Cambodia: Travel Notes

A very selective and highly subjective list of useful people and places found while travelling through Cambodia in June 2003

These notes are designed to be simple addendums to the stuff you find in the usual travel guidebooks (Lonely Planet, Rough Guide etc), covering first hand experience of specific hotels, cafes et al.

Lonely Planet Cambodia

They are obviously deeply subjective and everything mentioned is subject to change without notice. These notes were made whilst travelling in Cambodia during June 2003.

Guides

Our time in Cambodia was made a lot easier and a lot more fun thanks to the Cambodian guides we used in each of the cities we visited. If you want to get a really good feel for each of the places you go to in Cambodia, it’s worth contacting these guys below. Each of them recommended each other to us, so we felt in good hands as we arrived at each new destination, and we weren’t disappointed. They can meet you when you arrive in each area, which makes dealing with the inevitable scrum of touts distinctly less daunting.

NB – Cambodian names feature the surname first, so the second name is actually their first name. As it were.

Phnom Penh
Jack
Email: Jackthy955@hotmail.com
Mobile: 011 748 326

Jack – an Anglicisation of his real name – and his elder brother Nan can sort you out to see any of Phnom Penh’s tourist attractions from the back of their trusty motos and are a fount of information about how to get around Phnom Penh, Cambodia and indeed out of it to Vietnam. Jack and Nan also work for the Lazy Fish Guesthouse (No 16, Street 93, Phnom Penh) which is a decent backpacker hostel set on the city’s lake. Jack says you can pay what you want. The Lonely Planet recommends paying guides around $7 a day – Jack and co seemed happy with that.

Siem Reap (Angkor Wat)
Mr Ling Theavy
Email: Theavyling@hotmail.com
Tel: 012 895 406

Theavy (pronounced Tee-Vee) is a very pleasant, quietly spoken older guide who speaks good English. He is extremely knowledgable about Angkor temples and can organize motos and cars to get you around both the most popular temples and the more far flung ruins. If you arrive by boat at Siem Reap, the drop off point for which is several kilometres away from the town down a hideously mangled road, Theavy will be happy to come and meet you. I can’t remember Theavy’s rates but he names his price before setting out so there’s no confusion.

Sihanoukville
Mr Ty Vibol
Email: tyvibol@yahoo.com
Tel: 011 881 045
..and usually to be found hanging out at Mick And Craig’s Bar most evenings

Vibol (pronounced Vee – bol) provides an excellent day trip around Sihanoukville to see the surrounding countryside, which includes beaches, waterfalls, Ream national park and more. Not only is he friendly, trustworthy and a good English speaker, he’s a top laugh too. Vibol can also organize trips to Bokor National Park to see the ruined hotel and casino, along with visits to Kampot and Kep. Vibol is happy to name a price before setting out on excursions.

Places

Not much to add here that you can’t find in guidebooks, although there’s a couple of things you really should do if you visit these places

Sihanoukville

Starfish Bakery
Tucked away just off Sihanoukville’s main road, Starfish does fantastic coffee, brownies and food in a blissfully chilled out shady garden, thanks to Canadian expat Dierdre O’Shea. The Starfish Bakery supports the Starfish Project, which funds small projects to help out the locals, from buying an amputee a new prosthetic limb to rebuilding a family’s house. You can find out more about Starfish’s work at starfishcambodia.org and, of course, at the Bakery itself.

Siem Reap

Landmine Museum
On the outskirts of Siem Reap, this museum relies completely on donations to keep it open and for Mr Aki Ra, its owner, to continue his work of actually clearing mines from the countryside surrounding Siem Reap. This museum is worth visiting not only to understand just how big the landmine problem still is thirty years after the end of the war with Vietnam, but also to learn about Mr Ra’s remarkable life story and to support his work. You can even volunteer to help out at the museum if you wish. Would suggest you take a moto rather than a tuk-tuk to the museum because the track out there is pretty rough. More info at landmine-museum.com

Travel

Here’s how we got around Cambodia:
From Trat in Thailand we did the overland crossing into Cambodia to Koh Kong. I got a month long Cambodian visa on arrival.

From Koh Kong you can take a boat or a bus to get down to Sihanoukville. The boats look pretty dangerous as they are not ocean-going vessels. When we were there, storms had stopped the boats running completely.

The buses run along an earth road recently constructed by the Thai army for Cambodia which connects Koh Kong to the main highway which leads to both Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. Journey time to either city is around 5 to 6 hours – the road is in a decent state. Take lots of food and water though in case your minibus breaks down like ours did..We were waiting for four hours before a replacement bus arrived. Nice.

From Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh is only three hours on a decent road. Big coach buses run every hour or so between the two. You might want to bring earplugs in case the driver jack up the TV to play Thai videos at earsplitting, distorted volume for your entertainment.

From Phnom Penh to Siem Reap we got the boat that goes up the Tonle Sap river. This is quite pricey – around $20 – but the road between the two cities is meant to be atrocious. Again, bring lots of food and water as the boat broke down for a while. If you can’t swim, don’t get on board. The river is very wide so if it sinks (as it has done a couple of times) you will have a long way to get to the riverbank.

The so-called port at Siem Reap is actually a huge shanty town where the jetty is literally collapsing into the water. It’s a depressing sight. The road from the port to the town is a couple of kilometres of churned up mud – it’s not really a road at all. Taxis will be waiting to take you into town. It’s too far to walk.

The boat ride from Siem Reap to Battambang is spectacular, allowing you to see the various fishing villages that live and work on the water itself rather than on the riverbanks.

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