Phnom Penh, Cambodia Travel Blogs

Phnom Penh - better than everyone says!
Mar 17, 2009 (31 photos)

... have covered it in carpet (bit of a let down). The palace grounds twinkle in the sunlight, there's gold everywhere. Phnom Penh sometimes gets badmouthed by fellow travellers but I think it's a top class place mixing history with nightlife (especially ...

Back to Phnom Penh
Feb 7, 2005 (3 photos)

Returned once again to Phnom Penh after a pleasant 4 hour bus ride that miraculously only took 4 hours. The horror stories I had heard about the road between the two cities seemed to be completely untrue. Mellisa asked many times before we left Siem Reap ...

Deep fried spiders
Jan 24, 2008 (13 photos)

We had a full morning in Phnom Penh before we needed to catch our bus to Siem Reap. We wandered down to where the muddy brown waters of the Tonle Sap met the blue flow of the mighty Mekong. Boats journeyed up and down the rivers, and families ...

Cambodia or bust
Feb 6, 2005 (3 photos)

... a country you have only been in for 4 days? We transferred from the boat to a minivan for the final haul to Phnom Penh. My first vivid memory of Cambodia is of a little girl, probably 5 years old or so, throwing a small rock at our car window. Things ...

Fantastic Four hit the capital
May 15, 2006

6 hour $4 bus 2x 30min stops on the way walk to riverside waiting and hassled found GH indian meal

Holiday in Cambodia.
Oct 28, 2003 (6 photos)

Well, here we are in Cambodia. Phnom Penh. It's be a long, sobering day. To catch everyone up, after heading out from Bangkok to Siem Reap (translated: Siam destroyed) to see Angkor Wat, we found our way to Battambang to get our Vietnam Visas and ...

Angkor Wat and Pol Pot
Dec 28, 2006 (21 photos)

... 1980, and thousands more remain buried in the ground visitor walk on. There are sites like this in many places around Phnom Penh and Cambodia where people were imprisoned, waited to be killed, or were killed in prison. The Khmer Regime was not wealthy ...

Year Zero to 2005
Jan 15, 2005 (7 photos)

... weeks prior to the fall of Saigon in 1975 a militant band of radical agrarian communists, the Khmer Rouge rolled into Phnom Penh emptying the city completely. The entire population was ripped from the capital -- hospital beds, schools, cafes, government ...

Cambodia
Feb 26, 2008

... off everyone within a 100mile radius of London (debate with yourself whether this would be a good or a bad thing.) Just outside Phnom Penh is a killing fields site which for 4 years was a mass grave to some of the hundreds of thousands who ...

Piss poor Phnom Penh
Oct 1, 2003 (4 photos)

... to start attacking Vietnam and Vietnam retaliated around 1978. After Vietnam placed a new government in Phnom Penh, the U.S. placed a trade embargo on Cambodia having supported the Khmer Rouge as the official government. This made it even more difficult ...

A traumatic day
Mar 10, 2006 (9 photos)

... the same time unbeknown to each other and were killed there. Needless to say it was a very human way of illustrating Cambodia's recent history and was very upsetting. We then spent some time going around the museum which included hundreds of photos of ...

Phnom Penh
Jan 14, 2006

Travelling to a country on Firday 13th were guns still get fired in the street didn't really strike me as a bright move on our part, you could say we were a little nervous. The fact that there was a sign outside a coffee shop asking that weapons be left ...

Our 1st Impressions of SE Asia and Cambodia
Jul 8, 2003 (17 photos)

... at the hotel rooftop restaurant. Sun 29th June - Had breakfast in bed as a Sunday morning treat and book onto tomorrows bus to Phnom Penh. M trims L's hair to make up for the damage done (now have 1 inch fringe and elfin cut!). As you've probably ...

There's Nowhere to Go But Up
Jan 22, 2006 (6 photos)

... 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, entered the ...

Day 73: The Land of Contrasts
Aug 3, 2008 (33 photos)

... ambitious and started running cross-border raids into Vietnam, who thanks to the US were not in a good mood and promptly invaded Cambodia, booting the genocidal bastards out of power. They continued to be a problem for the next few decades, carrying out an ...

