Travels with Hayley

Determined to get one last, early morning walk in (I leave for the airport tomorrow at 6.30am), I got up and had a wander around town. Having done the more touristy side last night I headed for the local area which was centred along one long main road with shops selling everything from agricultural equipment to cleaning products. I dodged around the breakfast sellers casually deep frying their wares in the middle of the pavement, the moody teens with their iPhones in hand and the trucks piled precariously with all of life’s essentials and a few more besides, and busied myself taking photos.

No one was unfriendly as such, but it was very noticeable how much less charmed by me, a tourist, the locals here were than any other town we had been to. I can’t blame them in the slightest, Kom had confirmed that there was a big problem here with both sex tourism and trafficking and the behaviour of the westerners in town last night, cutting up people on mopeds and generally just being arrogant and rowdy had made me feel ashamed to be associated with them. No wonder the locals weren’t keen. Still, I tried to be as polite and respectful as ever (I’ve learned how to say ‘how are you?’ which they seem to really like, it always elicits giggles and replies. I really hope that is actually what I’m saying come to think of it…) and made the best of it.

Passed by a pair of extremely serious child monks in mustard yellow robes rather than the standard orange, collecting alms from the shopkeepers. It’s very weird to see grown men kneeling down in prayer to what are essentially pre-teens but whatever makes people happy. The monks seemed less than happy it had to be said, the side eye on one of them was severe!

Hopping on the bus at 9.30am we headed back toward Phnom Penh for our final night. We went through a town that must have a surfeit of chickens as there was at least a dozen roadside stalls lined up in a row all selling the exact same thing of spit roast chicken – how can there possibly be enough custom for it, there were hundreds of them – surely someone knocking out something different would make a killing, just to break the monotony? Other memorable things witnessed were the start of a dog fight, a woman selling fruit through car windows at the traffic lights and a tuk tuk hung with so many saucepans inside and out you could barely see it underneath! Very sadly I couldn’t get pictures of all of these but you’ll just have to fill in the blanks with your imaginations!

Arriving back in Phnom Penh, the only major tourist attraction I had left that I wanted to see was the Royal Palace so I jumped in a tuk tuk with Luigi, Juliette and Kerry and we made our way there. Entry was $10 each and then there were official guides in there that you could hire for an additional $10 per group. The whole thing was worth every penny, what a spectacular place! Our guide was so sweet, her name was Monica (not really but as she said, no Westerner has ever managed her name so she picked one they could!) and she really brought the whole thing to life for us, even going as far as positioning us where to get the perfect photos and adjusting the settings on our phones to ensure the glare from the sun didn’t ruin the shot. Amazing service!

She was so beautiful and elegant in her uniform too and when she smiled she had a tiny sparkly gem stuck to one of her teeth. Tooth jewellery, that must catch on here soon surely! I admired it and she did that funny thing that girls do when they’ve got a bargain of immediately telling you how much something costs “ah thank you, was only ten dollar!” 😂

The palace is fascinating, the king actually lives there, obviously you can’t go into that bit but you can take photos from the outside and apparently he’s a very nice man, Monica meets him 3 or 4 times a year at various events. He’s 70 and single – allegedly because he wants to follow the Buddhist teachings – when Luigi (gay) heard this he gave a ‘mhhh hum’ and flicked his fan for emphasis (not a euphemism, he’s been carrying a fan everywhere 😂). We both suspected the king of being a certain type of bachelor…

Being that he has no children, the government, chief Buddhist monk and other members of the royal family will choose the next monarch from somewhere within the royal family – the current king gets no say in it, even if he chooses to step down from the role early (as his father did) which seems a bit harsh doesn’t it – I wonder if it’s a rule from ye olden days so Kings couldn’t be bribed or blackmailed. Talking of the kings parents, the queen mother, Monica informed us, looks exactly like Queen Elizabeth. She’s absolutely right, see picture a bit further down.

We learned so much and it was all so interesting – the throne the king/queen sits on during coronation day is only used on that one day – they never, ever sit on it again. Even the previous king who had to flee during the Khmer Rouge – when he returned to the country they had another big, recoronation ceremony – but he still wasn’t allowed to sit in it again 😂 So strict! There’s also a brand new crown for every king – none of this handing it down nonsense like we do, it’s yours to keep 😂

The grounds were beautiful with French style formal gardens (it was all built during French sovereignty) and there was a huge Buddha tree which flowers every day in the morning and the flowers die and drop off every night. Every day is a new set of blossoms. They use the flowers to brew a tea to treat post natal depression – every affliction here seems to have a tea that will cure it!

Everything was so interesting and Monica really brought everything to life – we saw the outside of the national library which holds all of the musical instruments played in the country rather than books, the palanquins that the kings used to be carried on (the queen’s ones always had canopies above them so the queen doesn’t get tanned by the sun – white skin being prized above all else for women in SE Asia), a life size model of the last white elephant that carried the king before they went onto more motorised forms of transport in 1975, the markings on the stairs that ensure the bodyguards always stand in a perfectly straight line, and part of the painted frieze that tells the same story as the carved frieze at Ankor Wat that stands 3.5 metres high and 604 metres long – that’s almost 0.4 miles of painting!

