Phnom Pehn

Arrival in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia's captial! Wow, this place is amazing. I'm really loving it... It is somewhere I wouldn't mind living for one or two years along the line sometime. It is quite a nice place, alot different than I was expecting. I was expecting it to be alot more similar to Kathmandu, as I have heard from various people that "all Asian capitals are the same..." Well, that is completely not true. This place is alot more cosmopolitan. Phnom Pehn is fascinating... From all the places I have seen so far there is the biggest visible gap between extremely rich and very poor. There are some amazingly beautiful hotels, swanky restaurants, gorgeous mansions throughout the city. There are also the little winding dark alleys I am used to from Kathmandu that house the less well off city residents. There are very posh restaurants where people wearing Banana Republic chic linen clothing toast and sit in minimalistic chrome bar stools. Across from these restaurants is the river which shimmers under dozens of country's flags whipping in the wind. In the river are very poor people's boats, tiny wooden canoes. Naked children bathe in the murky brown water, and fisherman pull in small catches of fish in nets. There are endless rivers of motos, alongside big trucks carrying dozens of men coming back from a day's manual work, alongside shiny new Mercedes. Phnom Pehn is definetally interesting to wander around as I have not seen anything like this place before. It is like Kathmandu in spots. There are dirty places (but to a lesser extent) and markets where the peddlers resemble the peddlers on Kathmandu's streets, exhibiting the freshest vegetables, chickens (not even dead yet), fish, fruit, and other food stuffs. It is like Singapore in some spots. Some places, like the riverside area are very clean and Westernized. There is a manicured grass lawn spanning the boulevard, nice statues, museums, curved Cambodian buildings. The riverfront area reminds me of Boat Quay and Clarke Quay in Singapore. A very nice place, catering to alot of foreigners and expats. Then there is Monivong (sp?) boulevard which reminds me of a mixture of Kathmandu and Tokyo. There is chaos. Never ending chaos. To get even more chaos, hop on a moto and have him drive you around in the rush hour traffic (frightening!!! but well worth the harrowing experience!) There are flashing lights, big buildings, traffic lights that people sort of abide by. There are casinos, and posh drinking spots, sushi restaurants. There are street vendors, and those little hole in the wall shops that seem to be all over Asia that sell all sorts of what looks like junk to the untrained eye, but are probably useful things to someone. Phnom Penh is really fascinating. You can live in high style, you can live dirt cheap. In Kathmandu, there was not such a divide between rich and poor. Most people in KTM seemed to be about the same socio-economic status. There were of course, alot of beggars, but the majority of people seemed to be lower middle class in Nepali standards. Most people seemed decently dressed and clean, but not rich by any means, and there were not rich areas. The only "nice" hotel was the Hyatt, but that was really far away from the center of town.