On the third day of Tet celebration, we left Sai Gon an hour before dawn heading to the borders between Cambodia and Viet Nam. It was over an hour away.
We got to the borders when the sun came up. The sky was beautiful clear blue with no cloud. The weather was not too hot. It was pretty pleasant during this time of the year.
The border check point by vehicles wasn't big and sophisticated like many countries in the world. Thousands of Cambodian and Vietnamese are crossing the borders on the daily basis.
There is a decent size of one population and the other live in the neighbor country for decades. They both share the similar way of living, cultures, and religions.
Soon after crossing the border, the road was getting worse. We couldn't drive any faster than 35 miles per hour. There were road constructions every now and then. But the scenery was beautiful and quiet with miles and miles of rice fields.
Housing structures and designs are similar to one another but they all looked different to the Vietnamese or Western designs. Most if not all of the houses built here had the bottom level raised a few meter high. I guess it was design with flood in mind.
Most of theses houses were made of wood and were really small to any standard. It was around 10 in the morning so everybody was working in the field so all the houses we passed were empty and locked up. There weren't many people we could see on the street. Cambodia has a very small population so this reflected it.
We stopped at a small town on the way to Phnom Penh called Krong Svay Rieng. The main road was no more than a mile long with a few shops on both sides of the road. There were 2 gas stations mostly provided to commercial trucks, buses and heavy farm equipments.
There were too many street food vendors selling snacks on hand made carriers. To our horror, the majority of the snacks sold here were bugs, crickets, and scorpions.
They were sold by the weigh or on sticks. They looked scary in both appearance and cleanliness.
The scariest snack of all was the deep fried giant spiders. These were so big, they looked just the same as the Mexican red-knee tarantulas I saw in pet shops in the U.S. Street vendors sold them whole with hairs sticking out all over. One is as big as a child's fist.
To prove the point of freshness, some vendors even carried a bucket of live ones on sight.
I didn't dare to try.
Beside these, they also sold fresh fruits like sweet pineapple and palm seed, which is my wife's favorite. There was nothing else.
The Khmer people are very religious and their main religion is Buddhism. There were plenty of temples on the roads we passed by.
The road to Phnom Penh was long and treacherous. Dirt and small rocks were kicked up to cover like fog to make driving a very tough task. Accidents were here and there on the road to remind us to put extra care into driving.
We finally got to Phnom Penh in the afternoon. We still have plenty of time for checking in and exploring the city.
In the countryside, this was the basic public transportation mean. A motorbike pull-cart with 1x2x4s for seating was very common.
They could carry up to 20 people. They weren't fast but could take people around a small town quick and for a very low fee. There was no station to stop for loading and unloading. You just hollow to let the driver know where you want to be dropped off. Or to stand on the side of the roads to wave at them for boarding.
There were many beautiful temples in Cambodia. They look a little different from the other temples in their neighboring countries like Viet Nam and Thai Land with plenty of gold and pointy tops.
In Cambodia or in all the warm and humid countries in the world, Bougainvilleas flowers are plenty. There are at least 3 different color and variations. I found them in all of the temples in Cambodia.
A commercial truck flipped over on the side of the road. It's a reminder of how risky and hazardous to drive in a strange land that you weren't familiar with.
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