It was time to move on from Vietnam and enter into Cambodia. We did this on an excellent 6 hour bus trip from HCMC to the Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

When we arrived we first noticed the heat. It was 36 degrees celcius the day we arrived which we certainly noticed walking from the bus station to our hostel at 2pm in the afternoon. The second thing we noticed was that this country was very different to Thailand and Vietnam in regards to its development. Even though Phnom Penh is a big city, the level of poverty was much higher than in cities of the same size in other places.

We were recommended a restaurant by our hostel which serves Khmer food. For dinner we had fish amok (a fish style curry). a vegetable curry and several glasses of Angkor draft beer. Dinner was delicious and prices were comparable to restaurants in Thailand.

As the sun went down, we started to notice another major difference compared to other places we have visited. There were a huge amount of single, western men aged between 50 and 60 everywhere we seemed to look. When we realised that there were also a lot of bars catering to this audience with names such as ‘smile girl’ and ‘rose love’, we made the connection that there was a much seedier side to Phnom Penh. It turned out our hostel was right in the middle of the red light district of the city so walking home from dinner confirmed our suspicions.

The second day we visited the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum which taught us about the horrendous acts that occurred here in Cambodia not long ago. The Khmer Rogue devastated the country and has left behind a very young population who are trying their best to rebuild the industries and infrastructure. I’m not going to write about what we saw at the sites but recommend you read up about what happened.

On day three we just relaxed along the river, had some more Angkor drafts and dabbled in some deep fried frogs for dinner which were absolutely delicious!