Great song by The Dead Kennedys, always comes to mind when I think of Cambodia. Which, to be fair, isn’t often.
Anyway, with that dealt with, our last day in Thailand/first in Cambodia has been almost entirely free of excitement, adventure, or anything else worth writing about, other than the utter uselessness of our bank, First Direct, who have blocked my card for no apparent reason, and are ignoring all attempts to get it unblocked. I have told them we have no money, or any access to any, but they clearly don’t give a flying one: I was told to contact their customer services when they opened at 8am (having been told repeatedly that I needed to ring, despite telling them repeatedly that I couldn’t, as I had a data-only sim) – so I emailed them. Five hours later, their response has been diddly squat. To say I’m unthrilled doesn’t come close.
Putting that to one side, we spent eight hours on the bus, and it was just about as much fun as eight hours on a bus generally is. First impressions: the Cambodian countryside is incredibly drab and arid, and everywhere looks visibly poorer and tireder and tattier than either Malaysia or Thailand. There’s nothing along the roadside but billboards for beer, and signs like this featuring indistinguishable boring looking men – always men – in suits, one after another after another:
I wouldn’t buy one, would you?
Anyway, it was all entirely painless, even crossing the border (apart from the cost – forty bucks a head), and we arrived in Siem Reap mid-afternoon, taking a tuk tuk to our hotel after Virle bargained them down from 100 baht to 50 – though she ended up giving the guy 60. What a mensch.
We went out to try to get funds, only to find that none of the ATMs dispense Cambodian money. Apparently (googling has since revealed) this reflects the fact that $US is the de facto currency. No one uses the Cambodian riel other than to annoy people by giving them it in change. Tomorrow we plan to fill our pockets with yankee dollar, sort out new sims for our time here, and go to the museum to learn something about Angkor Wat. Then potter around a bit and do some practical homework. Like researching the practicalities of cycling to the city itself. Apparently it’s absolutely vast – over 400 acres! I had no idea. Everyone says you need a three day pass to do it justice, so that’s what we plan to do.
Just returned from our first meal here – perfectly nice, if unremarkable. Neither of us could quite decide what our pretty much randomly chosen dishes actually tasted like, but we enjoyed them all the same. And the bill – $7 all in, no charge for the iced tea – was decidedly reasonable.