Exploring the City
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2008
1
40
129
Trip End
Jul 07, 2009
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Monday, January 5, 2009
The next morning we tried some Amok. This is traditional Khmer (Cambodian) curry made with lemongrass and shrimp paste. It was delicious! We spent the afternoon looking around the royal palace and the silver pagoda. Both of these were very ornate and in a completely different style to Vietnam. They were very colourful with murals on the wall. Inside the silver pagoda was a Buddha made of emerald and a gold statue of a man which was encrusted with diamonds. No photos were allowed inside so unfortunately I have none :o(. We went for dinner by the riverside and tried the famous Angkor beer, which was not so nice (too beery for me).
The next day we headed to the Tuol Sleng museum. In case anyone doesn't know the details I will explain. From 1975 to 1979 Cambodia was controlled by a group called the Khmer Rouge who basically abolished all human rights and treated the people as slaves. Noone was allowed to do anything. Educated people were considered evil. Anyone opposing this regime was taken to Tuol Sleng (then called S-21) and tortured and then beaten to death. The building used to be a school before it was used as a type of concentration camp. The place was found with 14 bodies covered in blood. They are buried there. The other victims were found in mass graves about 12km away (which we visited in the afternoon). About ¼ of Cambodia's population was killed in this place. We walked around looking at the tiny cells where the people were kept before they were killed. We saw horrible pictures of the bodies as they were found, complete with pools of blood on the floor. We saw pictures of all the victims, some of whom were children. We saw pictures of the grinning guards who did all the killing, many of whom are still alive today and live in the countryside. Noone has ever been prosecuted, but there is a campaign for a trial to take place. We saw horrific paintings of guard beating up the babies of the prisoners and we saw some of the victim's sculls with bullet holes and parts missing. It was truly horrible. How anyone could have thought that this was a good way to run the country I have no idea.
We had a delicious lunch of Cambodian curry (I am loving the food here, it's like a mix of Asian and Indian) and I had banana spring rolls with chocolate sauce.
Next we depressed ourselves further by visiting the Killing Fields. This is where all the mass graves were found. There was not much there except some holes in the ground and a commemoration monument filled with thousands of sculls. It was very peaceful there, with birds tweeting and noises of children playing in a nearby school. It was hard to imagine all the horrible things that happened there.
We headed back to town and looked around the Russian market, which basically sold clothes and fake designer stuff, so we gave up and headed for the internet and I began updating this site. When looking for dinner we were very excited when we found a British restaurant. It even did Sunday Roasts! Then we realized it was Sunday and got even more excited! So we had our first roast in 4 and a half months, including unlimited gravy (good for us), roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, crackling and stuffing. I had roast beef and David had a mixture of beef, pork and chicken (he couldn't decide!). We got a free glass of wine too. It was lovely but very filling after all the light Asian food. We were stuffed!
Today we took the bus to Tonle Bati, a temple built 1000 years ago. It is in ruins now but it was very cool to walk around. Unfortunately there were lots of people who seemed to be living there so they mobbed us and asked for money. They also tried to get us to buy incense which we didn't want. They said it was to pray for Buddha. We said we were not Buddhist and so didn't want to and they looked at us in horror. We wondered if they knew about other religions or whether they thought theirs was the only one. Anyway they left us alone and we wandered around the temple in peace. It was very pretty. There was another, more modern one by the lake next door which was nice too. We walked back to the road and sat waiting for a bus back to Phnom Penh. Unfortunately no bus came. A lady selling drinks let us sit on her chairs (we bought drinks) and then we waited. For over an hour. We began to wonder if the bus was coming. Then a tiny van crammed to the brim with Cambodians came past and stopped. A lady got out and asked if we wanted to go to Phnom Penh. We said yes and so got crammed in with them. We sat in the boot! There must have been 20 of us in a tiny van, and the road was very bumpy!
Back in the city we had some lunch and then cooled off with some beer (yes I drank the beer!) by the riverside.
Tomorrow we are leaving Phnom Penh and taking the bus to Kampot.
