Day 89: Phnom Penh

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Phnom penh is the capital of cambodia, and the biggest city. We ended up spending 4 days in phnom penh while waiting for our vietnam visas.

On the 11 hour bus ride from ban lung to phnom penh, we had plenty of time to read our guide book, and we decided on heading toward Bueng Kak lake for our first night. It is one of the few "backpacker" areas in phnom penh. We got in after dark, so we weren't too picky about where we stayed the first night. We were just looking for a hotel that had hot water and air conditioning. Sadly, it took us visiting 4 places before we found one with both hot water and AC.

The restuarant area of the hotel was pretty nice - it was one of maybe 6 or 8 restaurants on stilts over the lake - but the room was a dump. But it did have hot water and AC, and we were tired of carrying our bags so we decided to stay there for one night. After we paid for the room, I flopped down on the bed and one of the bed legs went THROUGH the floor! We heard people exclaiming in surprise in the room beneath us. We scooted the bed back a foot, and problem solved!

The next morning we found out that Bueng Kak "lake" is mostly filled in with dirt and garbage in the center. Not so majestic as it was the previous night. We found a much better room at a hotel off the lake for the following few nights.

As far as activities go, we didn't do too much in phnom penh. The first day we took a tuk tuk to the river front, which is a slightly more upscale tourist area when compared to bueng kak lake. Plenty of good food, lots of souvenier shops, etc. We did find steph a fresh pair of sunglasses - I think she's on her 4th or 5th pair now.

The next day we saw the killing fields and the S-21 prison. The killing fields are where about 20,000 of the 2-3 million cambodians died during 1976-1978 under the command of the khmer rouge. There are dozens of mass graves which have now been escavated, the largest holding 450 bodies. They constructed a memorial which contains the bones of I think 9000 of the skeletons that had been buried there. After the killing fields we decided we still were in too good of a mood so we went to S-21. S-21 is where prisoners were held before being taken to the killing fields. They were forced into writing outrageous confessions to please the higher ups of the khmer rouge. Only four people survived out of thousands. Pretty depressing stuff, but it is an integral part of cambodian history and it definitely can't be missed if you're staying in phom phenh.

The day after that we checked out the local shopping mall to get a few supplies. Commercialism is just catching on in cambodia (there is not a starbucks or mcdonalds to be found! ...yet) so retail stores are few and far between. In fact even the mall wasn't really divided into stores, more just a bunch of stands all selling the same stuff. Basically an indoor, air conditioned version of a cambodian market, except without the smell of fermented fish paste. On the top floor they had an arcade and a roller rink. On the bottom floor they had the only grocery store we ever saw in cambodia. Maybe it is the only one in cambodia. Steph almost died of happiness when she was able to buy a liter of fresh skim milk, which she later pounded in about 4 minutes.

Our last day in phnom penh was spent pretending that we were living large. We went to the Phnom Penh hotel, which is actually a really nice hotel near bueng kak lake, and paid 6 bucks each to use their pool for the day. We got our moneys worth out of it though, with full body sunburns to prove it.

So... we enjoyed ourselves in PP, but didn't really take too many pictures. Here's a few though:

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Comments

[Matt Potterton]

whoa there
Is that your hotel room falling into the lake there in that first picture?