August 10 to 11—Bed Bugs, Hotel Upgrade, and Exploring Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Dear Family and Friends,

Friday, August 10, your fearless wanderers awoke at 1:00 AM to the makings of a terrifying horror movie. We’d been doing some tossing and turning in bed before Dani finally asked Martha to turn on the lights. In a way, we wish we hadn’t, as we found the bed infested with crawling, nasty bugs the size of small beetles with the likeness of fleas that did not bounce. They squiggled everywhere on the bed, intent on our blood. We squished many of them, smearing droplets of blood that were unlikely our own. We ripped off the covers and the pillows, which housed dozens and dozens of the nasty little blood suckers, throwing them outside of the room onto the deck that was the hallway. We tried to find the hammocks outside, but it was too dark and too late to see our way around with any certainty that the hammocks weren’t covered with other critters. We flipped the bed onto its other side, and could see no more of the bugs squirming beneath the red plastic Winnie the Pooh bed cover (we could see them on the side where we’d been sleeping) and agreed to try to sleep in shifts. Martha took the first sleeping time in the center of the bed, leaving Hero Dani to guard against the approaching demonic insects, agreeing to wake up Martha at 3:30 AM to switch stations. Dani figures she killed more than four dozen of the bugs as they quickly crawled up around the corners of the bed to get at Martha’s sleeping tasty flesh. Squish! Splat! She went through several clumps of toilet tissue before her shift was done, including killing some against the wall, discovering that the flat surface made the kill faster so she didn’t have to keep her eyes off watch any additional seconds. She decided in the wee hours that smearing the bloodied bodies on the wall would serve as a warning to future guests.

When she woke Martha up at the appropriate time, Dani was in no mood to try to sleep among the critters, and we searched for another option, first trying to make our way to the hammocks in the dark once again. Finally, Martha noticed that the keys were in the doors of unoccupied guest rooms, including the one next door to our own, so we entered, leaving our baggage in the locked, infested room, and taking only the computer and our passports for safety into our new space. We felt more comfortable with the lights on and finally made use of the eye-covers Dani’s mom brought back from India. Dani lay down to sleep after we searched the room for signs of similar problems, while Martha worked between snoozing and guarding for an hour to ensure that the nasties did not lie in wait for us to sleep before attacking. She killed just four before falling into a disturbed sleep.

Around 7:00 AM, folks around the main desk were up and about, so Martha went out to let Smiley know that the bedding was in the hallway because of bug infestation. Then, she headed back to bed to sleep for some solid hours. Sometime after 10:00 AM, we emerged again to open the door and get our things out into the daylight. We spent some time searching our bags and clothes to make sure that no fleas had entered our stuff in hope of spreading their family’s vampiric ways to other parts of the globe. In the meantime, we were pleased to see the reaction of the Smile team: They ripped that room apart, bringing out the mattress immediately; then tearing the entire bedframe out of the room and into the sunlight by the river; and finally fumigating that room and others in the row just to be safe.
Sopear, the 22-year-old gentleman at the front desk who had been making friendly with the two of us during the evening before, apologized for the inconvenience, stating that this had not happened before and blaming foreigners for bringing the bugs into the guest house. Not us, of course, since there were WAY more adults with bloodied bellies than we could have provided in the few hours we had occupied the room. They offered to upgrade us to pretty much any room that we might want, but we opted to stay in our safe haven next-door in Room #13. We looked through our packs and bags one final time, removing just a few ants and none of the evil bloodsuckers, before moving them into the secure space.

Tired, we continued with our important plans for the day. We took a long walk through the heart of Phnom Penh, South to the Vietnamese Embassy. We needed to get there the first day in town since it would take a few days to procure our month-long visa for the two or three weeks we plan to spend exploring the next country East—the only one between us and the West side of the Pacific Ocean. As we left Lakeside, we passed a pack of city sheep grazing and cleaning up the garbage near the mosque along the way. We stopped further down the Monivong Road at a bakery to pick up some breakfast breads, although neither of us seemed to have much appetite after the night’s squishing extravaganza. We passed the electronics part of town and priced external hard drives to back up our computer (which may well run out of memory before our photo-taking is done on this trip), stopped at a grocery market to buy water and see the local product base (including glorious CHEEEESE), and stared at the mixture of European and Asian architecture.

Phnom Penh is the smallest capital city we have ever encountered. The skyline is low and the entire city is 5 to 6 KM squared, but it has an up-and-coming feel to it. Much is happening in Phnom Penh; it is the center of commerce for Cambodia and home to the four-corners of great Asian rivers as well as the beautiful lake of Boeung Kak. The people are friendly and inviting, and we have not had a meal here without talking in English with some aspiring youngster waiter or another who is studying our native language and wishes to practice at every opportunity.

Outside the Vietnamese Embassy, we stopped at the guard booth, where the man in a police uniform immediately offered to take care of the visa for us. His first quote? 60 USD EACH for a 15-day visa. “Well, we needed more time than that.” But he could get it for us by the end of the day for just 120 USD total. “Huh? We can have our guest house get it for us for 37 USD! And the guidebook said it would cost about 35 USD. And we needed 30-day visas!”

“Oh, no, no 30 day visas.” HUH?? Oh, okay, he could get that for us at 60 USD each, and could pick them up tomorrow. With that price still astounding to us, he lowered the cost to $35. Not that we felt keen on leaving our passports with a man in a booth on the street (though he had a small stack in front of him), but now he was haggling the price!?!

