Surly They Won't Make It

8/4/25

Jonathan didn’t sleep as well as he’d liked. Frankie never has any problems. We had breakfast at 9:30am. We decided to try a traditional Cambodian dish called congee. It’s a rice porridge dish, usually with meat, but we had it with tofu. It was quite bland. Not much colour. Our ‘big’ vegan breakfast still wasn’t very big.

We were going to visit the museum. It had mixed reviews. Instead of walking for 35 minutes in the heat, we took a Tuk Tuk. They’re a bit different here and nowhere near as powerful as Thailand. It cost a mere $1.50. We felt a bit silly giving the driver a 1000 riel tip. It’s only 25 cents. 

When we arrived we were forced to leave our backpack. No actual cameras were allowed either. Only smartphones. No water bottles either. When the temperature outside barely dips below 30C we found it inexplicable. 

The museum had a ‘briefing room’. A dated video that just described each gallery and advertised the attached shopping mall. We started to understand the criticisms. No explanation of Khmer civilisation was included. Very disappointing. 

The first exhibition was the gallery of 1000 Buddhas. There were definitely that many. There were a few information boards and we learnt a little bit more about the tenants of Buddhism. We can’t say we are remotely experts. For example, there are multiple different Buddhas. Not just one. We don’t quite get it. Maybe we’re just not enlightened. It was a nicely decorated place to linger.

The rest of the galleries were a meandering exploration of the history of Cambodia and the empires that have inhabited it. We couldn’t pretend to have any less questions. This museum was once again afflicted by the same problem that plagues them all. The information appears to be written by experts that don’t realise the level of detail included is incomprehensible to the masses. It usually lacks visual aids too. People are only getting a glimpse and it should be engaging and pertinent. It’s all too dry. Interesting, but not memorable. Not in just a few hours.

We had to nip back downstairs and get some water midway through. They’d put a cafe in the middle too. A cynic might question this. One of the most interesting galleries was actually one that solely contained lintels. The charting of the different styles, through the ornate stone carvings, was fascinating.

After viewing some very large stone heads and a brief exploration of costume, that we weren’t interested in, we ‘ordered’ another Tuk Tuk. We got dropped off at an ice cream shop. We managed to try coconut and chocolate but sadly they were out of the lotus flavour. They had a book behind the counter that included ‘90 vegan flavours’. Sadly no one had read it. 

We walked back to the hotel via the ‘Old Market’. The outside of the market was all clothes and art stores. Once we’d penetrated, we found the food stalls. It took a while to find the vegetables. We were going to make dinner at home so we could ingest more vegetables. We walked round a few times. One woman was selling what we perceived as the best quality. 

When we got back to the hotel we marinated a big box of tofu with soy sauce, garlic, chilli and lime juice. Then we went to the pool for a bit. The owners of the hotel were Australians and were floating around. The other residents were sitting in the same place having a drink. When we got too hungry we went upstairs to prepare the rest of our meal. Lettuce, onion, cucumber and tomato salad. Thai basil and green beans too. It went down well with our tofu. For dessert we ate some fruit. One of the staff even brought up a fruit platter for us too. We were very grateful for that! We watched the Apprentice and ate bananas and dragonfruit.