National Museum Phnom Penh

It has taken a long time before we can post this blog, sorry! Our days are full of new impressions and experiences that we can at least keep them all written down in our little books and then share them with you.

We left Siem Reap with the Mekong Express bus to Phnom Penh at 9am. The bus drove along the lake, the landscape was decorated …

We
started our day with a city tour arranged through our driver from
Siem Reap. He recommended his brother-in-law as a tuk tuk driver and
since we liked the guy, we agreed. We found out later we could have
paid $5 less for the same tour in an air-conditioned private car with
a driver that speaks English. Add this to the long …

This morning we were up bright and early and enjoyed a very nice hotel buffet breakfast.... not as good as Siem Reap. The coffee tasted like folgers but hey I m in Asia. We met our tour guide who spoke very good English and we were off....

1. First we headed to the Royal Palace which is the place of residence of the King and Queen. It is a …

Luego de recibir nuestro timbre, pagar las visas de Cambodia y sacarnos fotos con los guardias de la frontera, retomamos nuestra travesía fluvial por el Mekong por alrededor de dos horas más, viendo búfalos, gente bañ****, etc y hasta que paramos, en medio de la nada, para cambiarnos a una preciosa van Mercedes Benz. El único problema fue que la …

Arrived Phnom Penh and grabbed a tuk tuk to our hostel which was out of the centre of the city but we had ace noodles – that looked like short worms, then we got our heads down busy day tomorrow!! In the morning we met up with some guys from our boat trip there hotel in town was ****, they turned up at ours in the night as if by chance!! So …

The day started with an early breakfast at the top of the Mini hotel, a typical Vietnam building - tall and impossibly narrow! With the rooftop breakkie it was a great vantage point for soaking up the weird and wonderful sights of Saigon. However, we'd decided that the waitresses had taken against us as we were snubbed with the fruit …

Två dagar har snart passerat i Kambodja och jag har hunnit se en liten del utav landet. Första dagen så såg jag den ryska marknaden som inte var särskilt ryskt av sig. De såldes både det ena och det andra men inget jätteextremt som djur eller så. Jag for till marknaden för att införskaffa mig ett par nya flipflops då jag tappade bort den ena av de …

Hello to you!

So this is the part of the trip I had been dreading the most. Learning about the Khmer Rouge and discovering what happened.

So we arrived in Phnom Penh at around 2pm...we used a different company to get back out of fear us foreigners would be booted off. So we got to Phnom Penh and checked into the Velkommen …

We are now in Cambodia, ex French colony and straight away we can't avoid noticing the big Air France plane parked on the tarmac of the small Phnom Penh airport, apparently one of the very few international connections outside Asia. This is a real shame, because after only a few days here, we are already in love with this country and its people. …

First thing was first this morning: we needed to go and pick up our Vietnamese visas. For some reason I envisaged a multitude of problems but there turned out to be…none whatsoever. We took a tuk tuk to the Vietnamese embassy, strode in and picked up our passports with Vietnamese visas snuggly ensconced within. Done.

We then thought …

... sizes were flying stiffly in the breeze along the waterfront. We moved on to the National Museum, a beautiful terracotta building housing treasures of Ancient Cambodia. I was interested to discover that some of the statues are still revered as ...

... to the Silver Pagoda which houses a gold Buddha with 2,086 diamonds, the largest being 25 carats (again no pictures allowed). Our last stop was the National Museum which was interesting showing the history of the Khmer artwork (again no pictures ...

... lot more about the plight the Khmer people have faced over the last few decades. From SR we made our way to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Like Siem Reap, it was very dirty and impoverished, yet much, much bigger. During our bus ride there ...

... to hassle you, this happens all over Asia but Phnom Pehn is particularly bad.   After breakfast I walked to the National museum. Defiantly worth a visit, lots of artefacts from Angkor and some interesting pre-historic items too. Only spend a hour ...

... and silver floors, shop-houses, burning boats, and over one million Khmer people create a solid framework for a revival in Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia. The rule of Pol Pot began on April 17, 1975, when Khmer Rouge combatants, mostly children, ...

... that King Sihamoni is home. This compound is separated from other buildings by a wall. We travel on to The National Museum which was built in 1920 and proudly displays over 5,000 pieces of Angkorian artifacts. Cambodia's tourism industry is just ...

... and homes, and huge photos of him surrounded by gold-looking designs at prominent spots like roundabouts! Next stop is the National Museum... Amy's not so keen having read the description in the book of many sculptures and not much information, so reads ...

... total were killed here and around 8000 human skulls are on display in a tall glass case. We spent another day visiting the National Museum, Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda (the floor is covered in solid silver tiles) - all very ornate and beautiful but a ...

... one I found a little different. Each year the King presides over a royal procession from the Palace to the grounds near the National museum, which is nearby. Laid out in the middle of the grounds are five bowls, containing rice, beans, wheat, wine and ...

... a month in Phnom Penh, and I have now see two tourist attractions! I'm ripping through them! Thankfully, the second, being the National Museum, didn't leave me with an awful feeling in my gut like the last, Tuol Sleng S-21 prison. The National museum ...