The Killing Fields
May 16, 2004 (6 photos)

... to play Shithead! Before long the sun was setting and a nice breeze was sweeping across the terrace and I thought how nice Phnom Penh really was. Wednesday 12th May Enough lazing about. We decided to go and see some of the darker sides of Cambodias ...

Stroll around Phnom Penh
May 2, 2007 (20 photos)

... " and exuberance "alive."  It's strange because the issues of life and death are inescapable when exploring the city.  Phnom Penh was emptied after the Khmer Rouge take over in 1975.  The entire population of almost 1 1/2 million people was ...

The Beauty and the Beast
Jan 14, 2005 (5 photos)

... 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 we ...

Pressing on to Phnom Penh
Mar 9, 2006

(Dave here) Took a morning bus (9am) which went to the Bavet border (Cambodia) and carried on to Phnom Penh. We picked up visas at the border (30 days - $20) and arrived here around 5pm. We took a TukTuk straight to the lake area (Boeng Kak) and are ...

Fusion in Phnom Penh
Feb 19, 2005 (9 photos)

... palace, which made us feel completely better. Nothing like seeing an extravagent lifestyle to make you feel good about the world. So, Phnom Penh. One of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. Ancient Khmer (not the Khmer Rouge) ruins, mixed with old ...

Back to the Capital
May 19, 2006 (19 photos)

... know yet there are just a few playing such important roles in our lives. Compared to the rest of Cambodia, those huge, bright streets in Phnom Penh are beautiful. I can barely smell the bloody slougheer of 30 years ago, when the city was forcibly ...

Back in Phnom Penh
Jul 30, 2008 (13 photos)

... and got an FA Cup Semi Final with Man Utd to come - not bad for a first season in the hot seat!). Once we got to Phnom Penh, we went straight to the post office. We wanted to send a load of booklets home as they were weighing me down. Also sent home the ...

S-21
May 3, 2007 (22 photos)

For background info:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge The short version is that in the mid 1970s the Khmer Rouge instituted an incredibly extreme form of communism, killing intellectuals, forcing everyone into agrarian work, outlawing ...

Day 72: Night in the Heart of Darkness
Aug 2, 2008 (3 photos)

... I wanted to go to Battambang (Jeff didn't to begin with), we decided to forgo it all together and go straight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's only real city. Thus, the day started out with a late-morning hop around the Siem Reap market area, popping our heads into ...

Day 76
Nov 29, 2006 (8 photos)

... David to drive me around all day though, so he took me to the North part of town to look at a temple on the only hill in Phnom Penh. Afterward I got him to take me to the Grand Palace where I let him go home since I was going to be a few hours in the area ...

Cambodia - Phnom Penh
Apr 25, 2007 (17 photos)

... was over there was no time left to see any attractions. One day down, one to go!     We wandered through Phnom Penh to the riverside and called into the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) for dinner. The FCC in Phnom Penh is one of the few in ...

Cambodia: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Aug 5, 2006 (25 photos)

... put into jail to be interrogated and tortured and then eventually executed, with the bodies dumped into mass graves. In Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, we went to visit the largest prison during that time, called 'S21' or Security Office 21. It was ...

Phnom Penh stopover
Jan 8, 2008 (13 photos)

After 16 hours of flying and three different flights, we arrived late afternoon to Phnom Penh (Penom Pen). From Lauren's journal: After meeting our tour group at the airport, it became quickly clear to my mother and I not only were we the youngest, ...

Raw wounds of Cambodia's cool capital
Aug 6, 2005 (2 photos)

... , suspicious people, undercurrents of tension, a city still very much in ruins? As the two of us strolled through Phnom Penh on Thursday afternoon, after the six-hour bus drive from Saigon, we found something completely different - a vibrant capital ...

Potty Pol Pot
Nov 22, 2003 (3 photos)

... didn't know how to farm) succumbed to the same fate. I wouldn't have had a chance. In 1975 a high school in central Phnom Penh was turned into the notorious S-21 security prison. In only 3 years 17,000 people were subjected to horrific torture, with only ...