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Published: January 13th 2008
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Phnom Penh sometimes feels like one of the poorest areas in South East Asia. Its not often you come across so many people begging, so many people without limbs and so many run down areas. Most of the streets are dirty, there is traffic everywhere - half of it going the wrong way up the street. It seems like complete chaos, just how you imagined a third world capital city to look.
However there are two sides to Phnom Penh. Along the riverfront there are fancy restaurants, there are lots of posh hotels and you see a lot of tourists who are obviously not slumming it like me in a budget hotel (which had a rat in!!), counting their pennies to see if they can afford a pizza as a treat. So I decided to explore both sides to Phnom Penh!!
I only ended up spending two days in Phnom Penh as I wanted to get to a homestay in the countryside ASAP, so the first day I headed firstly to Teuong Sleung (also known as S21). This is a converted school where thousands of people were tortured and killed during Pol Pots reign. I'd been there before and
been completely shocked and devastated to see how human beings are capable of treating each other, but I wanted to go back to go back there and remind myself again as to what the Cambodian's went through as a race. Going back a second time was no less upsetting then the first time really. Seeing photographs of how people were tortured and killed and seeing the thousands of faces of the people that died had exactly the same impact as before. It's such a shocking and sobering experience.
In the afternoon to cheer myself up I headed off to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. I could see glimpses of it from the outside and it looked quite impressive, but I wasn't prepared for just how gorgeous it was!! It was totally stunning!! If you have any interest in culture or architecture you have to go there if you're in Cambodia. The grounds surrounding all the buildings are immaculate. There are paintings along the side of the Silver Pagoda, which are still in good condition and inside the buildings are so many beautiful things. The main two buildings people head to are the throne room and the area that
houses the emerald buddha. Unfortunately you aren't allowed to take photos in either of these rooms and its quite hard to explain just how ornate everything is in both of these rooms. In some of the other rooms it shows some of the history, such as the outfits that were worn on different days of the week. All in all it was a fascinating afternoon for me!!
After that I treated myself to a pizza along the riverfront and had about 10 children come up to me trying to sell me books and two disabled people come up to me begging. Its so upsetting to see it and have to say no all the time, but I don't have much money and even if I did it wouldn't be enough to give money to everyone. Walking up the riverfront afterwards I could almost forget I was in Cambodia, it was so clean with no street stalls, not much traffic and not that many Cambodian's!! However you only need to turn down a side street until you see motorbikes zipping about everywhere, cyclos, tuk tuks, busy markets and lots of noise and colour everywhere. I definitely prefer the areas full
of chaos!!! On the way back to my guesthouse I walked past the Independence monument and noticed lots of monks walking past, I love seeing them as its such a colourful sight with them in their orange robes. It was nice to be back in a Buddhist country.
The next day I visited an orphanise called the Lighthouse Orphanage. I hired a motorbike rider to drive me there and we stocked up on some bread for the children. When we turned up I was greeted by hugs from loads of the children, which made me feel quite emotional. They all looked reasonable well fed though, so even though the orphanage is reliant on donations, the children don't seem to be starving. I ended up giving an additional donation of $10 when I was there - not much money, but it was all I could afford after buying the food. All the children were so cute though. I ended up spending most of my time there playing with them - I played football with the boys and then spent ages with one girl who wanted me to walk her round the playground on their orphanages bicylce. They didn't have stabilisers
and she couldn't ride it by herself, bless her, so I held onto the handlebars and pushed her around on it. When I left some of the children came up to me and said thank you for the food. I'm so glad I went, it was great to do something that made me feel like I was making a bit of a difference, even if I only fed them for 1 day, its better than nothing!!
So that was my very brief visit to Phnom Penh. I'd been there twice before though, so 2 days really was enough. Next stop is a homestay in the countryside.
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