A Fascinating Place - Part 1
Just got back from Cambodia yesterday. I would say it is one of the most interesting and fascinating place that I have been to so far. Brilliant...simply brilliant. Our main motive is to go see Angkor Wat - a kingdom that has been forgotten. We first flew to Phnom Penh from KL on Feb 9, 2006. It was a sunny day...great weather, but hot of course.The guy from the guest house picked us up from the airport and spoke to us in chinese immediately. I was shocked that they knew Chinese! It can be considered as perfect Chinese! Interesting...After loading our stuffs into the van and getting ourselves into the van, I notice one thing - they drive on the right side of the road. I was like, cool! BUT...then I realized that some of the drivers' seat are on the right side...and some are on the left. I thought...weird. In addition to that, most of their cars, motorcycles, vans do not have the registration plate number. I couldn't really understand why, but I did not ask just yet at that point.
We drove into the town area. Another thing that caught my attention was the amount of BREAD that they were selling along the road. Bread that looks a lot like baguette. Everywhere you turn, there's a stall selling baguette. (see the breads...)
I also realized that they have a WHOLE ROW of 10-15 stores selling the SAME STUFFS on the SAME ROAD. For instance, if you see the first store selling TV sets, you'll expect to see the next 15 stores sellling the same thing. Really interesting. For the next 20 minutes, I was mesmerized by how interesting this place is. It's dusty, but interesting. =)
We got to our guest house, check-in and went to have a look at the room. Not bad for a room that cost us only USD10 per night. We settle down, went to the washroom and decided to go out to have a look around - to see if we can find something to eat.
There were quite a number of restaurants when we got ourselves to the main road. After much discussion, we sat down and ordered food. We didn't know what food they serve...or rather we don't know what their food tasted like. Anyway, we picked a few dishes and some rice. The taste was not bad...very Asian...like a combination of Chinese food...and Thai food. After dinner, we got back to the guest house and rest as we are on the 7.30am bus to Siem Rep. At this point, I found Phnom Penh being an interesting place to explore. They speak their own local language of course, English, Chinese, the Teowchew dialect and some of the other dialects! Fascinating...
BUT...the main action has yet to unfold and the trip becomes more and more interesting...
We then travel to Siem Rep from Phnom Penh the next morning and...I guess I'll continue this blog tomorrow! :)
posted by *chiaoju* @ 9:32 PM
1 Comments:
can't wait for the 2nd part! :-)
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