Phnom Penh

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Tuesday, February 17, 2009

17/02/08: Early morning with a hungover for our departure to Phnom Penh. The bus was supposed to pick us up (yes, quite strange) and we thought it would never arrive when he turned up nearly 30mn later to drive to the bus station. All in all we were supposed to leave the bus station at 9.30, we left at 10.30. Punctuality must not be Khmer, we thought, we were the only tourist plus an old Belgian hippy. The rest were locals. The bus curtains were of various flowery patterns, giving it a real 70's look and seats were to fit the size of the locals. We had two great movies in Khmer featuring Jackie Chang.

They all were laughing out loud at the silly jokes. It was hilarious. We finally arrived to destination at the end of the afternoon, checked in our guest house. One of the first thing the guy said "look Elton John stayed here" showing a picture of Sir Elton, signed to the Guest House. I was like "no way" (why would he stay in a cheap guest house??) and the guy was like "why no way, yes way"). We had an early dinner, walked around for a while before crashing into bed.

torture cell

18/02/09. Very productive day today. After breakfast, we headed towards the genocide museum, which is located in the buildings of one of the prisons where they interrogated, tortured and killed anyone opposing the regime of Pol Pot. Quite impressive to see the old cells, the rooms where they tortured people, some skulls from the killing fields and especially the pictures of the ones arrested. We stayed 3.5 hrs in the place and felt totally spaced out coming out. That was not a long time ago: after the end of the war in the late 70s, the Khmer Rouges were still out there until the late 80s. After this, we visited the Royal Palace, which looks a bit like the one in Bangkok but less nice. It was nice to see the Silver Pagoda, a temple which is fully tiled with silver tiles. Each tile weighs 1.2kg.


19/02/09/ We continued our study of the dark times of Cambodia by visiting the killing fields, just outside of Phnom Penh. Some of the hundreds of thousands of skulls and bones are exposed to remember all the victims. Many mass graves have not been dug up yet. What a coincidence to be in the country during the trial of the former director of the S 21 buildings.The thought of it all puts shivers down our spines. And despite all this, Cambodian people appear to be one of the friendliest population we have met, always laughing or smiling.
In the afternoon we visited Phnom Wat, a temple in the city. I really liked the inside because it looked really funky. Buddha with a fiber optic aura, as well as other Xmas lights. We have been really bold in the evening and ate a big salad. It felt so nice. We are still not sick!!

Selling veg

20/02/09. Relaxing day today. It is way too hot to do anything except for staying in an Internet cafe with the fan blowing on your neck. There is a wedding preparing in our little street. The guy from the guest house  apologized in advance for the noise for tonight. They are blocking most of the street with a large pink tent covering the tables. A big heart and plants (even bananas) are decorating the entrance.We came back later on to find tables full of guests drinking like Irish. They managed to make a real mess, table cloths and papers  all on the floor.  I am not sure who the bride is, but we reckoned the girl in yellow with the crown. There seems to have bridesmaids and groomsmen. There are also entertainers, who are particularly bad ad keep singing off key. Fortunately for us, it stopped really early, at 10.30pm

We have not done much either on the 21st. We wanted to do a cooking school but left it too late and it was full. I am glad to leave P.P tomorrow, as 5 days is more than enough. I am also done with all the crippled exhibiting their limbs for charity at every corner.  There is also all these kids either begging or selling stuff. They are so young but already act like little adults, little merchants. It is frighting. One of them was quite clever. He arrived next to our table and tried to sell us books. He took a look at our South East Asia travel book and started laughing, saying his is much bigger. Basically he was implying that we got ripped off with our small one, except what we did was to tear it apart before leaving Europe and only taking with us the relevant countries..

Khmer wedding