Phnom Phen, a very depressing stay
Trip Start
Jun 06, 2008
1
15
23
Trip End
Aug 06, 2008
Phnom Phen,
Cambodia
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Well... DO NOT listen to them if you ever meet them! Dirty, depressing, hit hard by Pol Pot's reign of terror, Phnom Phen really brought us to the lowest of the low in regards or poverty and need for help.
But let's start with the bus ride which was okay until our second rest stop when we saw a lot of local food and Shady and I could not resist trying the fried crickets and spiders. Our stomachs on the other hand wished we had never done that for the next 3 days. While thanks to Kelsey I have had crickets before, eatign a hairy black spider about 3 inches by 1.5 inches was a first. A lady also had these tiny frogs but 1 dollar for one was excessive. Spiders were 25 cents for one and crickets around 5 cents.
Upon our arrival to Phnom Phen, we felt dirty, tired and ready to pass out or puke or release these spiders in any way possible. We went to the place the Irish guys told us to go (Okay Guesthouse) and it was actually decent. Except for the whole bathroom literally not having a sink. But that's just details right? Everything else was pretty good and for 2 dollars a night you can't complain.
We dropped our stuff and watched movies in the lobby/restaurant for a little then took a 30 minute walk where we walked by the palace and the center of town. Here we saw deformed people, people that ahdn't eaten in days, people showering in brown river water, etc.
Me eating a spider at the rest stop
all at once and it was really hard to take.Once we returned to our place we met these 2 girls Alex and Fiona who were sleeping in our "dorm" room so we started chatting about the usual stuff. After that dinner and early bed time at 10:30.
The morning after we woke up at 8, ate a nice omelette for breakfast and got a tuk tuk and driver for the day ($3.50 per person) to bring us to S21, Killing Fields, and Russian Market, 3 of the few attractions the city has to offer. On a side note, I think we picked the msot broken down and slow tuk tuk in Asia. I feel bad tho because at the end of the day the guy driving us (a 26 year old) told us he was very thankful we stuck with him the whole day because he knows his tuk tuk is falling apart but doesn't have money to replace it and tourists pick other tuk tuks over him because of the bad conditions his is in.
Anyway, first we went to to S-21 which stands for security office 21 and has now been repalced by the name Tuol Sleng Museum. What this is, is a school which in the 70s was turned into a prison/torture place by Pol Pot, head of the Khmer Rouge regime. Believe it or not, this Pol Pot killed more people than Hitler did. According to the flier and the documentary we saw in the museum, 20,000 entered S-21 and only 7 survived it. Also in 1977 was the peak of this deadly regime and 100 people were killed a day. More about the place we visited, the old classrooms were turned into tiny cells or torture chambers where pictures show prisoners to range from men and women between the ages of 10 to 80 about.
Prison cells in S21
Cuttign people's fingers, drowning, etc where all methods widely used here. After this infprmative history session, we went to the Choeng Ek Killing Fields, where everyone from S-21 was sent to be killed. This place is 45 minutes away from the city and is a mass grave that includes wholes that have been uncovered and some that are still filled with people's skeletons covered by dirt (many times bones would stick our of the ground). At the center of this field or better yet dirt landscape there is a tall stupa with 8000 skulls as you can see in the picture in memory of all the unjust killing that went on here.Next we had our driver Lade or Lobby (can't understand when people here tell me their names so many times I just pick an english word that resembles it the most) drive us to the Russian market where I got a really nice Buddha statue which is kind fo hell to pack in my bag and a new little bag to keepmy valuables so I can throw out that blue St. Barnabus Hospital bag which was tearing real bad. What's cool about my new little North Face bag is that some zippers are Puma zippers. I bet you no1 has that!!!! ahah. Oh Asia.
After this we went home and slept between 3:30 and 5PM, then we ate, used some internet trying to catch up with this journal, bought bus tickets to Ho Chi Minh City, then went to sleep ay=t 11:30 exhausted.
Next morning up at 5 to eat breakfast at Okay Guesthouse then another fun long ride for 7 hours in a bus overcrowded with Vietnamese. The border crossing was the same old, getting off and on the bus between 3 and 5 times because first you have to fill out the paperwork, then you leave a country, then you enter another country. But we made it with our Visas we got in Kuala Lumpur for way too much money so they'd do it in 2 days.
That's that for Cambodia, a gorgeous place but not the happiest of stays.
