Cambodia (first impressions)

When I first flew into Cambodia, I changed my RMB at the airport and they gave me riel. This ended up being kind of stupid, because they also use USD in Cambodia. 4,000 riel = 1 USD and you're constantly doing the math, you can pay in a combination of both, and you'll often get change in a combination of both. I actually had a harder time using my riel than using the USD I accumulated.

Cambodia is a really poor country, that might have been the one thing I heard from my students when they heard I was going. But for being so poor, it was definitely more expensive than I expected. You can find a decent hostel for maybe 8, 9, 10 USD, which isn't much, but all things considered it was surprising. Food and such was actually more expensive there than in Songyuan.

Along with USD, I also found a lot more foreigners and a lot more English spoken amongst the locals than I was expecting. I can count on maybe half of one hand, the number of my friends in the States that I have ever heard mention going to Cambodia, or just mention Cambodia at all. We saw so many young, say college aged people, on our trip, and many retired couples as well. One would assume this is why there is so much spoken English. That part was a bit overwhelming for me at first. I'm used to not understanding and tuning out 99.5% of the things around me. Being able to eavesdrop on five conversations simultaneously is quite a bit to take in in contrast to that.

Along with all the foreigners, there is a lot of foreign food. I can't count how many days while I was traveling that I had banana pancakes. Real, western, banana pancakes. It was great. The French had a huge influence in Cambodia, and it was so nice to have that influence in the food as well.

One of the most interesting things for me though, was to see how Cambodia is both ahead of and behind China. For example, China is more developed and has a lot more buildings, but the buildings aren't built to last. Cambodia's are much fewer, but the construction is more solid and enduring, and you can find more older architecture.

Last but not least, I wouldn't be me if I didn't talk about the bathrooms. Siem Reap has primarily western style toilets, though we found more squatters as we moved on. What they don't have so much is toilets with flushers. Almost all of them (western and squatters alike) are manual flush toilets. There would be a big bin of water with a scooper next to the toilet, and when you were done you had to scoop a bunch of water into the toilet to force your business down. And almost all the bathrooms have butt guns (yes, I am SURE this is the technical term). They're like the poor man's version of a bidet. Mounted on the wall next to the toilets, there is a hose with a sprayer on the end that looks just like the sprayer and hose combo you would find at an American kitchen sink.