Finally, Martha noticed the ‘Visa Consult 50 meters -->’ sign, grinned broadly at the guy in the booth, and headed to wait in line with the others until the office reopened sometime well after 2:30 PM. Dani later read that the police in Phnom Penh earn about $30 per month, so better understood why the guard would try to earn a few bucks on the side.

In the simple office with two tables and two rows of waiting seats, we filled out visa form, paid 35 USD, and were told to pick up the visas Tuesday morning at 10 AM, no sooner, no later. Dani tried to move him back a day so we could pick up the visa the day before we wanted to leave on 15 August, but they needed two days to process the things. No go. We assured ourselves that leaving our passports for the weekend would be no problem since they must do this all the time.

We started back North to Lakeside and eventually got a tuk-tuk, which dropped us off at the corner outside of Lakeside’s alleyway. We went to the guest room by way of the Flying Elephant restaurant, where the sweet 22-year-old waitress, Lina, was a great pleasure to speak with for lunchtime. A couple of Aussies had made friends with her and decided to send her to university (a year costs around 300 USD here, according to an unreliable source, but that is too much for so many of these folks). So she’s working to house herself and her mother and study English at the university level; her dream is to return to her village a teacher. Neat.

At the guest house, we sat by the lake waiting for the sun to set over the gorgeous horizon and talked with a charming French couple about how wretched the two-week vacation system is in America and how it deters Americans from traveling to know more of the world. We had hoped to see a glorious sunset over the lake, but it was not to be with the heavy cloud-cover. The approaching night was very pretty anyway. After dark, we headed out to dinner at Bar Fly on the fifth story of the French Pho Pho restaurant at the corner by the mosque. It was way too dark to see the lake, but we knew it was there. The music was good and the food was great (Dani’s fried rice with luscious beef chunks; Martha’s Khmer soup (she has taken to ordering mostly things that have Khmer in their name).

Not wanting to face the bedbug potential that waited in the darkness, we stopped off to sit on one of the lake-dock pubs that extended out into the water. We had a G&T each in cushy chairs by candlelight and watched the lotus leaves on the water rise and fall with the slow steady pulse of the lake’s waves.

Back at Smile, we slept a pretty easy night. There was no repeat of the former night’s horror—we only encountered five of the buggers—probably thanks to the spectacular response by Smile’s work team. We did wake up around 2 AM, but only because our minds were the creepy crawly ones.

Saturday, August 11, we decided that it was time to leave Lakeside and Smile. Although our night’s sleep was decent, we were hungry for Internet access, so headed to Hotel Cara, which advertised WiFi in the hotel. Sure, it was pricey for a room at almost 30 USD per night, but we were ready for just one night of comfort after our budget-living experience on the lake. Hotel Cara was less than 1 km away, so we paid our bill at Smile for the two nights (a total of 18 dollars including a breakfast, coffee, and fruit shakes) and headed out by foot.

It was hot, and we were sweaty and gross (much to the giggling enjoyment of just about every tuk-tuk driver that we turned down along the way) by the time we got to Hotel Cara, only to find that they were booked. Could they recommend a guest house with WiFi? The Royal Star didn’t have Internet access, but had a room overlooking the river for less than 25 USD. Would we like to go there? We turned down that office, but they kindly let us use the guest-only area of the lobby where the WiFi connection was strongest to hunt for what we needed!! We sat there for probably a half an hour before Dani (who was using one of the hotel’s computers while Martha hunted on our laptop) found a couple of decent options downtown.

We thanked the ladies at the front desk profusely and hopped in a tuk-tuk to Sakura Hotel, which happened to be much closer to the Vietnam Embassy, as well. Martha waited with the bags while Dani learned about the room rate (15 USD a night for a room with air con, bathroom en-suite with hot water, a mini-fridge, and television) and took a peek at our options. We decided to stay even though the Internet access was limited to 15 min free per day and it was only available through the cable in the lobby. We wouldn’t get much work done, but could still keep in touch with family and sleep in relative luxury.

In the room, we cranked up the AC to cool down, taking some minutes to enjoy the scenery from the large window in our room. Sakura is close to the main tourist attractions in Phnom Penh, as well, such as the National Museum, the Grand Palace, and our primary landmark, the Victory Monument. Not wanting to waste the day completely, we headed out to see the Grand Palace, but decided not to pay the 6 USD each fee to enter since we’d only have an hour to explore before it closed. Instead, we walked past the Vietnam-Cambodian Friendship Monument and over past the Victory Monument before taking a left into the heart of the city once again to find dinner.

We started with a cocktail as a sign called us to enjoy a watermelon margarita in the evening’s heat. Delicious and refreshing! Seated farther down the block for dinner at Flavour Restaurant, Dani enjoyed a lemongrass and ginger concoction with chicken and a pile of rice while Martha enjoyed some Khmer fried rice with pork. We walked back slowly through the streets. The sidewalks here are even more cluttered than in Bangkok, and most of our steps are taken in the street as motorbikes parked on the sidewalks often make it impossible to pass. Not many folks walk in this city, it seems, and we see most locals opting to hop on the back of one of the moto-taxis. As we entered the lobby of Sakura Hotel, we noted that women standing around who worked in the ‘massage’ parlor and noted a few men looking into a strange open window on the second floor. When we checked it out the next day to see what was in the window, we saw only three red-felt covered steps and a television, perhaps to showcase the men’s options for a massage?

Thankfully, we were high up on the fourth floor away from all of that, and had a blissful night free of bugs and heat.

Much love,

Martha and Dani