Cambodia
In April 2019, after weeks of planning for what was supposed to be our Bali trip, Xavier and I ended up finding our flight tickets at a ridiculous price: classic story, if you ask me. Really, those who know me know that I’m a sucker for SkyScanner and when we were ready to book our flight, I had already been checking tickets for Paris – Bali for more than one week, in incognito mode, on different computers, on my phone… Surprisingly, the prices stayed stable, until the moment we added them to our shopping basket and they went up with 400€ (!). Bummer.
Like most people, I don’t like being scammed and I feel especially provoked when the scammer happens to be a digital entity. We cancelled our plans for Bali and looked up the cheapest but farthest going flight for the weeks we had blocked to initially go to Bali. Not even 30 minutes later I texted my dad: “Guess where I’m going in three weeks?”.
| 32°C is the average temperature in Cambodia | 121 days a year are rainy in Phnom Penh | Average spending is 10$ – 12$ a day | I consider Cambodia safe for solo female travelling |
Cambodia in a nutshell
- Name: Kingdom of Cambodia.
- You probably know it from: The temples of Angkor Wat and, unfortunately, the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 70s.
- Inhabitants: 16.7 million, Khmer are by far the largest ethnic group living in Cambodia. Due to its tragic recent history, about 40% of the Khmer are under 16, making the population very young.
- Capital: Phnom Penh, the second city is Battambang and the third Siem Riep.
- Language: Khmer (official language), (younger) people generally have a -surprisingly- good knowledge of English and the elderly often have some basic knowledge of French.
- Religion: Buddhism, but the history has strongly been influenced by Hinduism (this is still visible when visiting the temples of Angkor Wat).
