hope the traffic would improved. But alas, we managed only to observe a few and nothing more.

By 2pm, i'm get restless and decide to call it a day and went to the hotel....

In general, Pnomh Penh as a city reminds me of the smaller city in Malaysia. No high rise was seen. Traffic (as in automotive) was quite disorganize at times. And since it's a left-hand drive system, I had a hard time to readjust...just like when i visited Vietnam. The weather was actually not bad. Though it was sunny but it was also windy as well. The wind was quite cooling.

Compared to Hanoi or even Ho Chin Minh City, PP is relatively peaceful, without those honking noises...it was actually quite a relief. If i'm to compare, I will definitely match PP with HCMC rather than Hanoi as PP is more modern. PP will be something of a mix between Thailand and Vietnam. You get to see those temple-ish design as you would see in Thailand, while you also get to have a bit of French presence, the French loaf, the language, etc. At the same time, there are also products from China, Thailand and even Malaysia. I ended up buying some noodles from China, LOL!

Language wise, I believed Cambodians are much better in conversing the English language than Bangkokians. Furthermore, USD is a common trading currency. Perhaps the only thing i would like to complain about is the taxi fare which was quite hideous, mostly because we are tourist, hence the taxi drivers could easily exploit us. In PP, you either get a motorbike taxi, which can sit 4 people (including children) or a Tuk-Tuk. The motorbike would be much cheaper but still expensive compared to Bangkok. A short distance ride could easily cost me USD2. But then again, it also depends on the taxi driver. The smart one will try to charge more while the honest one would not. Well, you can try to negotiate first but since i'm not travelling much, I decided not to. But then again, with the fares I paid, I could get a few breakfast at the garden cafe! Well, travelling alone do have such disadvantages, I guess.

Well, that's it...gonna find me a rainbow.....