Day 45 Thursday June 18, 2009

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Day 45 Thursday June 18, 2009

Rented a motuk driver for the day to take in some local sights for $14. Our 1st stop was the Royal Palace and they were charging $6 admission. The guidebook quoted $3, but she said they raised their prices. Whether they did raise them or she was trying to make a profit, we didn't bother with it and decided to go somewhere else. Once you've seen one fancy palace in an exotic country you've seen them all. They can't afford to feed all the hungry people in the nation, but they can sure line a palace with gold! Anyway, our 2nd stop was the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. (History lesson from Lonely Planet: Between 1975-1978 people were executed by the Khemer Rouge for pretty much whatever they felt like, mainly being educated). Our 3rd stop wa the Tuol Sleng Museum where all the people executed in the Killing Fields were held prisoner and tortured. These facilities once housed an elementary and high school before being taken over by the Khemer Rouge. Can you imagine being held prisioner in your old school? Sad, very sad. Our last stop for the day was the Psar Tuol Tom Pong (aka The Russian Market) where we dined on local Cambodian food and shopped for bargains. This market is famous for all the popular clothes manufactured here from Banana Republic, GAP, Victoria Secret, Levis, Dockers, Nike, Adidas, etc all being sold at a fraction of the cost as they are back home. Unfortunately I was not in clothes shopping mood, therefore saving myself several dollars=) We went back to our backpackers ally and milled around with the locals and some other tourists. We found a cool laid back restaurant/ lounge over looking the lake and watched the sunset, well what you could see of it through the clouds. We ended up going back to the Wanderer restaurant for dinner and to have a rematch in pool, but someone else was playing pool tonight. So we settled as spectators watching some fellow travelers playing pool with one of the kids selling books. It's sad that these kids are probably being forced to work at such a young age, he is 8, for someone other than their parents, but at least the ones in this neighborhood are taken care of by the travelers. They played pool with them, bought them water and shared their pizzas with them. I almost asked one little girl, she was 11, if I could take her home. She had gotten us to buy a book the previous day and had come back. I told her I wasn't going to buy another book (I was relaxing in the hotel lobby reading while Camden was on the internet), but that she was welcome to hang out with me in the A/C. It was hot outside and she unloaded her book cart and curled right up next me and took a nap. (Awww, can we say "pulling on my heartstrings?!?!?!") And to think, these are the lucky ones....

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