We went into the silver pagoda (no photos allowed inside), so named because the floor is made from solid silver tiles – 6000 pounds of silver all told. That was not the only impressive statistic – the solid gold Buddha inside that was made in 1903 weighs 90kg, with hundreds of diamonds including one at 25 carats, 2 at 20, one at 16 and another at 15! It was in a glass case held secure by the tiniest, flimsiest padlock you’ve ever seen – my suitcase has a better one on it! They are obviously a very trusting bunch. There were some beautiful, origami style flowers which were made out of folded 100 rial notes (about 2.5p each), each petal was a note folded into a triangle showing the Buddha with all the bling above. Monica showed us her clear phone case under which she had one folded exactly the same. I admired it and she immediately took it out and gave it to me as a gift, so sweet. I’ve kept it in the back of my phone case now too as a memento of a really lovely afternoon.

We saw the ceremonial uniforms the kings bodyguards wear which look distinctly like a glam rock version of the sergeant pepper outfits (the chief bodyguard wears orange and carries the umbrella, which seems like a weird honour to give the boss rather than a more lowly minion…) and learned that each day of the week at the palace is assigned its own colour. So when important ceremonies take place, all of the staff have to wear the corresponding colour, meaning they all have seven sets of dress uniforms!

Talking of the staff, I asked Monica if she got paid by how many tours she sold (there had been no hard sell at all when we got there) and she confirmed no, the palace paid her monthly no matter how many tours she did – which made me feel very kindly towards the king I have to say.

We passed by the stupas as we left, these are where the remains of the kings that have passed on are interred.

Each stupa holds the remains of one deceased person only – however, in a very touching break from tradition, the current kings father insisted that when he passed away, he was to share the stupa with his daughter who had passed away 60+ years ago at the age of 4. Somehow this made him seem very human to me, he sounds like a very nice man – he looks it in the photo too.

As we left, sweating in the roasting heat, we were handed free bottles of water – what a classy guy this king is (he didn’t do the handing of the water you understand but I’m sure he had to sign off on it at some point along the way!) and we headed back to the hotel for a little lay by the pool (which seems to have become invaded with a very young German tour group – rude 😂) before we headed out to dinner.

Ah dinner. Poor Kom. He wanted it to be so special and it was one of those evenings that everything just went a bit wrong 😂 He had asked us to pre order our meals, I guess to make things easier for the kitchen or the bill, I’m not sure (you all pay for exactly what you have on these tours, unless you split off into smaller groups and mutually agree to just split it). We went to the restaurant which was a gorgeous, rooftop place, quite fancy looking with an amazing view over the city.

Things got a bit complicated when happy hour came into play as the offers were a bit unusual – 3 for the price of 2 and multiple different types of drinks within one deal – then people tried to split the deals between them which already was confusing the poor wait staff.

When my meal came – well I wouldn’t say I’m the biggest eater, but I did want to know where the rest of my dinner was 😂 All the other dishes were normal sized and even quite large in the case of the soup and curries, but my grilled fish was less then 3 inches long with a salad than would have balanced on a dessert spoon 😂 I was assured I could have rice for an extra dollar but by the time this arrived everything was cold and I was a bit over it all.

Then the bills came. I’m not exaggerating to say these came back 3 times, wrong every single time for every single person. Even when Kom spent 25 minutes with the staff they still couldn’t make it work 😂. At least 45 minutes after we first tried to pay, the poor man gave up and we each had to queue at the till and tell the waiter exactly what we had while he punched it in – totally should have done that in the first place 😂 Poor lovely Kom. He gave a very sweet speech thanking us all for coming to ‘Kombodia’ – cue many groans – and never once did I see his smile falter the whole time we were away. Tour guides earn every penny they make and the good ones just make a trip so much more than the sum of it’s parts.

Juliette, Kerry, Katja, Luigi and I decided to salvage the evening by going back to the cocktail bar that I’d gone to on my first dinner tour, where I met Juliette before the official tour started. What a fabulous plan that turned out to be 🥰 We sat in the gardens, drinking cocktails and eating dessert spring rolls filled respectively with pineapple, banana/chocolate and liquid dark chocolate, dipped in salted caramel with cinnamon and mango dipping sauces. We chatted and chatted and laughed our heads off and finally left when the place booted us out at closing time!

Back to the hotel and a quick room change as the hotel had messed up mine and Kerry’s room – our original one the toilet apparently didn’t work so they had put us in a room with a double bed and a put you up bed with the worlds thinnest foam mattress, with no gap between the 2 beds or the wall so to get out we’d have to wiggle down to the bottom like a worm (this is the same hotel that at the very start of the trip I had to get my work voice out at…they had not improved in 2 weeks 😂)

Once we had politely pointed out that I was not a small child come to visit a relative and therefore would not be staying on said put you up bed, they moved us to a double each (no twins being available). While it was sad to say goodbye to my wonderful roommate a night early (seriously, she’s bloody awesome, best roommate I’ve had. Thanks Kerry, love you!) I’m sure she was very glad of the enforced separation when my alarm went off at 5.30am the next day!

Taxi to the airport (I could have got a tuk tuk but I decided that staying clean and not having to smother myself in mosquito spray before the flight, sadly was the more sensible option) and 2 flights, a massage at Bangkok airport (that’s the way to do a layover, utter bliss 😍) and a mere 23 hours later I was home.

What a fabulous, friendly, beautiful and baffling country all in one. I hope I gave you all at least a taster of what it was like and brought you along for the whistle stop ride.

Again, I feel like the luckiest person in the world to do these tours, I never ever dreamed I would do anything like this even once, let alone regularly so I want to capture every second of every trip for posterity – thank you for all of your encouragement along the way.

Lest we break tradition, let’s end with the last random signs I saw in Cambodia!

Lots of love forever and always xxx