14 DAYS IN CAMBODIA: COST BREAKDOWN
One common question we have when telling people that we gave up our jobs, packed up our house, and went on an around the world travelling adventure, is how much does it cost. In time we’ll put up more articles talking about this, but right now the short answer is: we don’t know! We have spent many hours behind a spreadsheet putting in costs we know about (we paid for things like flights, travel insurance, inoculations, etc. before we left) and put some guesswork numbers in for how much we think we’ll spend each night on accommodation (averaging around £15 per night each, with cheaper countries more like £6 and more expensive countries up to £25). We also put in some figures for the cost of food, drinks, activities each day, but we have certainly found that we haven’t been sticking to our budget. It is a tricky tightrope to walk: in some respects if we don’t stay within budget we are going to be in trouble the longer we travel for, on the flipside, what is the point of traveling halfway around the world and missing out on the number one attraction which is the reason most people visit in the first place? But as we continue to travel, we are getting better: in India we signed up to an eight-day tour of the Golden Triangle, blowing our budget (but actually turned out really good, see THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE TAXI SCAM IN THE NIGHT for more on this), so in Cambodia, when we saw the option of going on a 12-day tour for £650 each, rather than jump in and spend too much, we did a bit of research on what it would cost to do the same tour, but booking it all ourselves:
Accommodation – £92.22
5/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Phnom Penh, £5.39
6/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Phnom Penh, £5.39
7/3/18, Beach Road Hotel, Sihanoukville, £11.42
8/3/18, Beach Road Hotel, Sihanoukville, £11.42
9/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Koh Rong Samloen, £6.74
10/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Koh Rong Samloen, £6.74
11/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Kampot, £6.06
12/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Kampot, £6.06
13/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Phnom Penh, £5.39
14/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Phnom Penh, £5.39
15/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Phnom Penh, £7.41
16/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Phnom Penh, £7.41
17/3/18, Mad Monkey Hostel, Phnom Penh, £7.41
Travel – £47.92
7/3/18, Bus to Sihanoukville, £9.44
9/3/18, Boat to Koh Rong Samloen, £8.37
11/3/18, Boat then minivan to Kampot, £12.72
13/3/18, Bus to Phnom Penh, £6.53
15/3/18, Bus to Siem Reap, £10.87
Activities – £131.80
8/3/18, Boat trip, BBQ, snorkel, £30.00
10/3/18, Fire show, £10.00
11/3/18, Waterpark, £20.00
12/3/18, Boat trip, £25.00
13/3/18, Wat Phnom, £5.00
14/3/18, S21 + Killing Field, £10.00
15/3/18, Night market, £5.00
16/3/18, Angkor Wat, £26.80
Tuk-tuk’s to get around – £32.50
13X £2.50
So the bottom line costs of us doing the tour ourselves are:
- Travel: £47.92
- Accommodation: £92.22
- Activities: £131.80
- TOTAL: £304.44
We don’t mind paying a little extra for a tour, as they do the work in booking it for you, they have someone leading the tour and you end up with a group of people which you (hopefully) get on with, which makes it even more fun. But we weren’t willing to pay over double the price for the privilege, so we booked it up ourselves the day before we left Vietnam. It felt like somewhat of a relief having a plan for what we’ll be doing in Cambodia and it gave us a sense of excitement as we crossed over the Mekong Delta heading towards Phnom Penh.
Phnom Penh
The two most popular tourist attractions in Phnom Penh are the Killings Fields and S21. These were both sites used by the Khmer Rouge (a communist lead party) as part of the genocide of 2 million people, one of the worst mass killings of the 20th century. S21 used to be a school but it was turned into a detention centre primarily used to force confessions from civilians that the Khmer Rouge didn’t like (including people with: soft skin; glasses; education; skills outside of farming). Once the confessions had been forced, the poor soul would be sent to the Killing Field to be brutally killed. As the contents of both of these sites were disturbing, further information about our visit is in spoiler tags below, it contains photos of human skulls (in display cases), areas of the Killing Field used for killing along with signs depicting their purpose. Please only expand the below if you wish to see this (we found it one of the saddest things we have seen on our travels so far, but all essential in understanding Cambodia and helping us as humans avoid such things in the future).
