Visiting Phnom Penh, Cambodia

So we had some time off with the TET/Lunar New year holidays so we thought we should take advantage of it and go somewhere that is on our wish list of visiting spots.  We left early in the morning on Saturday, 6.15am, who is awake then?  A friend advised us to take the bus to see a bit of countryside, was also interesting at the border crossing between the 2 countries.  

We saw some very poor situations people were living in.

                 And a few rice paddies.  All pictures taken out of the windows of course.

                        Loved this picture with a family travelling together....seat belts anyone?

At the end of our 6 hour bus ride we arrived in Phnom Penh.  Our initial impression was that it was very poor and dirtier than Vietnam.  Someone told us that all Cambodia needs is a wash and a fresh coat of paint, it's kind of like that.  Our hotel was lovely although quite difficult to find, all the streets are numbers rather than names...street 178 was ours.  It was in a great spot and the staff were very friendly and helpful.  The room was lovely.

http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Hotel_Review-g293940-d2156361-Reviews-Frangipani_Fine_Arts_Hotel-Phnom_Penh.html

 We could walk to everywhere that we wanted to go in the general central area which we always like as well.

On our initial travels around the street we saw this Lunar New year preparation.  On the eve of Lunar New year people have to prepare their food in advance as they shouldn't do any work on the actual day.

      Of course a cup of tea is always in order.....watching the street life go by on Sisowath Quay.

The Royal Palace

 This little girl looked so cute perched up on the bench of her Mum's stall on the way home, Mum pushing the cart below.

 Below is the beautiful place that they put the ashes of the old king who had just died a few days earlier.  It was brand new and sparkling. His son had already taken over the reins but he was certainly well respected. Night photo and daytime photo.

                                                                 

National Museum picture and the evening traditional show in the grounds of the Museum by a school of the arts.  We saw a marraige, a birth, a funeral...well done.


For sale in the hot sun we saw lots of people selling tiny chili flavoured pippies from carts....didn't try them needless to say.

These waffle like sweet cones on the other hand were absolutely YUMMY!

We also tried the famous Fish Massage that involves putting your feet in the water and having fish nibble on the dry skin on your feet.  It starts out crazy tickly then settles down.  It worked really well too.

                                        You can see them chomping away at my toes below.

THEN on a more sombre note we went to one of the Killing Fields where there thousands of bodies from the genocide were found.  Unbelievably it happened in our lifetime between 1975-1979.

                     Below is a tower built to house the thousands of bones found in the area.

Below are just some of the bones housed in the tower. 

                                          

Above is a tree with many bracelets left on it by visitors as a sign of respect.  This tree was used to beat children to death, held by their feet and swung at the tree to kill them, sometimes watched by their family, too awful to imagine and very disturbing.

Above is some of the clothing that continues to appear over time from the ground in the area as the weather wears away the soil.  We just walked past these couple of bits, I gather there will probably still be peoples bones under here as well.

 
                                 
Then to the Genocide Museum which is housed in an old school where many people were held and killed over the 4 years.  Below are just some of the faces......I couldn't help looking in their eyes, some were resigned, others were defiant, some were angry.  None lived on.

 Even with this not so nice side of the story we understood clearly what had gone before the days we saw a country that was very welcoming and well worth visiting.

        Final drink in Phnom Penh on the river front opposite the Foreign Correspondent club.  This used to be the place the media's Foreign Correspondents hung out in the past, very colonial.

Resting on bikes

I decided I had to share some pictures of this amazing phenomenon.  I have seen some amazing demonstrations of people being able to sleep, sit and generally balance on bikes in ways I never imagined.  This is just a short version......

Impressive hey?

                                                 AND a new addition from Cambodia...

New Year Excitement builds in HCMC

TET or Lunar New Year is officially the 10th of February this year and the celebrations are well under way!

Phil received a lovely Tet/ Lunar New year card from a group at Uni wishing him all the best for the New year.

AND BELOW

There have also been lots of red envelopes given out to cleaning and gardening staff at RMIT, they took up a collection from the teachers for this.  We are going to give our workers here at the apartment a red envelope and of course the usual situation is the children are given red envelopes by their parents and Grandparents.

