After a sort of stressful 9 hours trip from Saigon to Phnom Penh, I have finally entered in Cambodia.
The trip was supposed to take less hours, but the border control between Vietnam and Cambodia was very crowded and officials were not very efficient working. Also, I had to leave the bus where I was travelling to cross the Mekong river by ‘ferry’ (or better, a platform over the sea where all waves soak you) to then again take the bus and continue the trip to the capital of Cambodia.
The poverty is much more evident here than in Vietnam. There are hundreds of children begging in the streets, prostitutes in each night bar, rubbish accumulated in the streets… I didn’t have time to see much, but I had the luck to meet an old friend that happened to be on holidays in the city at the same time than me and he has shown me some corners of the city off the touristic sight. There are no words to describe the feeling every time a child comes to you asking for food.
I have been witness of how a couple of guys in a motorbike has stolen the bag of my friend while walking in the street and how the police is so corrupted that even to report the robbery you have to give them money.
Tomorrow I will be heading to the Killing Fields to know more about the Khemer Rouge empire and the devastation of the population that happened in this country just some years ago.