It wasn’t just the quantity of people which were killed at the Killing Fields around the country which shocked us, but even more so, the brutal ways in which people were killed, where bullets were seen as too expensive to be used for the killings. The Khmer Rouge’s base idea was that it wasn’t fair how there was so much disparity in the country, the rich city slickers vs the poor farmers. Their idea to fix this was to execute, or work to death, anyone who isn’t a farmer. Initially, they got the farmers onboard by talking about all the positives of taking the wealth from the top, making things even again, making the country self-sufficient by everyone being a farmer, therefore, making enough food for everyone to eat without reliance on other countries. Whilst there is a glimmer of sense in the base idea of making a fair society, that is where the sense ended. The execution of their plan resulted in millions of deaths, typically bludgeoned to death, or killed in other horrific ways. The following is a grave for 166 people, found without heads.
One of the most shocking things, killing tree which executioners beat children, or a simple display cabinet of children’s clothing found at the site.
Once the Khmer Rouge regime had ended, the site has been very carefully analyzed to find out exactly what happened to all the people that have died here. They returned the result into a monument of both peace and a monument to remind us exactly what has happened in the past. From a distance, the monument looks pretty, at each corner is a mythical bird, known as Garuda, who represents birth and heaven. Nāga, a seven-headed serpent is above Garuda, this is a symbol of the Khmer culture. Garuda and Nāga are enemies but when they are combined together it symbolises peace. Inside the monument are thousand of skulls, carefully split into different categories which are based on how the person was killed, often by different sorts of trauma to the skull (from a blow from a sharp farming instrument to repeated blows from something blunt).
S21
This used to be a school before it was turned into a detention centre used for coercing confessions from people guilty of nothing more than not being a working class farmer. One of the elements that made it so eerie was the fact you knew once upon a time it was a school, built to educate children. The living conditions were horrendous, and the only way you got out of S21 was by confessing to something you didn’t do, so you could be taken to the Killing Fields. Here are a few pictures of the cells along with some of the rules:
Inside we found board after board filled up with faces of people who had been prisoners of S21, ranging from grown men and women to young children. The map below shows the various sites, until we saw this we hadn’t realised (foolishly in retrospect) that there was more than one and the grafiti below was found in a room where guests were invited to leave a message, and it resonated with us How many more times will such horrors be repeated before we realise and admit we have lost the right to call ourselves human.
The centre of the compound has now been turned into a peaceful garden, which is such a contrast to what it used to be like here, and there is also a series of white stone monuments, one for each of the victims found when the detention centre was finally closed after the Khmer Rouge campaign ended.
Whether you expanded the Killing Field/S21 section or not, I’m sure you’ll all want to see Steve in a swimming pool and some Khmer home cooked dinner!
Other highlights in Phnom Penh included the Royal Palace, National Museum and Wat Phnom. The Royal Palace is basically a large garden with many beautiful buildings in, like with a lot of attractions, it is best to turn up early to try and avoid the hordes of selfie stick-wielding tourists. The National Museum is predominantly an archaeological museum, so it is great if you wish to see lots of old statues, but less so if you are looking for history about the country. Finally, Wat Phnom is a Buddist temple, more or less located in the middle of a roundabout. It costs $1 to enter, and in our opinion is worth a visit, it is a lot bigger than we expected.
To give you a better sense of the layout of the Royal Palace garden, here is a quick 360 video:
Sihanoukville
We used this more as a base to facilitate us getting to Koh Rong Samloen (one of Cambodia’s islands). The area is nice, very much a tourist beach town, with various places to eat and drink – and the fact our hotel had a nice swimming pool meant Steve spent some time there too. To some extent, it was quite a relief to be somewhere which didn’t have very much to do, other than relaxing – after spending day after day going site seeing or travelling in buses, it is nice to sometimes have a day or two to do very little – and Sihanoukville provides the perfect destination.
