Day 27-31: Phnom Penh

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Hello everyone, day later writing this as Phnom Penh's internet facilities were a bit worse off compared to other places we've used in Cambodia. We're now in Sihanoukville!

We rushed out of our room in Siem Reap hungover as we decided to pay one more visit to the Angkor What? bar the night before (2 Angkor Wat pitchers, I finally got my t shirt! - N) We got a pick up from our hostel to the central market, changed onto another bus then onto the actual bus heading to Phnom Penh. The coach ride was interesting enough, every bus journey in Cambodia is accompanied by loud khmer karaoke pop dvds throughout the whole journey which you learn to phase out! We had a 6hr ride to Phnom Penh, and on the aisle next to us there was a Cambodian man and his girlfriend. The guy was on his mobile for about 4 and a half hrs of the journey obviously very riled by his business developments, so proceeded to shout down the phone for this long whilst his girlfriend was failing to get his full attention, hard as she tried! Then after this he tried to make a few calls, clearly by this point there was no reception as each call lasted around 1 minute with him shouting repeatedly 'hello, hello, hello, hello....' A normal person would give up after 2 or 3 attempts but he was happy enough to put an hours worth of effort into it, becoming the most persistent caller we've ever seen. After an hour of trying, he went to sleep and we got half an hour of quiet before arriving to the hustle and bustle of Phnom Penh. Nat found this extremely amusing but we had to keep straight faces as we were in very close proximity!

Arriving off every bus you are greeted by a swarm of tuk tuk drivers who block you at every turn, funnily enough we hadn't taken note of the address of the hostel we had booked for a night so we were hoping on the driver knowing the way. Actually this one of the only times a tuk tuk driver took us to the right place in Phnom Penh!! We arrived at our hostel which was a couple of dollars pricier than most but was really nice and it was a brand new hostel with awesome breakfast menu. Their doctrine (the hostel was called 'me mates place') meant that the employees were a bit over the top with their friendliness and we ended up having to dodge them a few times to avoid being guided towards their tour offers. Their pancakes are definitely worth the couple of extra dollars though!! We were pretty shattered from the long bus ride and after a late lunch in their restaurant (again, awesome) we caught up on much needed sleep.

The following day we went to Wat Phnom, a popular temple on top of a small hill not too far from the guesthouse. One dollar for foreigners, free for Cambodians. There were elephant rides at the bottom as well as a group of men playing a local game, kind of like keepy uppy but with a shuttle cock, using acrobatic kicks to keep it up in the air. We walked round the temple, it was 36/37 degrees so we didn't last very long before heading further into town. The buildings are in lots of different styles but the French Colonial ones stand After a bit of heading in the wrong direction we came to the central market where Toe bought some fake Abercrombie and Fitch sandals for a few dollars, the brand didn't matter but then neither did the lettering which began peeling off a short while later. We had brief respite in the air conditioned mall nearby then we checked out a nearby hostel. It was cheaper and more centrally located so after viewing a room we made a reservation for the next few days. Later that evening England were playing Japan so we went out for dinner with the intention of getting back early so Toe was kept happy! A walk along the riverfront brought us to a crazy market, after some little kids helped us cross the motorbike clogged streets we had a look around. It was the same kind of stuff we had seen in Siem Reap and as their were no food stalls we quickly found a nearby Thai Restaurant. A delicious Dumpling noodle soup each later and we were Tuk Tuk bound back to the hostel. However a miscalculation in time zones meant that Toe only caught the second half of the England Friendly, something that happened with the Mexico game earlier in the week (didn't really matter in the end, woeful performance).

Next morning after we fended off our hostel with a story about meeting some friends in town ("where are you going? what are you doing today? where are your friends staying?") we got their tuk tuk driver to take us to a cafe over the road from our new hostel, he managed to overshoot by a couple of blocks but near enough! When we arrived we were welcomed by the friendly staff brandishing snacks and sweets at us. That afternoon we headed to the Royal Palace further south. We were bombarded from all sides by beggars, hawkers and Tuk Tuk drivers before finally losing patience and deciding to opt out from going inside. Phnom Penh is very in your face, we figure it must have some similarities to Bangkok - where we missed out on this time around. We got some ice cream, chilled out and spent the afternoon reading and listening to some tunes. We had got a late lunch in the food court of the mall, some awesome noodles at $2 dollars a piece, so we did without a proper dinner and got some z's in.

