Phnom Penh, Cambodia Day 1 (Saturday, November 5th, 2016)

When we travel with a tour group, we love coming to our first city a few days early, so we have time to adjust to the new time zone and get to know the city on our own before the tour starts.  

We awoke at our hotel this morning and the first thing on our mind was a shower.  We literally poured ourselves into bed last night after taking a little time to wind down from all of the travel.  I jumped into the shower first, and they seemed to have hot water, but it was really only luke warm.  So I shivered through my shower. It seemed to get slightly warmer as time went on, but maybe that was just my imagination playing tricks on me.  It never got warm enough to be comfortable.  I chose to shave with lotion after I got out rather than endure the process of shaving off all my goosebumps.  

Once we had both showered we headed downstairs for our complimentary breakfast at the hotel.  The dining room was very nice, with a lot of options to choose from.  They had traditional Cambodian cuisine as well as western breakfast items to choose from.  We took our time and enjoyed our breakfast, including some Cambodia coffee, which is a sturdy cup of coffee.

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia, and our hotel is located right on the junction of and Tonle Sap River, just above where it meets the Mekong.  We've decided to explore our local area on foot, there is a lot to see right around our hotel without venturing too far.  

As we stepped out the door, the first thing we noticed is how busy this part of the city is.  Whether we are walking along the river, or exploring the back streets or the Kendal Market, it is bustling. 

Cambodia is less developed than Thailand was, and each family is working hard to make ends meet.  Tuk Tuk drivers are everywhere, offering rides to anywhere you want to go, and people on the streets are eager to have you look at their wares or eat in their restaurant. Everyone seems to know enough English to strike up at least a short conversation with the tourists.  English seems to be the chosen second language in most parts of the world.

Everyone has been very polite so far, and we've seen many smiling faces.  It is just a very crowded, fast paced way of life.

The first thing that hit us as we stepped out the front door was the smell that is prevalent in many southeast Asian countries.  We're not sure what it is, but it is very different than we are used to.  We think it is a mixture of the high humidity, mixed with the strong smell of Asian spices and who knows what else.  And it changes slightly from neighborhood to neighborhood, but it doesn't go away.  (We found out later it is the smell of fermenting fish paste. Smells like hell, but tastes like heaven!).

We headed over to the river walk first to give ourselves a chance to adjust to the crowded city we were in.  The river walk has a lot of open space unlike the crowded streets the other direction from our hotel.

The traffic on the street corner right outside our hotel

The Tonle Sap River.  It is the livelihood for most people in this city, especially the very poor

A temple we can see from our hotel window

Looking from the river walk across the main street

A river boat on the Tonle Sap River.  The hotel behind it is right on the point where the two rivers meet

Once we became comfortable by the river, we chose a street and headed up into town.  We were very comfortable with the people around us, they were all very nice, it was just the traffic and crowds that were a little overwhelming.  Our city is very quiet and less populated than Phnom Penh, so it takes some getting used to.

A nursery, selling beautiful plants

Motor bikes are everywhere, even parked on the sidewalks

One of the places we really wanted to see was the Kandal Market. We weren't sure what to expect, but it sounded like it is set up daily, and the vendors sell everything from food to clothes to housewares  As we were walking, we happened onto the market and decided to go in. We don't really understand how vendors get a stall in the market, but we're sure they rent their space and then cover it however they want.  The market stalls are covered with umbrellas, tarps, plastic, or whatever they can find.

In the meat market, the women sit in the middle of their stalls and cut the fresh meat with cleavers.  They will cut and weigh out exactly what you want.

The fish is also cut and weighed for each customer.  Most of it is still alive.

Each vendor sits in the middle of their stall, surrounded by their product

Chicken feet seem to be a delicacy

Bananas and fish, an interesting combination

Rice and packaged products

Motorbikes drive through the market among the pedestrians

This vegetable stall was very clean and tidy

Shoes.  So many to choose from

A fabric shop with on-sight tailors

After we made our way through the market, we headed back out onto the street.  

