The World That Doesn't Exist: Cambodia

PHNOM PENH

The many hours spent on the plane don't take away the excitement of the moment of landing at Phnom Penh airport. For $20 you can get a visa on arrival, immediately experiencing how the Cambodian bureaucratic machine has nothing to envy of the Italian one...A line of about 20 customs officials, paid no more than $100 a month, pass the passport from one to the other. Each one has his own precise function: one tells you the price, another leafs through the document, the next one looks for an empty page, one puts the stamp and another signs it...and so on for 10 minutes... Outside a downpour welcomes us and a swarm of made-in-China scooters wraps around us. Cambodia gives us its welcome. The riverside of the capital is where the few hotels are concentrated and thanks to the indispensable Lonely Planet we choose the California2Guesthouse.

$19 for a double with comforts and river view absolutely unexpected. The days in Phnom Penh pass under the sign of an almost unbearable humidity and a succession of emotions so contrasting with each other, that they will leave an indelible mark on our souls for a long, long time... The royal palace with its Silver Pagoda (which greatly resembles the complex in Bangkok), Wat Phnom, the independence monument, the houses and buildings dating back to the period of French colonialism are the main attractions of a capital light years away from the world as we conceive it... The monuments can all be visited by walking around the city, opting for the longer distances one of the countless tuk-tuks or mototaxis...forget about what is considered a public transport service, here it is something absolutely unknown...

In Phnom Penh there is then a building that deserves a special note: the Tuol Sleng Museum. An old school, transformed into a torture center during the dictatorial regime of Pol Pot. Sadly known as S-11, the complex, perhaps because of its state of preservation, perhaps because of the loneliness that the very few tourists add to the solitary classrooms, makes those who pass among the thousands of photos of faces now lost come to know a reality, a genocide unknown to most. And all this happened only 26 years ago. The image of pain, of a nation and a people decimated by its own leaders and forced to kill its own neighbors and its own family members, culminates with the visit to the mass graves of the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.

Reachable in about 30 minutes, the journey alone through the outskirts and the countryside around Phnom Penh is worth the visit......the markets of Psar Tuol Pong (Russian market) but above all the central Psar Thmei market with its fried spiders and worms, metal parts of unidentified vehicles and clothes of every kind among open-air butcher shops, give us back that smile that we had lost for part of the day......so we leave, after 3 days, Phnom Penh with its elephants, its monkeys and the smiles of a fantastic population, which has already begun to capture us...

SIHANOUKVILLE

7 in the morning. The appointment is at what is considered the city bus station. More simply a tide of vehicles at least 20 years old parked a bit wherever in the middle of the main square. Tourists can be counted on the fingers of one hand and so, waiting for our coach to manage to get out of its parking spot (in the end it does, but it "takes out" a minivan and a gas pump!) we keep ourselves entertained with those who like us are waiting for a bus to who knows where..

To cover 230km it takes us almost the whole day, but at least it's impossible to get lost, given that in the whole country there is only one properly asphalted road...the journey, even if tiring, is extremely fascinating, passing among flooded rice fields, huts and small urban centers with the inevitable markets, all marked however by a hygienic situation at the limits of the imaginable, with children bathing in pools of black water where there are no fish but garbage of every kind... Sihanoukville, considered the main tourist resort of the coast, is a quiet village that chaotically tries to appear like one of the many coastal resorts of nearby Thailand. But the difference is enormous. And not in a negative way. We stay at the Occheutel Beachside Bungalows, where even here the standards far exceed the average of the country.

$15 wonderfully spent, finding ourselves moreover 1 minute from the beach called Serendipity. For three days we dedicate ourselves to sweet idleness. Apart from a boat excursion to the nearby islands, including the beautiful Bamboo Island, we spend the hours eating and mixing with the Cambodians who have decided like us to spend the weekend at the sea. Tourists here too can be counted on one hand. And so we find ourselves surrounded by a multitude of children...and I can't help but fall in love with two of them. They are intelligent and likable and their joy of living will remain forever in my heart... Sihanoukville cannot be overlooked in a trip to Cambodia...and the walks in search of a bar in the absolute darkness of the night, I still remember them laughing...

SIEM REAP

It's certainly not for its motorways that we chose Cambodia, but a single long-distance paved road in the whole country that always forces you to have to go through the capital doesn't help make reaching Siem Reap any less of a slog...and then if during the 12 hours of bus you're accompanied by chickens, spiders and at least 60 children (note: the bus has 48 seats...) who belt out the hits of the Cambodian charts at the top of their lungs... Finding a tuk-tuk at the station to reach the city centre isn't difficult. It would be difficult not to find one. We choose the T.Rosa Villa hotel (NH6) just 5 mins from the centre. This gives us a clean, cool room and staff in the best Cambodian style. And all for just €6 per person. Siem Reap is very small, but at the same time the number of tourists far exceeds that of the capital, and hotels and restaurants are everywhere.

And it's all down to the proximity of the Angkor archaeological complex. The city itself doesn't offer many tourist attractions, but the central square with its little market and the bars all around are perfect for resting after hours of walking among the ruins of Angkor......Stefano and I therefore decide to rent a couple of bicycles and leave the town pedalling: thatched huts and smiles kept us company the whole way (totally at random...) and in doing so we breathed in a bit of the real Cambodia... Angkor is unmissable. And of course expensive to enter ($20 for one day), but absolutely all well spent. A single day is enough to visit the most important temples. Their splendour is immense. A tuk-tuk haggled for in the streets of S.R. is indispensable for getting around within the archaeological area, and $8 for the whole day is a more than fair price.

Angkor Wat, the most famous and impressive complex, leaves no room for words to describe it. Only the eye can understand...and avoiding the very expensive elephants, unmissable is the sunset from Ta Prom Kel. Unforgettable even if a bit too crowded... We then dedicated a day to visiting the floating village on Tonlè Sap Lake, the largest in South-East Asia. Stefano and I were the only 2 tourists on the big barge passing among the stilts and floating houses where poverty touches one of its deepest peaks, it leaves an indelible mark on the soul. And the children who stand afloat in big cooking pots, propelling themselves using large tree branches as oars and attacking the boats like pirates to ask for a paltry dollar, leaves a silent pain, impossible to heal... And it's with all this that we leave Cambodia to return to reality, better or worse I really don't know, unjust without a doubt.

Cambodians have nothing, but everything to envy us. But talking with them, walking their streets you realise that, incredibly, we also have something to envy them: that desire to live and move forward and that smile, a true one, that they are always ready to give you.