one phnom-enal city

was this worth the trouble? the question first popped into my mind when i landed at siem reap-angkor international airport, cambodia — via a transit flight from bangkok — to find myself at the end of an admittedly short line for the immigration desk.

after twenty minutes of carefully thumbing through my passport — and satisfying himself, perhaps, that this was just a regular indian national with simple sight-seeing plans — the officer pointed me to another desk where an arrival tax of us$25 was being collected from every traveller. as my companion and i parted with a $50 fee we hadn’t been informed about earlier, the question began to make its presence felt in the form of a mild headache.

when we reached the baggage claim area, i was told my luggage had yet to leave bangkok. it did reach my hotel later that day, but by then the question had begun to pop up at half-hour intervals. was this worth the trouble?

my answer arrived the next morning. returning a customary bow from our extremely polite front desk staff, we were escorted by our extremely polite guide to our fairly run-down rented car. it was to take us to what we had travelled a few thousand miles to see: the ruins of angkor wat. a gentle, steady rain accompanied our drive. even as a weak sun struggled to push through the grey, i gazed upon the magnificent temple complex before me, and i knew. of course this was worth the trouble.

much has been written about angkor wat. thanks to its status as a world heritage site, most travellers seem to think it’s the only thing cambodia has to offer. yes, it’s fabulous, provided you pick a time before the french tourists arrive en masse (try late october). yes, you can pose alongside icons created in the twelfth century. yes, you can shop for all manner of things bearing the temple profile (like cans of angkor beer), eat for as little as us$2 (off the street, obviously), and examine classical khmer architecture until you feel a bit sick. no, you shouldn’t leave without spending time in phnom penh.

we had a number of options to reach the capital, but picked the most exciting: speedboat. leaving siem reap jetty at 8 am, our vessel swiftly cut through the tonle sap — south east asia’s largest freshwater lake — on a journey that took five hours. staring across that wide expanse, i noticed floating villages dotting the lake’s edges, along with floating shops, even floating schools! and then, rather suddenly, phnom penh was upon us.

we sailed into attractive sisowath quay, along the banks of the mekong and tonle sap. the city looked dusty. heading to the home of a friend, we were driven on a main road that appeared to be in good shape. the smaller lanes we passed were as pot-holed as the streets of mumbai though. this wasn't a surprise, considering the last four decades hadn’t been very kind to phnom penh. the bloody khmer rouge revolution had left millions dead, and a government with no funds to invest in infrastructure until the nineties. things were looking up now, but this was clearly a work in slow progress.

we had settled in by the next morning, and opted for a tour by tuk-tuk — motorcycles with cabins for passengers at the back — that charged between $1 and $2 per trip. that was a weird thing about cambodia — paying for everything in dollars. the national currency, the riel, had been re-introduced in 1980 (there was no monetary system for the five troubled years before), but didn't seem to be popular. then again, considering $1 was worth a little over 4,000 riel, it made sense to stick to the former.

stopping at a restaurant for lunch, my companion tried spicy fish amok, a traditional khmer dish of curried white fish wrapped in a banana leaf and served with rice. apparently, this is how we got the english word ‘amuck’ — ‘to rush about violently and out of control.’ i wasn’t sure about the veracity of that piece of information, but the source of the word was undoubtedly interesting. years after the demise of the khmer rouge, cambodia was still struggling to escape its shadow. according to unicef, the country still has the world’s third highest number of landmines. they have, since the seventies, taken over 60,000 civilian lives.

we couldn’t avoid the tuol sleng genocide museum at the heart of the city. once a school, it had been converted by the khmer rouge into a security prison where all who disagreed with the revolution were tortured before being executed. of the 14,200 prisoners who passed through those rusted gates, only seven survived. stopping at the little gift shop on our way out, we looked at the souvenirs on display: t-shirts bearing the words ‘danger! mines!’, and photocopied books — printed books were rare as most locals couldn’t afford to pay — on murderous khmer rouge leader pol pot. we bought nothing.

there were other places in phnom penh that occupied the rest of our week. i tried a khmer massage (us$10 for an hour) at one of many parlours but, despite claims made on a board outside, it didn't make me feel like a brand new person. we hired a boat for a cruise down the river (tip: carry a bottle of wine); visited the national museum (admission $3), with its prints of the epic poem reamker, based on the ramayan. we decided against a visit to the killing fields at cheoung ek, 17 kilometres from the city. we were also told about the famous stung meanchey garbage dump, where the very poor reportedly sifted through garbage for anything of value. apparently, it attracted tourists in search of an unusual, ‘authentic’ experience. but then, we had our own dharavi back home.

we also spent an afternoon at the royal palace, built by king norodom in 1866 on the banks of the mekong. looked upon as a sacred site by locals, photography wasn't allowed in all parts of the palace and we were told to dress decently. i left my shorts at home.

on the evening before we left, we stopped at the riverside cafe, a popular bar by the riverfront. we had been warned that phnom penh could shift from quiet to chaotic in an instant. we had been asked to carry no more than $30 while moving around after 7 pm. guns could be whipped out suddenly, we were told, and muggings weren’t uncommon.

yet, as we moved at 11 pm from the café to a restaurant nearby, heading back past midnight in a tuk-tuk, we found nothing but calm streets. to our left, the mekong flowed as it always had. to our right, moonlight glinted off the roof of the palace.