Blogs from Phnom Penh, South, Cambodia, Asia - page 14

July 6 - The Royal Palace and evening hours on Sisowath Quay I must confess, I am drawn to promenades with rows of lamps at night time since they provide a great opportunity to try out long exposure photography. I was back near the Royal Palace from Tuol Sleng a little earlier than planned since I decided to skip the visit to the Russian Market in Phnom Penh. I spent the next couple of hours visiting the Royal Palace, which was open on the 6th. The grounds have well manicured gardens. The various dwellings and assembly halls are large and well spaced. The rooftops are all a golden yellow color. In one corner of the palace grounds is the Silver Pagoda, which houses two spectacular Buddha statues. One, a roughly 2 feet jade statue with the ... read more

The roads in Phnom Penh were the most chaotic we had experienced so far, it was a great ride in the tuk tuk to our guesthouse, on the way passing loads of bakeries and European architecture, you can't miss the French influence! We had to stay longer than we intended due to sorting visas so we decided not to rush around and had a few lay ins which were welcome after our busy and early starts visiting temples! We visited the National Museum, and after reading about all the gems and gold found in many of the temples we were hoping to see some, but there was non! :(. Plenty of sculptures dating back to the 5th century so very old, but after you've seen 20 you've seen enough! We visited the Royal Palace, and the ... read more

July 4 - Departure day(s) and the dancing air-hostesses What point of one’s travel is it the norm start the accounts in a travelogue ? Whatever the convention may be, I am compelled to recount mine from the time I left my house in Bangalore, India for the airport. The scheduled departure of my Bangkok Airways flight out of Bangalore was 0135 hours on July 5 2012. Given the travel time to the airport from my house and the regulatory 2.5 hour early check-in, I had to leave my house at 9 pm on the 4th of July. The trip to the airport and the check-in itself were uneventful. The flight to Bangkok was on time and I completed the usual boarding procedures in practice at Bengaluru International Airport and settled in my assigned ... read more

This is not a capital city like all others I have visted. Where else would you see an Ox drawn cart! The city for foreigners is set up around the river, with girlie bars and restaurants in abundance. Look a street or two back, and it very quickly becomes very local in look and feel. The locals use the promenade by the river in the evening for such events as Tai Chi and Aerobics, excellent entertainment whilst having dinner and a few beers. The mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers converge here, and like the rest of the rivers in Cambodia this time of the year, the colour is a healthy shade of brown. I visited the Royal Palace, and it was okay. Nothing more. I have seen buildings of similar size and build all around ... read more

I thought I better issue a couple of corrections to my previous blog now that I'm reading "Never Fall Down". The lead character in the "novel" is Arn. For some reason, I thought Patricia McCormick had changed his name in the book. Also, Arn grew up in Battambang, the second largest city in Cambodia, not Phnom Penh. The book says his father didn't die at the hands of the Khmer Rouge but before they came to power. Arn was living with an Aunt at the time of the evacuation from the city. I don't think any of this changes the incredible story but I did want to put it out there.... read more

Arn Chorn-Pond is a complex person. Arn is a flute player, an orphan of war, a brilliant musician, a storey teller, a graduate of Brown University, a son of an opera singer and an accomplice to countless murders. These are just a few of the people living inside Arn's skin. In the empty moments of the night Arn hears two very different sounds. He hears the cries of the dying, the children he was a child with, his mother and father, the men he cut the pants from from as the Khmer Rouge slamed a rock or machete into the back of their head and he hears the soothing music of his native land rich in tradition whose masters were almost all exterminated during the four years of the killing fields. And he has a vision ... read more

On August 14, 1971, Philip Zimbardo, a young Stanford University psychologist turned the basement of the psychology building into a prison. Zimbardo was seeking to better understand the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels, and social expectations in a simulated prison environment. He recruited 24 young white middle class male students to play the roles of prison guards and prisoners. These were everyday common people like you and I with no previous history of mental illness, criminal record or abuse toward others. The guards were given very little instruction, only that they should maintain order and prevent escape. Students knew they were being watched and recorded and the experiment was to last two weeks. After six days the experiment was halted because the make-belief prison had been turned into a torture chamber. Even ... read more

It's April of 1979. Survivors of one of the deadliest genocides in history return to their homes. They make their way from the countryside where (if they were lucky) they spent their days as slave laborers working the rice fields. It's time for rebuilding. As many as two million people died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Some were worked to death, starved and malnurished. Others were imprisoned, tortured and forced to make false confessions. Shortly after, they were often taken to killing fields where they were beaten to death and buried in mass graves. You're thinking of them now. You start the day at the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The Genocide Museum is a former Khmer Rouge prison converted into a memorial center with the purpose of educating people about the Cambodian Genocide ... read more