Welcome to Kirirom Hillside Adventure

By the end of our weekend getaway at Kirirom Hillside Resort we all concluded that the place felt like the set of a dodgy horror movie. The resort was obviously once a very fancy place to visit, but is now lacking in certain health and safety, cleanliness and friendliness standards. However, we loved our trip there and these discrepancies made it all the funnier – plus we were staying in a villa that made us feel like we were on the set of the OC!

We arrived in time for lunch on Saturday, there was a lovely restaurant by the side of the pool and we were starving! All eight of us ordered off the menu and settled in with some drinks. However, at good 10 minutes later the waiter came back to tell us that they didn’t have any of the meals we ordered! No eggs, no beef, no sandwiches… the list went on. We then had to re-order, using the three and only three menus the restaurant owned. The food finally arrived but in pairs, which clearly meant they had a maximum capacity of two meals at a time. Two meals came out wrong, but an hour later we were all satisfied! An eventful start.

A few of us decided to explore and go canoeing, we went through the ‘dino park’, a weird selection of dinosaur statues hidden around the wooded area, which was complete with hundreds of little straw huts for picnics. The canoeing was on a very small lake and apart from the broken cable dangling in the water which we had to canoe over wasn’t particularly exciting. Clodagh however, had an incident with a huge spider on her paddle which the guy just brushed off while she screamed and she almost impaled herself with her paddle when we went under a bridge with lots of posts underneath!

Clodagh and Lauren at the lake where we went canoeing

After a dip in the pool we decided to go to our villa and change before dinner. It was dark at this point and the display of stars was amazing. We decided to cut through the ‘zoo’ which turned out to be a bad idea. It was a creepy setting with a random collection of animals, squawking monkeys, tons of white rabbits, a deer and then two large ostriches with only a waist height fence. This freaked me out a fair bit and then as we walked past the enclosure we saw that the gate was wide open! The ostriches were just able to wander in and out! We all got out of the zoo as fast as possible, running past the bizarrely painted Disney characters, who looked very creepy and not accurately formed or painted and a giant UFO which was casually placed at the entrance to the kids park. Not my favourite zoo. When we went through in daylight, one of the ostriches was just wandering around, none of the locals were too bothered and we were concerned they did not know what ostriches are capable of.

Casual UFO

Our day of adventure began the next day, starting off with the zip wire through the trees and over the lake. It was a really beautiful setting but the health and safety checks were not too stringent. We pre-booked and arrived at the start of the zip-wire with no-one around. A man then casually arrived and just walked up the steps to the top. He then pulled the wire until the harness emerged from the bottom and looked up for a victim. As an adventure lover I volunteered to go first, everyone else thought I was mad and suggested that we just abandon the idea. I decided to go for it and was very glad I did! It was a lot of fun and everyone followed me down afterwards. At the bottom, a guy would just grab you as you went flying into him and then he would shout ‘hello’ in a very friendly manner.

Getting attached and more and more nervous

Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

We then wanted to go to see the waterfall, which we were told was 8km there and 8km back, which we weren’t too keen to walk in the sweltering heat. However, they were not very useful in suggesting an alternative, the bikes had to stay on the resort and the motos were ridiculously expensive, so in the end we negotiated a 4x4, with four of us crammed in the boot! If we had walked it would have killed us as it was out in the open on a dusty straight track. We arrived at the entrance to the national park and were provided with an ox cart which we all crammed on – it turned out that ox carts are very slow so most of us ended up getting off and walking. We then had a lovely half an hour trek to see two waterfalls and have a splash about in the pool below, where many Cambodians were dancing around to Gangnam Style.

The two hour drive back to Phnom Penh in the air-conditioned bus (with Wi-Fi) was smooth but we saw some funny sights. Firstly, we saw an 8-year-old girl cycling a bike on a bumpy road with a 2 year old boy on her hip; she had to lean to the left to counterbalance the weight! We also saw a wedding that was being held at a petrol station; the guests were parking at the station and then going into the building behind for the festivities. I’m still getting used to this place.

