Day 131: Battambang to Phnom Penh

The following day I left for Phnom Penh; I’d layover there before heading for Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam, the next morning.

The day was uneventful, and I used the free time in Phnom Penh to post some blog entries and pictures and catch up on emails.

But before I turn to Vietnam, I’ll mention a couple interesting things about Cambodia that I haven’t yet discussed. First of all, of all the ATMs in the country (in contrast to Laos, there are many), not one of them dispenses riel, the country’s official currency. They all dispense US dollars. Though I had been using dollars throughout my stay in northeast Cambodia, I had only done so because there were no ATMs; I hadn’t considered the possibility that US dollars were actually a semi-official form of currency. This marked the first time I’d been able to withdraw US dollars from a foreign ATM since Central America.

Secondly, no matter where you are in Cambodia, you’ll see countless signs displaying the names of the country’s major political parties. And these aren’t homemade signs—they’re large, metal, official, standardized signs that resemble ones you might see posting the distance to the next exit on an American highway. Apparently Cambodian political parties spend a good deal of money manufacturing these signs and then giving them to people to put in front of their homes. In some villages, more than half of the houses have a sign in front. The whole thing makes the campaign signs that we put in our front yard in the US look rather second rate.

Finally, I’ve never visited a country whose buses made more stops per hour than Cambodia’s. As I mentioned before, many of the stops I witnessed were necessary to keep the engine from overheating, but even when I was on buses that had no need to stop, they stopped anyway. On my five hour bus rides from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and Battambang to Phnom Penh, the bus stopped twice for people to use the bathroom, and twice more for food—and not snacks, mind you, but sit down meals! I added up the total stoppage time on the trip from Battambang to Phnom Penh, and it came to over an hour and a half. All of it jives with the prevailing Cambodian mindset, though—“What’s the hurry?”

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day.