5 Days in Phnom Penh


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Asia » Cambodia » South » Phnom Penh
July 1st 2008
Published: July 9th 2008
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Before we begin this entry, I think we both feel that we gave Cambodia a bit of brush off, spending only two and half weeks there. Hopefully we can revisit later in the trip...
It was a six hour bus ride into Phnom Penh. The city is big, bustling, and simultaneously growing and crumbling. With chaotic markets and badminton playing kids alongside relics of the recent kmer rouge past, it was a lot to take in.
Some bits and pieces:
-Mike played basketball at the Olympic stadium a few evenings where he enjoyed meeting locals (playing in flip flops) and trying cane juice.
-Wandering through the numerous large markets, watching fish get chopped and scaled, tied up crabs clambering over each other, and flies gather like...well like flies on large beef cuts.
-Relaxing on the third floor terrace of Tat Guesthouse, where we ate, read, chatted with the owner's 15 year old grandson, and watched the maternity hospital across the street (no new baby sitings).
-Walking through the city and sitting quietly at Phnom Wat, watching monkeys and making kitten friends while breathing incense.
-Wandering through the Killing Fields, full of now emptied mass graves (and still full ones), and putting incense in front of the monument full of exhumed skulls, many with clear holes from being bludgeoned to save ammunition...around 2 million people died from the year zero experiment from 1975-1979, whether from murder, torture, disease or starvation.
-Finding myself at a loss for words at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a secondary school in the middle of the city which was converted to a torture center by the Kmer Rouge. Disturbing, hard to conceive of, yet painfully real and recent.
Don't have too many photos, but here they are...
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killing fieldskilling fields
killing fields

This structure is piled high with skulls
Monkey FamilyMonkey Family
Monkey Family

People feed the monkeys constantly. Some were super fat. But oh, so cute.


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