Becoming a resident of Phnom Penh

The six hour bus ride (which departed an hour late) was certainly an experience; there was Cambodian karaoke on the TV at the front with some awful singing with over-dramatic music videos, alternating with live comedy which was not a patch on Live at the Apollo and seemed more like pantomime. The Cambodians on the bus seemed to really enjoy it, laughing along. Along the roadside were houses on 4-6 foot stilts to keep them dry for the rainy season, but currently there was only a small pool of water in front of the garden, which often had water buffalo in them. The houses lined the street almost all the way, not seeming to resemble villages. The break stop we took had a variety of snacks available including fried tarantula and scorpion, but I left the opportunity at this point. (I’ll keep that for another time).

My first impressions of Phnom Penh were good – a vibrant city with a lot going on, especially on the roads where there is an endless stream of motos and tuk tuks! I have now got used to it and the best way to deal with it is to just walk across the road and let them swerve around you, it’s all a matter of confidence (and basically shutting your eyes).  The key to understanding the traffic is that no-one wants to stop, so if you join a main road with 3 lanes each way, you join on-coming traffic until you can dart across, in order to avoid waiting! It actually works surprisingly well – and none of the traffic is going very fast on the whole, so it’s generally pretty safe.

I think I am doing pretty well so far at blending in with my surroundings, I have; eaten street food, traversed a main road alone, had a full body massage, eaten fried frog, learnt a Khmer saying (if you want to learn to swim, eat the bitter part of the coconut tree), got used to the bum gun instead of toilet paper and ridden on the back of a moto (partially hands-free)!

Drinking coconut milk straight from the coconut

The funniest named bar ever!

I have started working at the Cambodian Women’s Development Agency (CWDA) and it has been a very exciting first week! I have been working with the girls at the shelter, who are really sweet and friendly, it is so much fun helping them with their English and taking them to the Olympic Stadium to play games. The Olympic Stadium is not what you would imagine; it was built in 1964 so it’s more like a Greek-style open air stadium. It is well used today with plenty of volleyball courts, café areas and all along the top of the seating area, locals do outdoor aerobics. You can just about make out the instructor with a microphone, by the booming speakers, as the sun sets.

We also take the girls to skate-boarding once a week, to an initiative called Skateistan, which aims to improve the confidence of under-privileged children through skate-boarding.  I was lucky enough to have a skate-boarding celebrity rock up in my first trip there; Javier Mendizabal, a professional skate-boarder from Spain, gave the girls a workshop in how to put together a skate-board and gave them a few pointers as well! The girls loved it and went home all excited with a poster of Julian and a Quicksilver sticker.

This week I also got to attend the UN Women briefing on the Commission on the Status of Women, which aims to eliminate and prevent all forms of violence against women and girls. It was a really interesting insight into the work that is in progress to improve the lives of women in Asia and worldwide. The women who attended from different Gender-based NGO’s in Phnom Penh are very focused and determined to improve the current situation, which I found inspiring and I look forward to following the progress of the CSW in the next few months.

I’m still in search of an apartment, I have looked at a few places so far and hopefully I will find the perfect place! 

My favourite meal so far!

Siem Reap

Crossing the border went smoothly and we avoided all scams… luckily we made a train friend from Hungary so we got a shared taxi from the border to Siem Reap for only $40 for 2.5 hours! We walked into town to see the night market and picked a traditional Khmer restaurant to get a taste for the food we will be eating for the next 4.5 months, and it tasted goood. There was no air-conditioning at the hostel so it was an extremely hot night – however, it was something else entirely which woke me up - the prayers projected out on loudspeaker which started at 5.30am for an hour and a half (and again at 5pm). 

Next we had our first full day of sight-seeing, where we visited the amazing temples of Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm and Angkor Thom (Bayon Temple) which were extremely exciting to explore. It was also fun to spot the people most dripping in sweat; invariably the American tourists won this game.  It was certainly a scorcher at 33 degrees, which is something I will have to get used to living here. At the temples most of the statues are headless due to looting, which brings a sort of eerie feeling to the place. I was impressed by the fact that it wasn't over developed as a tourist spot and you could just explore – especially at Angkor Thom which was left untouched to savour the ruinous atmosphere, but you do bump into warning signs suggesting impeding danger! After a sweaty morning we chilled out in the rooftop terrace at the hostel and had some mojitos! 

Entrance to Angkor Wat

View from the top of Angkor Wat

Headless statue at Angkor Wat

Angkor Thom

My favourite statue, at Angkor Thom

Ta Prohm, which had a beautiful pinky hue

Ta Prohm, with the enormous silver trees