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Traveling Cambodia

History, Culture and Travel Tips

by Amanda Nourse and Glenn Weinreb

Home : Travel : Traveling Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia : Cambodia

Overview

The Lonely Planet Cambodia travel guide, or similar book, is a must have for all travelers. We will provide a very brief summary of the information contained in this book, supplemented with many photos and personal reflections.

Cambodia suffered from war and political instability during much of the later half of the 20th Century. As of 2002, it is quite safe, provided you don't wander off into the jungle by yourself. For details concerning safety, please see http://travel.state.gov/cambodia.html. Cambodia's infrastructure is quite primitive due to the war. Businesses in the later half of the 20th century invested very little since they did not want to build factories that would later get shot up. Subsequently, very little money was spent on infrastructure to support a modern economy. Roads, rail, telephone, banking, water, electricity, small package shipping, and heavy container shipping are severally lacking. Yet Cambodia, which is now a democracy, is quickly rebuilding.

Visited Cities

History

The 20th century Cambodian history is quite complex. In summary, they had some civil war problems between 1970 and 1995. In 1975, the crazy communist Khmer Rouge took over and told everyone in the capital city of Phnom Penh to evacuate the city and march into the country to lead an agrarian life. The idea here is that educated folks are synonymous with capitalism and internationalism, both of which are bad and must be destroyed. This notion echoes the 1949 to 1976 communist leader of China, Mao Tse-tung who was a known opium addict (with opium ideas?). Sounds crazy? It is. To make a long story short, the Khmer, after killing 1M people in a 7M person country, were beaten back by the Vietnamese and some other folks; and Cambodia is now a free market, multiparty, democracy.

Culture

The Cambodian culture is mostly agrarian -- folks live off farms in a mostly tropical climate. Much of Cambodia is still underdeveloped. Yet tourist can still stay at a nice hotel in the larger cities, with all of the trappings found at a western hotel.

Hotel

As noted in the travel guides, you can spend anywhere from $3 to $150 a night and receive service ranging from a dormitory with no AC and no hot water, to a luxury hotel with Ritz Carlton-like quality. For a listing of what is available, please see www.asia-hotels.com or www.cambodia.travelmall.com. Or consult your Lonely Planet Cambodia guide book.

Food

The food markets of Cambodia are teaming with free produce.

Travel Tips

  • Transportation options within a city are motorcycle taxis (i.e. you hold onto driver), cyclo-taxis (tricycle w/ bench for passengers, includes peddler, $1/hour), and $20/day car plus driver. The car and driver thing is terrific if you don't mind spending the money.
  • Please pay attention to the safety and health recommendations noted in your travel guide. For the latest information on physical threats, please refer to the US State Dept. Cambodia Travel Advisory (http://travel.state.gov/cambodia.html). Since (emergency) medical care must be pre-paid, always travel with a credit card.
  • For visa information, please see http://www.embassy.org/cambodia/consular/
  • Don't travel in the countryside in an open air vehicle (e.g. not a car, van or bus), since the dust from the road is loaded with pathogens (virus, bacteria, fungi) and these are HAZARDOUS to your health. For health care in Phnom Penh, see www.InternationalSos.com.

Personal Reflections

Amanda: I learned a few Khmer words and phrases and practiced them on EVERYONE I saw, including French and German people. Whenever I went practicing my Khmer words on Cambodians, they would really light up. That is really the secret to making friends here with locals - just at least TRY to learn the language and they usually always warm up and even help you learn more words. Except the merchants and drivers - they are pretty tough and only want to talk one language with you - money!!! It is a lot more expensive here than in Thailand. In general much less easygoing, happy, and cute. But you have to figure that 30 years of civil war (ending in 1998), state-sponsored genocide, and a continuing danger of landmines, combined with serious poverty can definitely influence the national mood. The good news though is that the kids are really sweet and friendly. I hope they will grow up in a new era, as they say, of peace and prosperity.

Glenn: Cambodia is the most underdeveloped country that I've ever visited. It was interesting to see how folks live in a 4x4 meter hut with no door. I especially enjoyed the floating village where folks live on the water 365 days a year.

I traveled on the back of an open air pickup truck from Siem Reap to the Tonle Sap river to take a 4hr boat ride to Phnom Penh, and became coated with rural dust, much of which ended up in my lungs. Amanda got a terrible stomach virus from this that knocked her out for several days, and I got an infection in the lung (Pneumonia) the size of a grapefruit that knocked me out for 3 weeks. The Pneumonia thing lead to 104F/40C temperatures for 7 days that included sweating, chills, chest pain, coughing, and interesting bathroom experiences. I'll spare you the details. I was treated by the SOS Int'l Clinic in HCMC, Vietnam (www.InternationalSos.com) as an outpatient. They loaded me with powerful antibiotics intravenously for 4days, followed by two oral antibiotics for 2weeks. The bacterial infection responded nicely to the antibiotics, but if it hadn't, I would have medical-evacuated to a hospital in Bangkok or Singapore for more serious treatments. The SOS Clinic featured a combination of excellent Western and Asian trained Medical Doctors who were just as savvy as their USA counterparts, yet they lacked the advanced instrumentation and laboratories found at a typical USA hospital. This clinic was affordable only to tourists (e.g. $100 per outpatient visit and $800 per day for a bed) and subsequently was not too crowded, which helped them provide excellent care. I visited each day for 7days for drugs and tests. They were excellent and they saved my life. Thank You !

Lessons Learned:

  • Since (emergency) medical care must be pre-paid, always travel with a credit card. Your life could depend on it.
  • While traveling, if you get sick with a fever (e.g. chills, sweats), buy a thermometer at a local pharmacy and track your temperature several times a day. If you see > 104F/40C temperatures for more than 48hours or > 102F/39C temperatures for more than 72 hours, visit a clinic that practices western medicine. If the temperatures persist, keep going back at 24 or 48 hour intervals. At first, they may not lock onto the problem and you need to bug them daily to get them to do more tests. The desk clerks at the nice hotels know where to obtain western medicine.
  • Do not travel on rural dusty roads in an open-air vehicle (i.e. travel in cars, busses, and vans).
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