Flying To The City of Angels
Day was mostly taken up with our flight from Phnom Penh to Bangkok, again with AirAsia. Early this morning we visited the National Musuem, primarily for its collection of Angkor-era statutory. Caught a tuktuk across to the mustard yellow deco Central Market, which is undergoing renovations, but we were hasselled by some surprisingly unfriendly stall-keepers.
Wandered through Phnom Penh before making our way back to the hotel, where our driver from two days before, Dara – apparently a little worse for wear after a big night – picked us up to take us to the airport.
Roads in Cambodia are treated like any other public space – at the edges of, say, a six lane main road there may be a lane or two or each side which is travelling in the ‘right’ direction, but in the middle of every road is a broad, ambigouous area shared by traffic travelling in both directions. The system works surprisingly well, basically due to the fact that most of the traffic consists of small scooters or motorcycles, but cars and four wheel drives operate in the same manner. There is, in short, never any guarantee that traffic anywhere on the road will be travelling in any particular direction. When crossing the road there is a moment (and when crossing a large road it is quite a time) when you have to, quite litetterally, look in both directions at once. Failure to do so is met with a barrage of scooter horns and close shaves.
Nonetheless, Cambodian drivers seem less aggressive, less stressed and less frustrated than their Australian compatriots. They simply don’t expect the drivers around them to do to act in a certain way and presume the other drivers could do anything. If they have to slow down because there is a car or scooter heading directly for them they simply toot the horn and slow, perhaps move momentarily towards the correct side the road, and they continue on. I am sure there are some horrific accidents, but we never saw any.
We made our way through a crowd of people milling around the foyer of the airport, but initially there was no sign of our flight or where we should book in. After ascertaining that there were, indeed, only the 15 or so check-in desks (and nowhere at all to buy food or drink before security) we found seats and were left to amuse ourselves watching the other passengers on our flight begin to arrive and go through the same process of puzzlement, anxiety and relief that we had. We got chatting to a Belgian backpacker (whose name we found out) who has been through Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia. He had loved Burma; apparently the people were genuinely and unhesitatingly warm and he thought the Bagan temples as spectactular, if not more, than Angkor Wat (although to because he was somewhat ‘templed out’ that was the only temple around Siem Reap he had seen). Check-in was smooth for us, altough not for a couple before us who elected to repack rather than pay $1USD per kilo in excess luggage.
Both Ally and I managed to set off the security sensors but with the sacrifice of a bottle of sunscreen stupidly left in carryon we wandered around a couple of little duty free shops, perusing the interesting Chinese tobacco and alcohol.
Airplane was a little on the tatty side – for the first time AirAsia really felt like a budget airline but there was nothing to complain about. This time Ally and I were seated together, with nothing but an aisle between us.The hot meals we had ordered online were too grand for this tiny plane, so we had to settle for smoked chicken foccacias, which we both quite enjoyed.
From the airplane we had a 10 minute bus ride to the long lines of immigration. Successfully caught a metered taxi to our hotel. The driver serenaded us with several tunes along the way and laughed, frequently, in a fashion which was just on the happy side of manic. During the drive I felt like a yokel as I wondered at the modernity of Bangkok after just a week in Cambodia – the enourmous spagetthi junctions, the billboards and the illuminated skyscrapers. It really felt like the largest city I had ever seen, and possibly just about justified it’s name, which translated, means: “The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm”.
On arrival four or five employees immediately jumped upon the car to open the doors, welcome us and remove our luggage. Room at the hotel was just gorgeous, lovely view of the pool and worth three times what we are paying for it. As it seemed to too late to do anything we both collapsed for the night with dreams of the pool.