We also went on a boat tour, which took us to Koh Thas and Koh Rong Samloen (although a different part of Samloen to what we’ll visit the next day) and incorporated snorkelling, swimming in the sea, seeing a waterfall (however due to the time of year, it was little more than a trickle!) and seeing some beautiful, secluded beaches.
Koh Rong Samloen
We took the Speed Ferry from Sihanoukville to Koh Rong Samlong which takes about 45 minutes, and then another smaller boat to take us to our part of the island. The boat doesn’t pull up to a jetty, instead, it just gets relatively close to the beach, and then you jump out into the knee-high sea, and wade towards the beach with your bag on your back – it was quite a way to enter a new place! We were staying in a quaint little hut in the jungle with a larger open-sided building in the middle which hosts the reception, restaurant and bar. There is no phone service, no Wi-Fi, and instead, everyone is encouraged to chat with each other, make friends and enjoy the stunning setting. A picturesque beach, complete with hammocks and swings set up in the sea. We had a little guest in our room, a Gecko, which apparently keeps the room clean from flies, however whenever we saw him, he was just watching us shower, which was a little unsettling! In the evenings some of the locals put on a fire show on certain nights of the week, which we were treated to. Although it looked like some of them still needed a bit of practice as when they threw their batons of fire into the air, they sometimes landed almost on top of the audience…
Kampot
This time around, it was Gemma’s turn to be unwell, it seemed to be land sickness, which is basically a nauseating feeling of rocking around, after being on a boat (even though you are on still land). It took a couple of days to pass and stopped Gemma enjoying Kampot. However, the star attraction of Kampot is the river Praek Teuk Chhu, and whilst Steve spent most of his time making sure Gemma was okay, he did go on a sunset cruise on the river, during which there were incredible views of mountains, and then as the sun came down, breathtaking views of the world changing colour to pink and blue as the sun disappeared. We also saw a tree full of fireflies, but they refused to be captured in a photo (they are a photographers nightmare, as they are tiny little lights which turn on for a brief amount of time, not long enough for a cameras slow nighttime exposure to pick up). Here is a little video overview of the sunset cruise:
And one of our favourite shots:
Siem Reap
Our final destination of Cambodia, Siem Reap, is home to Angor Wat, the most famous attraction in Cambodia, something they are so proud of it features on their national flag.
We opted to go at sunrise (meaning we got up at 4:00, and bumped into a group of people in the hostel common area who were still up from the night before) and until we arrived at Angor Wat, we didn’t appreciate how big the grounds are (larger than the size of modern-day Paris). We had thought of Angkor Wat as the building pictured in the flag above, which, somewhat confusingly is Angkor Wat Temple, but the entire area is also called Angkor Wat. After starting at 4:00, we didn’t get back until 14:30, and yet only scratched the surface with regards to seeing all the temples/areas of Angkor Wat. However, for us, one day was enough. The temples we visited included, Phnom Bakheng (for sunrise):
Followed by Bayon Temple:
Then Baphuon:
Onto Phimeanakas:
Next, a relatively famous one, Ta Prohm, which was used in the global hit film Tomb Raider (based on the computer game):
Of course, the most famous, Angkor Wat itself:
Cambodia is an amazing country to visit, and even with only a relatively short timeframe, it is possible to see various very different parts of the country. From the capital Phnom Penh with its reminders of the horric past, to picturesque islands, to seaside towns, to Kampot with it’s beautiful river to Siem Reap with Angkor Wat one of the Ancient Wonders of the World. We felt that by following the plan that we did, we made our lives easier than planning it all ourselves (and cheaper than signing up to a tour). Getting around the country on bus (and ferry) was easy, and relatively cheap. It is yet another country we have been able to navigate without setting foot on a plane. However, our travels take us to Laos next, and our first stop, Vientiane is a bus ride of more than 24 hours away (made up of many different buses) – which is more than we’d like to attempt. So we have opted to take a flight from Siem Reap to Luang Prabang via Pakse, in order to explore what Laos has to offer us!
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