Monday morning came and we decided on having a fully active day. Nat had spotted a cheap minibus tour going for $5 each which took in both the Killing Fields and the famous S-21 prison so after missing out on morning trip we picked up some tickets for later that afternoon. This led to a massive scramble around lunch time as the tour company wrote the wrong time on the ticket (30mins earlier than needed) and the hostel restaurant took an age with what was supposed to be a quick lunch. The minibus ended up being 25mins late anyway which meant this was all a little ironic as we arrived nearly 50mins earlier than needed. Finally we hopped in with our sole companion, a friendly Canadian called Andrew and headed off to the first stop - the killing fields at Choeng Ek. Forgive us if we can't do justice to the places we went on this tour. We didn't take any pictures along the way, whilst others did, we couldn't bring ourselves to as it felt disrespectful. If you don't know the History it's best to look it up, however a brief explanation is that under Pol Pot the communist Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh in 1979 following on from a war in the country. They were greeted by cheers as the Cambodian people believed they would bring peace after several years of war. However within 3 hours the Khmer Rouge ordered a full evacuation of Phnom Penh, the citizens marched off to work in the Rice Fields away from the cities to fulfill their chosen role in the new Communist revolution. Teachers, Intellectuals, foreigners and anyone accused of being a spy were taken to either S-21 prison for interrogation or the killing fields for 'liquidation'. At the killing fields 9000 corpses have since been recovered from the mass graves whilst many graves remain unemptied. People were lined up at the edges of pits in the ground and then shot or beaten to death so that they fell into the pits. Many survivors were then buried alive. The overall number of dead for this period lasting five years is in the millions.

Andrew the Canadian told us he had written a paper on this subject 7-8 years ago and so it was a big day for him to visit this place. When we arrived we first entered a large tower which has been erected. Inside are shelves and shelves of recovered skulls of the victims of Pol Pot. Underneath was a pile of rags and clothing recovered and kept behind. The tower was around 50 ft tall we would guess, but that may not be right, and was very disquieting. We then followed a brief circuit of the area, marked only with hand painted signs describing the significance of the small areas and then looked around where you could see sections of field where the graves would have been recovered. When we reached the other side of a dyke in between this we caught up with a group of people who encouraged us to follow them and their tour guide. As we approached we had passed a series of uneven holes in the ground which had been left after clearly being dug up in the past. We realized that small areas in the path had more pieces of fabric poking out of the ground, apparently when it rains more and more remains are revealed. It began to rain at this moment which made it all the more poignant and also uncomfortable, it was hard to know where to stand. Following the guide we saw more signs of the cruelty which had taken place here, although its hard to describe what these were as it doesn't sound like things possible for a human being to do to another. Bones were also visible appearing through the ground in certain places where the ground was washing away. A small museum area nearby had more information on the events around the period of this all happening.

After we left we headed to the S-21 genocide museum. S-21 was a secondary school which the Khmer Rouge used to imprison and torture Cambodian citizens who were unlucky enough to be brought there. The school has been left almost how it was found and so were taken around by a Cambodian women who herself survived the Khmer Rouge by working in the fields. Even as tour guide she was still visibly upset at the end of the tour. We were taken through the cells and shown photos of the victims as well as photos of the remains of the last people who were found here when the Vietnamese arrived in Phnom Penh. Not for the faint hearted and not really possible to describe here, we were left fairly speechless at the end of our tour.

When we got back we needed to quickly check on our Vietnamese visas (don't worry mum, all taken care of) but were able to pop straight back out again to meet up with Andrew who we went out with for the rest of the evening. We all headed in circles for a while but got to soak up some of the hectic atmosphere of the street food markets at night time before we finally chose somewhere to eat. We introduced Andrew to some different Cambodian dishes and ended up sharing some beers and nearly a whole bottle of Mekong Whisky, a snip at $10 a bottle, tastes rather like Vanilla and went down pretty well! It was nice to chat about all of our travels and planned parts to come, we even hope to bump into Andrew in Sihanoukville as he's only a couple of days behind us on a similar route. So that's where we are now having arrived this afternoon, I'll leave that to our next post, in the meantime we hope you enjoy our photos of Phnom Penh. Lots of love Natalie and Toe. xxxx

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Comments

[Marissa]

Helloo
Hey, Hope your both well, it sounds really good there! That man on the coach to Phnom Penh sounds aggrivating haha. Talk sooonn, Marissa xxx