The six and a half hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City was surprisingly pain-free despite my having developed a cold (due to silly air-conditioner in our last guesthouse) and having to stand at Vietnamese immigration for about 30 minutes with packs on.
A short tuk-tuk ride shared with a French-Canadian kid making his way through the region found us at an oasis. I am pretty thorough when it comes to making decisions on where we stay, (that may be the reason we have only seen one cockroach in a hotel this entire trip) and I always consult as many books and websites as I can before making a decision. This process sometimes leads me to become slightly crazy, especially when I make a bad decision. No craziness this time around because I feel as though I delivered.
Seeing as we have decided to change our plane ticket for May 8th for London instead of Amman (or the very expensive to fly into Beirut), we can afford to splash out a bit more for accommodation every once in a while. When I saw that the number one ranked hotel on tipadvisor.com was a reasonably priced $40/night, I sent an enquiry email right away. Ta-da here we are at The Pavillion (http://www.thepavilion.asia/homeeng.htm).
We’re staying in a room that is part of the old building, which dates to sometime in the 1920s. A few steps from our room is a salt-water pool next to a lounge serving fabulous Khumer, French and Western dishes. As in most French colonies, the deserts are up to the Parisian standard (we’ve already had the tarte aux citron and the chocolate cake). It is a cozy tropical atmosphere with cool tunes playing while you read your book among the palms and flowers.
We did make it out of the hotel this morning to see S-21, Cambodia’s Genocide Museum. As I have seen so many times before on TV in the news or on travel shows, it is a haunting visit for all who go. School rooms turned into torture chambers with gruesome pictures of what Vietnamese troops found when they ran the Khmer Rouge out and took the city. Skulls of the victims found in mass graves all over the country, as well as rooms of posted prisoner photos tell the story of the prison without the need of words.
Our plan is to try and make it outside of the city tomorrow to see the Killing Fields; yet another horrific memorial site to all of those who perished under this brutal regime. We’re not sure if we’ll make it out seeing as we have arrived just in time for Khmer New Year, so all is very quiet about town and many shops are shut.
For tonight we'll just enjoy the hospitality and the wonderful food of Cambodia.
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1 comment:
Glad you are relaxing and enjoying yourselves! xo
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