Just like Thailand, power lines are all above ground

The white and green sign is a pharmacy.  They are plentiful in Phnom Penh

A pedi-cab looking for a customer

One of the things we have noticed is that the city is divided into districts.  If you want sunglasses, you would head to the sunglass district and there will be multiple stores to choose from.  The same with other types of goods and services.

Laundry services are very reasonable for your everyday clothes

There are many street food vendors

Many companies offer tours with free hotel pickup and delivery

A coffin shop

Comforts from home are available, but not necessarily cheap

Whenever we would start feeling slightly lost, we would just head back to the river.  We always knew right where we were if we were on the river.  

Even if we weren't lost, we often headed to the river.  We enjoyed watching the fishing boats.  The plants floating behind the boat are water hyacinths.  There are dried and used as fertilizer on organic farms.

Many fishermen fish from the shore if they don't have a boat

People who don't own a motorbike, carry their goods on their head

A city park

A pay-to-park lot for motorbikes

A brick, mortar and tile shop

This man is loading bricks into his wagon, and shoveling sand into buckets.  It's all done by hand

An electrical worker, repairing electric lines

The lime vendor's stall smelled SO good!

They  can haul anything with a motorbike

The Kandal Market is literally down the street from our hotel

For lunch we went to a little place that Steve found on Trip Advisor called Friends Tapas.  They are a vocational training restaurant for under privileged Cambodian children.  The are well known among Americans because their water and fresh vegetables are safe to drink and eat.  That is unusual here in Cambodia.  We typically have to drink bottled water and eat only well cooked meats and vegetables. 

We sat on their beautiful patio since it was such a nice day.  Their food is delicious!  We highly recommend this restaurant!

Prawn and glass noodle Salad with fresh herbs and chili lime dressing

Rocket and pumpkin salad with Chinese Pear, blue cheese and apple cider vinaigrette

Steve in front of Friends Tapas

After lunch we took a stroll be the palace.

In a few days there is going to be a boat festival all over Cambodia.  Boats are starting to show up in Phnom Penn for it.

For some of the poorer people living by the river, it was laundry day

We tried a nearby indian restaurant for dinner, but weren't impressed.  Maybe we'll have some better recommendations tomorrow.

We had a great first day exploring the city!  Now time to get a little more sleep and continue to get our internal clocks moved forward the 14 hour difference from home in the Sates!

Getting to Cambodia (November 3rd and 4th, 2016)

 We had a quick breakfast at the hotel, and then took the shuttle from the hotel to the airport. Our driver dropped us at the international terminal just as the Asiana counter was opening. 

When we landed in LA yesterday, we walked down to terminal B and talked to one of the Asiana representatives. She told us that they would open the counter for our check-in at 8:00 am for the 12 noon flight. We decided that since we had such great seats that we would be there early to make sure that there wouldn’t be any issues. The representative that checked us in was very helpful and even gave us United Mileage Plus points on our account. We didn’t realize that they are affiliated, but they are part of the Star Alliance group.

The LA international terminal is very clean and open, with a large projection system in the middle, in the area of the duty free shops. As we sat and waited for our flight we enjoyed watching a wide array of visuals on the projection cube. There was and old time silent film with rag-time music to accompany it, a mermaid swimming and many other entertaining productions. It really helped to pass the time as we waited for our flight.

 










We were on Flight OZ201 which was a double-decker Airbus A380-800. Our seats were on the top level, so instead of a 3-5-3 seating arrangement, we had a 2-4-2 arrangement. Steve and I were in seats A and B, so we had a window and an isle to ourselves. Since I had a window seat, we also had a nice little storage compartment for the pillows, blankets, head phones, etc. that the airline provided us. It was really nice to have a spot for them instead of tripping over them the whole flight. It was a really nice, new plane that seemed to be in perfect condition.

There was a charger on the back of each seat.

