PHNOM PENH - City life brings to mind images of New York

Traveller''s tips

Visit a beer garden, where you can enjoy brews at local prices, sample local food and listen to live music. Rent a bicycle and ride along the banks of the Tonle Sap River by Sisowath Quay. Take the five to six-hour bus ride to Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor Archaeological Park. This article was published by the Special Projects Unit, Marketing Division, SPH.  

Better than gourmet

When the evening skies darken, the night-time street vendors emerge, their carts adorned with rows of bottles containing liquids in a rainbow of colours. Bathed in the electric glow of the light bulbs affixed to their makeshift stalls, the stallholders fry up batches of noodles, the crackle of frying resounding enticingly in the night air.

The stallholder chatted graciously and offered me a plastic stool to sit on as I savoured my fried noodles. When I told him I''m from Singapore, he repeatedly said,"Rich country!" I could not help but detect a hint of reproach - after all, I had just bargained aggressively to drive the price of my meal down to 2,300 riel (about 75 cents). Old habits, it seems, die hard, no matter which city you find yourself in.

Treats for the feet

People in search of manicures do not normally head for the market. Central Market (Psar Thmei) certainly does not appear to offer much in the way of luxury or pampering.

The art deco style main building houses stall hawking coloured Casio knockoffs, Rolexes of dubious origin and T-shirts adorned with cheery, ungrammatical slogans.

Radiating from the main building are rows of tented stalls displaying a plethora of household appliances footwear and children''s toys that would look bizarrely dated to the iPhone generation, but quaint and endearing to anyone old enough to recognise the barking, somersaulting toy puppy.

It is under one of these tented roofs that you can find the manicurists. Seated on a low plastic stool, she casually coated a customer''s fingernails with fuchsia polish as her colleagues from neighbouring stalls chattered over her head.

The manicurist handed me a plastic laundry basket overflowing with a hundred bottles of nail polish. As I settled on a low plastic stool and rummage through the endless bottles of polish, she cleaned my toenails, not with a perfumed emulsion as one would expect, but with a wedge of lime.

The juice ran over my feet and was refreshing in the hot, dusty air. She whipped out a metal pick that I eyed with reservation and proceeded to use it to clear dirt trapped beneath my fingernails. I yelped a little at the stinging sensation and tried to banish hygiene issues from my mind.

While comfortable seating and relaxing music was conspicuously absent, I walked away, nails coated in a pleasing shade of greige (a mixture of grey and beige), happy that my manicure and pedicure cost me just US$1 (S$1.25).

Sourced: destinationcambodia