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Published: March 31st 2008
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That's the question that I'm still trying to work out, should I have stayed an extra night or run away when I did? Initial thoughts are that 16 hours is enough but there's that little niggle saying that one more night may have been a good thing to do. Oh well 16 hours it is, as there's a plane to catch in the morning.
The coach ride across from Siem Reap was relatively uneventful, well if you consider the constant horn blowing by the driver and the cow that we hit along the way as uneventful. But all was good on arrival, even if parts of the bumper bar were missing courtesy of the now former cow. As per usual when you arrive in somewhere new there is the bevy of tuk drivers trying their hardest to gain your favour. Fortunately in Phnom Penh they barricade them off so they can't get to you straight away. Although they do seem to be a bit dissappointed when you already have a booking for a hotel (missed commission doesn't make for a happy tuk driver). As luck would have it I found a decent one, Sam, as he explained it costs him
USD5 a day to hire the tuk and he is much more comfortable with the three wheeler tuk combo as opposed to the scooter and trailer combo. Why you ask, well as Sam puts it the scooter tuk combo only has the scooters breakes to pull up the trailer (tuk) plus overweight westerner, whereas the three wheeler trike style tuk has brakes on the rear as well, I tend to agree with his logic. Especially after seeing a local family of about fifteen riding on a scooter tuk combo.
With only 16 hours and most of those intended to be spent in the horizontal position sleeping there was a brief opportunity to see the sites of Phnom Penh. I chose two sites to see since I didn't want to over extend myself, especially with an early start in the morning to a destination that I haven't researched at all. The two destinations chosen for my brief Phnom Penh jaunt were S21 and FCC. Personally you could not get two different ends of the spectrumn to visit while in Phnom Penh if you tried. S21 used to be a school once a upon a time, until the Khmer Rouge decided
that it would be a great place for a prison to hold and interrogate people prior to sending them off to the Killing Fields. No matter how much I try words will not explain the place, but picture your local three storey primary school with barb wire along the fence. Add to this on each floor a few renovations that have turned the classrooms into multiple cells. Just to make sure throw a mesh of barbed wire along the open corridor so that no-one can jump to their death. Now that you have part of the reno's sorted it's time to turn the playground equipment into gallows so that your fellow countrymen and women can be tortured by hanging them up by their feet and dangling them into vats of water. The "headmaster" being a considerate sort of person ensured that one wing of the school had beds fitted for the captives. These beds came complete with electric shocks, shackles and other means of torture. Did I mention that you only got to stay at S21 for a short time, because after your torture you were shipped off to the Killing Fields for a one way trip. Of the 17
000 odd that were "lucky" enough to visit S21, six survived. There are varying estimates as to how many people were killed during Pol Pot's rein with the current maximum estimate being around the 3 million mark.
The FCC or the Foreign Correspondents Club is on the river front in Phnom Penh and a stark contrast to S21. This is where the expats and those visiting come to hang out and enjoy the view. Conveniently happy hour lasts for two hours and helps the demons of S21 to hide away for a while. How did I end up on the balcony enjoying happy hour, well one of the pieces of advise I got from a Canadian I met in Hoi An was to go to FCC and kick back as it's about the only good thing about Phnom Penh. After being here for 6 hours it's still difficult to work out if 16 hours in Phnom Penh is enough or too much. Everyone I spoke to on the way said that a day was enough, if not too much to spend in Phnom Penh. Although I think that this quick visit might just be enough, although it is a
little bizarre being one of the few western males that comes here with absolutely no interest in visiting the bars where a form of company is offered. Sam drove past a couple of these on the way around town, where there seemed to be a few too many Khmer girls showing way too much interest in your paunchy middle aged western male. But back to the FCC, a nice little place where you sit and watch the elephant walk past as you sit and watch the sun go down over the Tonle Sap River and the Mekong. Having managed to invest the princely sum of USD16 in more than a few cocktails it was time to move onto somewhere for food. Having very fond memories of Cantina in Prague it was reassuring to see that there was a Cantina here in Phnom Penh. Unfortunatley despite being the choice of hangout for film crews from New York City and Al Rockford the food was a little off the mark, even though the owner raved about it. My only offering on it is that if you were a vegetarian and ordered the chicken frajita there's a good chance that you will be
ok. After having sensational Indian chicken curries with all breast meat for less than USD5 in Siem Reap, Cantina was a disappointment. If only I could find a feather then I would have known that a chicken had flown near the chef when he was cooking the onion and capsicum chicken frajita.
But even with all that Phnom Penh is one of those places that leaves you a bit undecided, should I have stayed a little longer and gone out to the Killing Fields and then come back to town to take in the Museums or was 16 hours enough?
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