As soon as we were in the air, our flight attendants came around with juice and water for everyone. It was a really nice way to start our flight. Then about an hour later, they brought around the dinner cart. We had a choice of beef steak or bibimbap. We chose the bibimbap because we always like to try something new. Sometimes it's not all that intuitive how to eat food that you’re not familiar with but lucky for us our dinner came with an explanation of the ingredients and instructions of how to fix it. We also watched the people around us since they knew exactly what they were doing. They watched us a lot as well, wondering if we would be able to figure it out.

The soup that came with our meal was really good too.

Bibimbap is a common Korean dish which is composed of steamed rice, minced beef and assorted vegetables. Gochujang is a red chili paste which came in a tube, and a small packet of sesame seed oil was provided to add flavor to the dish. On the side, there was a small dish with a yellow (dessert looking) item, but we noticed that everyone was eating it with their meal, so we gave it a try with ours as well. The light yellow cake-looking thing was an egg and seaweed omelet and the bright yellow garnish was some sort of pickled root vegetable. They were both very good with our meal, but we were really glad we didn’t save them for dessert. They also provided beverages with our meal which included our choice of red or white wine or beer.

We mixed our rice into our bibimbap and then added the chili paste and sesame oil and mixed it all up. It was really tasty. 

It wasn't as pretty once it was all stirred up, but it tasted really good!

As we were finishing up our dinner the flight attendants brought around coffee and tea to finish off our meal. We each had some coffee, so that will probably take care of any sleeping we might have been contemplating for later.

The flight attendants have been wonderful so far, and speak very good English. They are making our flight very comfortable. So now we will sit back and enjoy an in-flight movie for awhile.

The flight attendants gave us about 4 hours to watch movies and try to sleep a little bit, and then they brought around some ham and cheese croissant sandwiches for breakfast. They were wrapped in foil and were piping hot. At first we thought they were grilled cheese, but when we bit into them, they were buttery and flaky like a croissant. Very good. The flight attendants have been very good about bring around water and juice every hour or so to make sure that everyone stays hydrated. 

After breakfast, we went back to movie watching and before we knew it they were serving lunch. We had a choice of chicken with pasta or spicy pork, which ended up being pork and spicy kim chi with rice. It was very good and came with a dinner roll and salad. 

Asian airlines always provide some type of hand wipe to use before you eat your meal, which we really appreciate. Last year when we went to Thailand on China Southern they brought around hot wash cloths. Asiana just had packaged towelettes, but they worked perfectly.

We were also very pleased with the amount of leg room we had on this plane.  Even my long legged husband had room to spare.

They also provided us with slippers, which was really nice.

All of the announcements were in Korean and English.

One feature that this plane had that was kind of nice was that we could see the pilots view any time we wanted.  So we watched the take-off .

We flew over some very interesting city names, so when we got the chance, we finally looked them up and they were in Mongolia.

The Incheon Airport in Seoul, South Korea didn't look too hard to navigate.

As we started to make our decent into Seoul, the clouds were just beautiful.

When we dipped below the clouds, there were lots of tiny islands off the coast of South Korea.  I believe that Incheon International Airport was on one of the islands.

It was very overcast when we landed, but it wasn't raining.

Our flight finally ended in Seoul South Korea at about 4:30 in the afternoon on Friday, November 4th. We disembarked the plane and started looking for our terminal, but then realized that we were going to have to go through security with our carry-ons before we would be able to continue on to our gate. Security went very easy, and we didn’t have to walk far to find our gate.  We came in at gate 43, and we would be departing for Phnom Penh at gate 42. It was our lucky day.

The international terminal was very clearly marked, and made it easy for us to find our way.  The only confusion was where they separated the international and domestic transfers.  It was a little hard to figure out which way to go.   

We had to wait for about 2 ½ hours for our next flight, but it went by quickly. Our plane into Phnom Penn was much smaller, but by this point we are getting delirious and I have no idea what type of plane it was. We boarded our flight to Phnom Penh and were on our way. As soon as we were in the air, they came around with a dinner and beverage cart. Steve had penne pasta with chicken and I had a beef stew with rice. 

