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Published: July 26th 2006
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Opulence amid the destitution
The gleaming spires and colourful roofs of the Royal Palace. Today is our second full day in Phnom Penh. After having spent yesterday faced with the horrors of S-21, today we intended to see slightly more up-beat sights in the city.
Phnom Penh being the noisy, grimy, steamy place it is, Alex decided to spend the morning enjoying the hotel swimming pool. Not our hotel, of course. Across the road from our little guesthouse is the Hotel Cambodiana (loving the name) which allows non-guests to splash about in its pool for a few dollars. While Alex swam, there were a few tasks that needed taking care of - posting cards, getting some cash and the like.
We met up again at about 2pm and headed off for lunch at a small restaurant going by the name of "Friends". The restaurant is part of a larger project to help Phnom Penh's legions of street children. Indeed this sprawling city streets are what many hundreds of children call home. But this is a dangerous place, and the children are at very great risk of disease, violence, abuse and drugs. Friends, as well as running a hostel for some 250 children, conducts daily visits to those children not lucky enough to get
Robes under the rain...
After a heavy shower, the main street in front of the palace filled with monks - I wonder where they were all going... a place in the hostel, and also has a restaurant where the kitchen and waiting staff are former street children. This made us feel a lot better about tucking into such delicious treats as sundried tomato hummus on deep-fried wonton wrappers ! The brightly-painted interior, decorated with vintage posters, was a wonderful haven a world away from the outside. We casually noticed on the menu that this place had a nice-looking cocktail menu, including Mangosteen Daiquiri...we couldn't possibly justify having one of these at noon, so we decided to come back again later for a pre-dinner drink.
That afternoon we paid a visit to the Royal Palace - built a hundred years ago or so by the French for the Cambodian Royal Family, and home for many years to King Sihanouk, who recently abdicated (taking everybody by surprise) in favour of his son - now King Sihamoni. Only a small part of the palace complex, barely 20 metres away from the river in central Phnom Penh, is open to the public. But it was still quite an eye-opener. The opulence of the place is really quite surprising after a couple of days walking round the streets of Phnom Penh,
Throne Hall
Photography is not allowed within the complex unless you pay an extra couple of dollars. Pikeys that we are, this was taken through the gates ! where barely ten metres of flat unbroken pavement can be found ! The palace is extremely reminiscent of the Royal Palace in Bangkok, and from the architecture and especially the roofs it would be easy to mistake one for the other. The throne hall was one of the structures open to the public and this was very impressive - a long columned hall with a huge throne placed on a dais at the end, surmounted by large parasols (symbols of royal pwer just as in Thailand). Also open to visitors was the Silver Pagoda, so called because of the 5,000kg of silver used to pave its floors. The pagoda came as something of a disappointment as most of the floor was covered in carpets to stop people like me scratching it. A few tiles were uncovered at the entrance, but it wasn't particularly impressive. Now if it had been gold...
The contrast between the Palace and the streets of Phnom Penh is particularly striking, and not in a very positive sense. The palace, with all its gilding and silver and gold buddhas with diamond-encrusted eyes, does not sit comfortably in this city. Beggars and homeless children wander the streets
A crumbling relic...
...of ages past. This old French colonial house is slowly falling to pieces. along the palace's high whitewashed walls, and this not the most pleasant of sights.
By the time we have finished visiting the Palace it has started to rain - we step outside the walls and head back to Friends - Daiquiri time has arrived. For some reason there are dozens of monks walking the streets, orange robes sheltering beneath orange umbrellas. A tuk-tuk passes with six monks bundled in the back, amid all the honking and revving. Phnom Penh is certainly a sight to be seen.
After a Mangosteen daiquiri (very nice, thank you very much) we head off for dinner, and find a lovely place right on the riverfront, which specialises in
Phnom pleung, literally "Mountain of Fire", which is a sort of do-it-yourself barbeque. A large helmet-shaped griddle is brought to the table over a charcoal brazier and you could lots of thinly-sliced beef and vegetables at the table. It's a Cambodian favourite and was delicious !
Tomorrow our Vietnamese visas become valid (a rather annoying aspect of the visas is that they specify an exact starting and ending date) so we are heading for the border !
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