So with the Lunar New Year celebrations comes even more decorating than Christmas!  I wouldn't have believed that.  We went into the city last night to have a look at the flower display that totally fills the street and there were wall to wall people.  Everyone comes in to have a look and have pictures taken but we couldn't help being amused at the poses?  We have done some to show you what we mean.

So this is half of the street of flowers, same length the other way. Thousands of people, we decided around 200,000?

We got to hang out with some friends and view the festivities from their balcony which was nice.

                                   This is just one of these such poses, our friends Elizabeth and Vicki.

Yet another one by us, pointing to the beautiful flowers or leaning on the baskets.

Phil got a bit scared of the big snakes? It's the year of the snake, 2013.

Here we are again with one of the standard poses framing the specific item?  

The security guards working really hard?

Walking through the crowds, it looked like Hoi An in this area with all of the silk lanterns.

There was an area that had each of the different animal symbols for the years, this was for the year of the rat.

                                    Had to take this one????my favourite weird pose? What is that?

They dropped a boat in the middle of the display, waterfalls, small lakes and rice paddies, amazing.

This video has the view from one end to the other just to see the scale of the display.  This is usually a road, they built everything on top of it...so much work.

This is the traffic trying to get home at the end of the night....was just wall to wall bikes.

During the day we saw these 3 young girls getting their picture taken next to one of the photo opportunity spots, this is a fake tree and it's huge.

Photo spot outside a shop.

                                                     Me making the most of the photo spot!

The streets are decorated, note the yellow flowers above and purple below, they all light up at night making it look absolutely beautiful.

So that is the New year in HCMC and we haven't even had the night of new year yet.  The place is starting to close down, lots of shops are closed and the supermarkets are even closed for 3 days from lunch time Saturday...wouldn't happen in Australia!  Everyone takes the time to visit family and so the break is taken.

Chuc Mung Nam Moi!

(Happy New year in Vietnamese)

Lead up to Lunar New Year/TET Celebrations

Well the place is going crazy!  The Lunar New Year is a time for family and friends and has an amazing resemblance to our Christmas craziness.  People not only buy gifts for family and friends but they also buy lots of new things for themselves, cleansing for the new year.  People may buy all new furniture for New Year and new clothes, we even got new door mats for our apartments.  Shops are closing and people are leaving town to visit their families in other cities and towns.  There are gifts of Money in red envelopes and huge gift baskets given.  They are on sale all around the city.
Phil and I have had our New year parties at work.  First of all the Caravelle Hotel where I teach English, and as a teacher was on the VIP table, there is a lot of respect for teachers here.  They are put on the ranking higher than a Doctor and just under a government official.

Anyway back to the Caravell, there are around 500 staff and a huge evening with platters of prawns and crabs on each table, a very impressive buffet and presentations from a group that played drums, and did the dragon and lion dances.  There were also presentations from each area of the staff groups.

                                     

                                         Dragon dance to open and lion dance video below

As we arrived we were given a red envelope each that gave us a prize, I got a $5 voucher for a supermarket!  In this picture above are some of the prizes they gave away in a draw for staff.  Major prize was a MOTORBIKE!  Amazing give aways!

Below is a video of one of the staff presentations...I was so impressed, it was very professional for a group of waiters!

                                      
The fruit buffet and another area in the distance, I was standing in the middle so this is repeated the other way as well.  Fruit carved in the platter below, just beautiful.
                                      
                                      

Then to Phil's celebration party at RMIT.  He was met at the door by a man drawing lucky Calligraphy hangings below.

This is one of the girls that catches the bus to work with Phil, she works in the library.  Wearing her traditional Ao Dai.

This is the presentation by staff at RMIT.  Many of the staff had actually gone away when the party was held.  There are no classes currently and it is a great opportunity to travel.  This was on Friday night.  The attendees also got a lucky envelope with $5 in it as well.  Nice touch and also a huge buffet and drinks.
There is so much more to come....in the next post on the blog!