Out of all the places we have been to so far, Cambodia is definitely the least developed.
Most of our day was spent on the road in a bus, heading towards Phnom Pehn. The bus system isn’t confusing to use (just book a ticket through your hostel) but the way it works seems to have no pattern at all. Along the ride, there would be stops to pick up and drop off people, with no apparent pattern. It didn’t seem to matter much though, because once you were out of the city, it seemed like there was only one main road so everyone could see when a bus was coming, and people would just come out to wait.
The entire road in and out of Siem Reap passed through farmland. On our 6 hour ride to Phnom Penh, we saw houses on stilts, cows idling everywhere (in and out of ponds. Sometimes all you see are the eyes), cricket traps (small squares of plastic filled with water, and a plastic sheet hung on top in the middle. They’re stir fried for food), people chilling in hammocks, and fields. There were rundown temples here and there, and a few collections of shacks sprung up together. In the places that we stopped, vendors with bags of food in their hands would run to the door of the bus, clamoring for us to buy their food, and fighting each other to get to the front or be seen.
We finally got into the city, which wasn’t much different from the countryside except for the shambled buildings in the backgrounds of shacks instead of fields. It was almost a little bit of a shock. It gradually got nicer as we headed more downtown towards the developed area. There seemed to be almost no real sense of organization in the roads though. Carts walked alongside bicycles that rode alongside cars and tuk tuks and trucks. Everyone wove in and out, honking at each other. It was a lot more chaotic and crowded than the streets of Bangkok, and it was a bit of a wonder when the bus made it to its final stop.
Here we grabbed a tuk tuk and headed to our hostel, which was in a slightly quieter part of the city but still near the more developed areas. I guess they have a pool party a few times a month with a barbecue, so we chilled for a bit (while everyone else got wildly drunk, people were definitely having sex in the pool, and I’m glad I didn’t get in because people woke up with eye infections the next day) before heading out to check out the city.
We originally tried to hit up Central Market, which is their big vendor hub, but it was closed at that time, so we turned and headed to the Night Market. We followed blocks of park (it was a straight shot to the night market and each block of the park had different facilities where people strolled or children played or sports were going on) to the market, where we receded to look for food. The market is separated into two areas, food and shopping. The setup was pretty cool, because in the center of the food vendors were tents set up with mats underneath. Sauces were shared among the mats, so you would just grab some food, take off your shoes, and plop down to eat. Amy had her safe choice of noodle soup with meat, while I grabbed an assortment of fried dumplings and fish balls with veggies, and freshly pressed sugar can juice with lime (I ended up going back for a second and third serving because it was only 1000 riel a cup and it was addicting).
After a quick stroll around the shopping area and too much head ducking (covers had been put up because of the rain but they were rather short), we decided to call it a day. The roads are ridiculous to cross since there are no crosswalks or stop lights and you just have to run for it, so we didn’t want to be sleepy from food coma, with cars coming at us from every direction.