This gonna be my very last entry of Phnom Penh. On the 2nd day here, right after our visit to the Killing Field and S-21 Prison, we then decided to spend some of our money at the local market. Based on the research, you can actually go to Phsar Thmei, Russian Market, Phsar Kapko and others. We spent most of our time in Phsar Thmei and we went to Russian Market early morning (on our 3rd day there).
If you’re staying somewhere near to Sisowath Quay area, Phsar Thmei can be easily access by walking distance. With local map in hand, get the name of the street and off you go! Phsar Thmei is commonly known as the Central Market. Basically, the 4 wings of the building houses numerous stalls ranging from antique stuff, gold and silver products, clocks, food, fabric, fresh flower, shoes, electronic goods, wet market and others. Its open from 7.00am to 5.00pm. We bet the most interesting part will be the wet market area. We were there late afternoon and half of the wet market area are already empty. As i read from other blogger and forum, you can actually see all kinds of bizarre foods here which is Cambodia local delicacies such as monkey brains, animal stomachs, fried insects and others. Phewww!
The gigantic yellow colour dome – Externally
The gigantic yellow colour dome – Internally
Our new friend, Pich. If you’re facing the Central Market building, just find a girl with the name of Pich on the right hand side. She’ll definitely give you the best price.
Cambodia silk
We bought quite a number of shirt here. We went to every single stalls who sells shirt but unfortunately we’re not happy with the quality eventhough it cost us only USD 1 . We end up at this stall and you can actually saw this aunt on the left hand side of the main entrance. This is the only stall who gave good quality shirt (for your information, all the shirt are the Old Navy factory outlet shirt) and come with various range of design. We managed to persuade the aunt to give us 3 shirts for the price of USD 5.
You can see a row of florist at the other wings of the building. Managed to talk to one of the florist there by asking them where are these flower supplies come from. Most of it are from China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
On the last day in Cambodia, we went to Russian Market. As mentioned by Abg Suri and Kak Mas that they preferred to shop here in Russian Market compared to Central Market. We’re here early in the morning since its super hot where they only used the zinc roof! We guess you can imagined the whole situation here. Serious macam sauna dalam tu even though you came early in the morning. They don’t really have a proper building as in Central Market. There are narrow pathway, low ceiling and no air circulation. Besides all the negative aspect mentioned, the best part is that they have all the stuff here from car spare parts, hardware shop, bookstore, furniture, factory outlet clothes and other that you couldn’t imagined to be in a market.
Bookstore! This is not the only one!
Outside of Russian Market
We managed to buy some kids clothes for our nephews. Rambang mata tengok all the branded clothes there and it’s super cheap. But we couldn’t stand the sauna condition. Just to kill the time, we walked around Russian Market area just observing local peoples.
This is how they spent their time. We could see a lots of coffee shop with the similar crowd doing the same thing.
We saw this in front of a shops but we really don’t have any idea what on earth is this.
We departed to KL via Air Asia somewhere around 4pm. After the 5 days journey, we’re very much glad that we’ve been to Cambodia. There’s a lot of things that you can see,learn and discover here. The best part is getting new friends that we still keep in touch till now. We definitely missed all our new friends there especially Nasir, Salim, Budi and friends, Abg Mas and Kak Suri. The most important things that we’ve learned here is that how lucky we are to be Malaysian.
Simply us,
Zara AB & FF
The Province of Chroma