Exploring Phnom Penh

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So here we are in Phnom Penh - the bustling, busy capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia. We have another half an hr to spare before we head to the airport to catch our flight to Bangkok (and our left luggage not to mention! 😊 )

We arrived here at 7 yesterday as mentioned earlier. What we failed to add was how we got here - we sat on the plane with one humongous backpack of which even 50% wouldn't fit in the overhead compartment, and luckily was squished under two seats. We therefore had no space to squeeze our second backpack (much smaller, but which also wouldn't fit in the overhead compartment) underneath, so held it in our laps the entire way. In between us, we squished our bigger Siem Reap purchases including a framed painting. Luckily, Anand convinced me not to buy the even bigger painting I was lusting after at the market as that truly wouldn't have made it onto the plane 😊. So thank goodness we weren't flying in the US as they certainly wouldn't have allowed us to treat the plane as our own private bus and cram all these things in!

One thing I have to mention is how good the plane food has become. Either I have gotten used to so much cafeteria (hospital cafeteria not to mention) food that my standards have gotten lower or it really has improved by leaps and bounds, as on each journey so far we have gotten interesting and appetizing food.

From the taxi on our way to our hotel itself, we saw many beautiful Phnom Penh sights, that we got to explore more today. As previously mentioned, our hotel manager, Reang Sey, is incredibly nice. She set us up with a tuk tuk driver, took care of our bags, gave us a free breakfast with water, fruits and in general was as nice as any family member although we just met her yesterday. The room itself was also nice although the list of instructions was definitely interesting - it included things like óne must not have drugs, guns, etc as well as that one should not be renting this room solely to conduct a brothel!!

We went to bed early and then started the day early. Therefore, we have now explored to our hearts contents today and had some extra time to write these blogs. We started off at Wat Phnom at 6:30. It's the highest point at the city and the reason for the name Phnom Penh. It was a beautiful wat, and hosts a horde of people on the hill selling incense, lotuses, other flowers, etc. They also had caged birds that we could pay to release (to get good luck). Now some locals say that the birds are trained to fly right back to the cage, but hopefully not.

Then we headed to the national museum and royal palace. We were sculptured-out from our Angkor Tour and so elected to skip going into the museum although the architecture itself was beautiful. The royal palace - reminded us a little of versailles which wasn't too surprising when we remembered that cambodia was a french colony in the past. There were beautifully maintained gardens in this palace enclosure, murals on the ceilings, and intricate window and door decorations all a la versailles.
The silver pagoda was the highlight - the entire floor was covered with silver tiles, and the room housed two amazing buddhas - one was life-sized, completely made of gold, with over 2000 diamonds encrusted in it. The biggest was 25 carats in size. There were diamonds in the eyes, the forehead, chest, and the whole effect was just beautiful. The other buddha was made of emerald, abt 2 feet in size, and apparently had been donated by Sri Lanka. Around this room and the throne room, there were many crowns, jewelery, many many more buddhas. We read that over 60% of the original items had been destroyed by the Khmer rouge which makes one wonder just what it would have looked like previously! Luckily, they apparently preserved the diamond/emerald buddhas and throne room to show the international community that they cared for the cambodian heritage..

After a few more stops at various wats around the city - Wat Ounalom and Wat maha Montrei - both of which were beautifully constructed and had murals of the buddha's life story around, we went to the Tuol Sleng museum. This is housed at the high school where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned thousands, and was called the S-21 prison. It was extremely depressing to see what mankind is capable of doing to their own brethren. It really shows though how much cambodia and cambodians have gone through in the very recent past and how amazing their recovery has been. The fact that they are so cheerful and positive on a daily basis is simply a testament to human fortitude.

After that we stepped across the street to an oasis of calm and peace, a restaurant aptly named Bodhi tree. There are many trees and plants all around, people are asked to take off their shoes and there was soothing music in the background. This is run by a non-profit that provides employment to street children and trains them in the culinary industry. The food was fantastic and we got to eat a few typical Khmer dishes that we hadn't seen in Siem reap.

As we had gotten such an early start, all of the above was finished before 1:30 and then we headed for the russian market. We spent two hrs getting thoroughly shopped out, but managed to pick up a few things. Particularly, the movie buff in the family spent a while going through the stacks and stacks of likely pirated DVDs available, discussing with the store owner regarding the collection, making suggestions as to what other new movies they could get, etc, and then finally making a few purchases.

Overall, we're glad we chose to spend a day in Phnom Penh. It has rounded out our Cambodia experience. We're sure it would be possible to spend months exploring this country but for now I think we've gotten a good sampling of it.

Now that we've finished updating this blog, we'll be heading back to the hotel to get ready and leave to catch our flight. I was initially suggesting that we could get to the airport about 45 minutes before the flight time, but Reang Sey seemed more concerned about us not missing our flight than we were, so our tuk tuk should be arriving soon.

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Comments

[Netika]

Culinary Delights
Hey you two! Seems like a smorgasboard of culinary adventures all through Asia. I've always hesitated on trip to E.Asia for the fear of not easily available vegetarian food - but you guys have discovered some cool indie nuggets! When are you uploading pics?