After dinner the flight attendants handed out our customs and immigrations forms, and they also handed out Cambodian visa applications for us to fill out on the plane. It was nice to be able to get that paperwork done ahead of time. We weren’t sure what to expect, or how many people would need visas in Phnom Penh. 

As soon as the plane landed in Phnom Penh, Steve turned on his T-Mobile phone to see what would happen.  There was a Cambodian man with his American wife sitting right across the isle from us, using his T-Mobile phone, so Steve asked him what to do.  He said to make sure we had our international roaming turned on, so Steve checked that in the I-Phone settings. Then he sent himself a text, and it worked!  He showed it to me with a big smile on his face.  A few minutes later, he got a text that said "Welcome to Cambodia! Your T-Mobile plan gives you unlimited data at 2G speeds, calls at 20 cents/min and free texts." 

Then a few minutes later he got a message from Cabodia Smarts network saying "To make calls dial + (country code) (phone number).  Dial 911 in case of emergency.  Enjoy your stay in Cambodia with Smart's superior network".  When we looked at our T-Mobile phone, we could see that we are connected to the Cambodia Smart's network.  We were thrilled!

We got off the plane pretty quickly, and attempted to follow the signs. There is not a lot of English in the Phnom Penh airport, but if your pay attention, there is just enough to get by. 

On our way to the visa station, there was a quarantine station.  The were using infrared to scan all of the passengers coming off the plane, looking for people with fevers who might have Zika.

There is no photography allowed in the visa area, but there were long lines, and you take your passport and visa application to a window, they take them both from you and have you go stand in another line. There are about 10 people behind the desk watching all of us and a few were processing the visas. 

After about 15 minutes they called Steve’s name. He paid his $30 and they returned his passport to him with a visa sticker in it. About 2 minutes later they were done with mine as well. The confusing part about this process was which type of visa we should request. There is a tourist visa for $30, which is what we had checked on our paperwork, and there is a regular visa for $35. We didn’t know the difference, and we still don’t, so hopefully a tourist visa is OK.

Once we got our visa’s we still had to go through immigration and and then pick up our bags. Yay! They were both there! Then on through customs which was our last stop before they booted us out of the airport. As we made our way out of the airport, there were literally hoards of people standing outside the building.  All we anxiously awaiting someone!  Luckily we saw our Gate-1 representative holding his sign and waiting for us.

Our Gate-1 representative/driver loaded our suitcases into the trunk of his Toyota Camry and off we went to the Ohana Hotel. We literally drove straight down the street that the airport was on until we hit the river, then we turned right, and our hotel was on the right a few blocks down. 

Once we got to our hotel, we texted our girls and Steve's mom to let them know that we were in our hotel room in Cambodia.  Within minutes we heard back from each of them.  We are so excited with how our T-Mobile service is working here.

The Ohana Hotel entrance is only about 12 feet wide, and not easy to see at all, so once again, we were glad we had a driver that knew where we were going, or we might not have been able to find it.

We checked in and took a quick little walk to clear our minds, cleaned up and headed to bed. As always, Gate-1 had complimentary water in the room for us which is huge after so many hours of travel.

Our first glimpse of the river at night.  We originally thought we were looking at the Mekong, but later found out that this was the Tonle Sap as it back-flowed toward Tonle Sal Lake.

We left LA on November 3rd at 12:00 noon and landed in Seoul South Korea at 5:30 pm on November 4th.  The actual duration of this flight was 13 hours 30 minutes.  We had a 2 hour layover in Seoul before boarding another Asiana flight to Cambodia.  We left Seoul at 7:30 pm on November 4th and landed in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on November 4th at 11:10 pm.  The total duration of our journey was 19 hours, 10 minutes, and we're exhausted but very excited to be here!

Viva Los Angeles (Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016)

We have decided to fly into Los Angeles a day early.  We have learned from past travel that if we arrive a day early into our departure city, we get a good nights sleep before taking off on the long flight ahead of us.  It helps us immensely with our adjustment to the new timezone and the confusion that is likely to occur on the other end.

