Trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia pt. 1

Assalamu’alaikum hello there! Hope you are okay and doing well ^^. Finally I can see you again after 4 years I left this blog empty. After I found that I need something different to do aside from academical stuffs, youtube and stuffs. So, I decided to write again on this blog. I wanna share my first experience going abroad in 2019. It was Cambodia. I have actually ever written an article which was published in International Humanity Newsletter held by SALAM UI. Here’s the link https://issuu.com/salamui/docs/ihn but I wanna make this more detail here.

I visited there in October 11^th 2019 after all the drama and the doubts came back and forth whether we would go or nah. The visitation was not for holiday anyway, it was for organization business and stuffs. You know, like visiting the relations, discussion and stuffs. The sponsorship proposal has been made. Until that time when we booked our ticket plane, we knew that we were gonna make it come true.

Ticket plane on October 11^th 2019 at 11.50 am was booked. Yes it was morning flight. Then we had to deal with the hotel or place that we would spend the nights there. Luckily, we got relation or pal, kinda, that help us to book convenient and nice guest house there. Everything seemed easy at that time.

The day came. We went to the airport, to the gate in, checked the passports and stuffs. And flew. Oh anyway there were 6 of us (4 girls and 2 boys). I was so excited and panicked at the same time. It was my first flight. I was actually so scared of flying by plane and always avoiding plane even though when I had to went to another island in my country as my country is archipelago. So I always went by ship, not plane. Okay so the plane finally took off and I just closed my eyes at that time XD. It was so horrifying tbh. Until I know that the plane has became steady (?) I mean when it flew steadily, I opened my eyes.

Fig 1. a view from the airplane

The flight took 2 hours or something, I do not remember it well. We finally landed in Phnom Penh. There was a bus which picked us and other passenger up from the plane to the airport. I still could not believe that I had landed in another country haha. Okay, so as we arrived in the airport, we filled a form about our details and went to take our suitcases. The immigration session was not so difficult anyway and did not take long time. We could answer the questions well and we probably seemed trustworthy haha.

Fig 2. Phnom Penh International Airport

When we were outside the airport, the first thing we afforded was the SIM cards and the data packages. Then we opened up our online transportation app where you can find your driver and take you to the places that you want. The app was so different with what we usually get used to in Indonesia. There were more choices on transportation mode like SUV which is a fancy car, remorque (it was like motorcycle with the face-to-face-seats cart that can contains up to 4 people), and tuktuk (the transportation we always used there. Tuktuk is really unique transportation, it is like bajaj (the transportation in my country). I’m gonna make the special single paragraph to describe it.

It can contains up to 3 passengers with the driver drives in the front. The machine is actually like the motorcycle. Each tuktuk has its own characteristic. The drivers seemed love to decorate tuktuk. Another advantage of tuktuk is it is much cheaper than the car and with its size, it was okay in any kind of road. The driver could drive well and seemed familiar with the road and where ever the destination we would go. Most of the drivers could speak English, but even though they could not, there was no problem in paying and getting exchange. Oh Cambodia uses 2 kind of currency, US Dollar and Riel. It was kinda difficult to get used to use 2 currencies as they have different conversion.

The first impression that came up in my mind about Cambodia is the sky was sooo clear, not gonna lie. I think the pollution is not that bad there. It was a bit hotter than Jakarta tho, but it was not a big deal. So, the tuktuk has arrived in a place we were waiting for it. We ordered 2 tuktuk and we have not had any idea about the position of the people at that time so we made a bad decision of dividing people or you can say group of tuktuk. We could barely move as we brought suitcases too at that time.

The way to our guesthouse was not that far, about 15 – 20 mins. The road condition in Cambodia was crowded but they did not use horn that much which was a good thing. We often saw many fancy cars there and the driver told us that it is common thing there. The drivers also sit in the left side of the car which it was not common thing for us. So we tried to adapt ourselves about the side where we walk on.

Finally, we were about to arrive the guesthouse. We decided to stop in a big mosque near our guest house to pray first. Not all of us, actually. It was me and 2 friends of mine. The first group had arrived in the guest house. There was also a problem with my suitcase where it could not slide properly because something cracked. Nice friend of mine finally exchanged the suitcase, so I brought his and he brought the cracked mine. The mosque was so beautiful. It was all white and it had nice park there. There was a yard where you could see children playing football too. There were no other people there. Until Guess what, we met Indonesians there to pray. We talked to them for a minute and continued our journey to the guest house haha. Here’s the picture of the

mosque by the way.

                                                               Fig 3. Al-Serkal Mosque

We finally arrived at the Boeung Meas guest house. The guest house was nice there was 4 or 5 floors I’m not sure. There were also a mini market there where we could get free hot water. So, we made our things, cleaned ourselves, laid down for a minute and checked out stuffs until 7 pm.

Fig 4. One of our rooms

We have already made an appointment with our relation/pal/friend there. She was with her sister who still studied in university near there. We had dinner together in a halal restaurant near out guest house with them and talked about Cambodia. It was kinda difficult to find halal foods actually. Luckily, our guest house was near the mosque, then there were some halal restaurants available there. Another unique thing (well, at least it was not common thing in my country) was they, Cambodians really loved salty ketchup. In their tables there were always salty ketchup instead of sweet ketchup. The day finally ended and we went back to our guest house to take a rest before the next tiring day. 

Fig 5. Bonus pic : Mineral water i got from our guest house