I entitled this post Viva Los Angeles, because while we were in Lake Havasu City a few weeks ago, they were experiencing a lot of seismic activity in the Salton Sea area of California.  This is the area where the San Andreas Fault meets with many other faults, and is an area of great concern when any of those faults become active. 

From October 1st to October 4th, the City of Los Angeles, and all of the surrounding cities were on earthquake alert. According to the news in Havasu, an earthquake has not occurred in that area for around 300 years, and do to this increase in in seismic activity, they raised the chances of an earthquake from 1 in 6000 to 1 in 100.   But after a few days, the seismic activity slowed down, and we haven't heard any more about it since we returned home, so I guess the countdown continues.  And as far as we know LA is still in tact!

Steve's parents drove us to the airport and we went in to the counter to check our bags.  They have a new process, where you have to log into machines and print out your own luggage tags. It's really easy, and saves a lot of time at the counter.  It was just confusing today because no one knew about it, so everyone went to the counter and got turned away to go get their luggage tags before they could return to the counter.

When we got off the DIA train between the main terminal and concourse C, we noticed a man who looked very lost, so we approached him and asked if we could help. He showed us his ticket which said he was on flight 1404 to Houston, so we took him over to the departures sign to help him find his gate and to our surprise his flight didn't show up on the board.  So we looked more closely at his ticket to make sure he didn't have the wrong day.  He had the right day, and his ticket said gate C25, so we walked him over to that gate to see what we could find out.  

As we were walking, we asked him where he was from as he said Chihuahua, Mexico.  He was on his way home.  When we got to gate C25, they affirmed that we had him at the right gate, so we left him there to wait for his flight.  He was so appreciative of our help, and we are just hoping that if we get that lost on our journey someone will have mercy on us and help us out as well. 

As we headed to find our own gate, we noticed that there was a new restaurant on the C concourse.  It was called Tamales by La Casita. 



We ordered a tamale plate and a steak burrito bowl.  They were both good, but the tamale plate was amazing, and it was only $6.75. They had even smothered the tamales with green chili for us at no extra charge.  We loved it!  We'll have to remember this place for our next trip through DIA.

What's left of the tamale plate.  It was great!

We got our order to go and and filled our water bottle in the airport after we got through security, it's a good thing we did.  The flight was so rough that they were never able to do the in-flight service, so we never got any snacks or drinks for the whole flight.  

I'm sure everyone around us hated us as we ate our Mexican food and drank our water on the plane, but we were very happy to have it.

We left Denver at noon and landed in LA at about 1:30 pm and caught the shuttle to our hotel.  We took a short walk and then enjoyed a Tecate by the pool as we tried to make this day in LA count as the start of our vacation.



When dinner time rolled around we decided we just wanted something easy, so we walked around the corner to the Sizzler Steak House.  

As we were walking over, we noticed a truck parked on the street and Steve said "That truck was there last November when we were here."  We thought that was kind of strange, so we took a picture. We'll see if it's still here next year.

It's a pretty memorable looking truck

When we got to the restaurant, we each ordered the salad bar.  We didn't set our expectations very high, but were pleasantly surprised. They had a really nice salad bar with a large variety of items as well as a lot of pre-made salads.

Salads we made from the salad bar

Pre-made Sweet potato pomegranate salad, Yum!

They brought us garlic toast to go with our salads, and kept clean plates and soup bowls coming.  They also had a soft serve ice cream bar for dessert.  

We're not usually big buffet people, but the salad bar really hit the spot tonight.  

When we got back to the hotel, we took a quick dip in the hot tub and then went back to our room to watch the Country Music Awards and the final game of the world series on TV.  We had to keep flipping back and forth so we wouldn't miss anything.  Right now the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians are tied at 6-6 in the 9th inning.  Yikes!

Although this was just a quick stop on our way to Cambodia we really tried to get our vacation started right. Now we'll call it a night and start out early tomorrow morning on the next leg of our journey.

Preparing for Another Trip (Thursday, October 27th, 2016)

We're on our way to Southeast Asia, to visit the countries of Cambodia and Vietnam.  We are very excited to learn about the history and culture of these countries, the food, and of course to spend the time getting to know the people.  

Both of these countries require visas for entry, so the first step was to go get international passport pictures taken.  They are different from U.S. passport pictures, and are much more expensive (very few local places take visa pictures).  Once we had the pictures, we filled out the application for a Vietnamese Visa and sent our passports, applications, passport pictures and self addressed prepaid envelopes to the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington DC. It took about 5 days for them to complete our visas, and then they were returned them to us in the mail.  

It was an easy process, but a little unnerving to send away our passports about a month before we would be leaving on our next trip.  When we got our passports back, they contained our Vietnamese Visa that we were praying would be in them.  

The Cambodian Visa's have to be purchased in the airport when we arrive in Cambodia, so hopefully it won't be too long of a process since we arrive in Cambodia late at night.

The next step was getting some money to have on hand when we arrive in the countries.  On Monday, October 24th we went to Wells Fargo and ordered a small amount of foreign currency for both Cambodia and Vietnam.  It usually takes them about three days to get the requested currency in.  
Two days later we received a call from Wells Fargo saying that due to the volatility of the Riel (Cambodian currency) to the U.S. dollar, they were not able to provide us with any Riel.  So we'll just have to take our chances when we get to Cambodia that they'll accept the U.S. dollar, or we can find an ATM when we get there.

One of the things we decided to change in anticipation of this trip is our cellphone.  T-Mobile's One-Plan provides unlimited data and text in 140 countries, which includes Cambodia and (we think) Vietnam, and calls from those countries are only 20 cents per minute, so we decided to give them a try.  

Instead of completely switching over to T-Mobile, we decided to buy service on just one phone, so that we could try T-Mobile out in all of the places where we spend time and see if it is comparable to Verizon.  So far, T-Mobiles coverage is not very good in Lake Havasu City or Red Feather Lakes, where we spend a lot of time, so it has been disappointing to say the least.  

Last time we were in Lake Havasu, we went in to the T-Mobile store and asked them about the questionable service, and they said that they are in the process of upgrading all of their cell towers in Lake Havasu so the service would be better by the end of the year, but only for I-Phone 6 or newer.  So we'll have to see next time we're down there. 

One thing we learned by visiting the Lake Havasu store is that all of the T-Mobile stores are independently owned, which helps to explain why we get inconsistent answers from different stores. 

Over the last two days while I have been working, Steve visited two different T-Mobile stores to make sure that our service plan would for sure cover us while we are on our trip, and both of the stores told him that he would only be covered if he bought the "Stateside" plan, so after the previous discussions with them that he was told he would be covered under their "One-Plan", he ended up buying the "Stateside" plan that they said he needed for an extra $15 per month.

When he got home, he was still confused, so he pulled up T-Mobile's plans on their website, and the website said that the "Stateside" plan is for people in the U. S. that need to call people in foreign countries.  This is not what we need.  We need to call people in the U. S. from the foreign countries we are visiting.  So now we were even more confused.

We decided to give T-Mobile a call.  He reached an agent named Christine, who talked through the plan with us in great detail.  She assured us that what we had read on the website was correct, and that we did not need the "Stateside" plan.  She said that we would have free unlimited data and text from Cambodia and Vietnam, and that calls would cost us 20 cents per minute with the "One-Plan". She also said that she would cancel the "Stateside" plan that the guys at the store told us we needed.  She did an excellent job of explaining our plan to us, so we are now quite confident that our plan will cover us in those countries.  She also gave us a code for turning roaming on and off as we enter and leave those countries.

Trying to figure out phones in foreign countries is never easy, but we're hoping that we finally have what we need for the trip ahead.  

We'll check back after our trip and let you know about the currency and the phone.