Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Outside the Royal Palace, lit up at night. Cambodia, like Thailand, has a current king and we even walked right by his car procession in front of the palace one day. The king got a good look at us as we strolled obliviously through the street blockade in search of dinner.
Inside the Royal Palace. The architechture was pretty stunning, but overall it was unexciting. The famous Silver Pagoda is in the compound, a wat with a completely silver floor, but most of it was covered with carpets to protect it. They did have an Emerald Buddha similar to the on in Thailand, and an impressive collection of small Buddha statues.
Stone sculpted stupa in front of a gold stupa in front of beautiful blue skies inside the Royal Palace grounds.
Before continuing with the pictures below, a little historical context is needed...here's the abridged version. After a period of prosperity and stability in the 1950s-60s, King Sihanouk (of Cambodia) was overthrown in 1970 by the Cambodian military and fled to China. Along with the increasing popularity of communism in the region came the rise of the Khmer Rouge, or red Khmer party. The U.S. (in conjunction with the South Vietnamese) promptly bombed the hell out of Cambodia to try and root out the North Vietnamese (and rising Cambodian) communist forces, similar to what they did in Laos with the Secret War. It didn't work, and the fighting ended in 1975 with the Khmer Rouge and their designated leader, Pol Pot, taking over Phnom Penh. They told everyone in the city to evacuate because the U.S. was going to bomb PP and within 3 days, a city of millions was a complete ghost town. It was an ingenious tactic playing on people's fears to get them countryside, where all citizens were then forced to work for the next 4 years in a huge agrarian cooperative, mostly growing rice to export. Meanwhile, Pol Pot's genocidal regime was systematically killing the intellectuals, artists, monks, ministers, engineers, foreingers, teachers, and students (and their families) of the former Cambodia at S-21 (see below) as they were a percieved threat to the new Maoist regime. In the late 70s Vietnam sucessfully invaded and overthrew the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, forcing them into the northwest jungles where they launched a devastating guerilla war that continued throughout the 80s.
This is the monument at the Killing Fieldsof Choeung Ek, a field 20km south of PP where prisoners of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime were taken after being tortured for confessions to be executed. Over 17,000 people were killed here and buried in mass graves.
This is what you see inside the monument. 14 stories of skulls and bones of the excavated skeletons all the way to the ceiling...very haunting.
The main security compound for the Khmer Rouge was called S-21, made up of multiple buildings used as holding facicilities, for interrogation, and includes the killing fields where they finally disposed of the prisoners. Tuol Sleng, left, was all three things for the Khmer Rouge. It is a former high school right in the middle of the city converted to a center for genocide. You don't have to travel far to observe what happened in the late '70s under Pol Pot.
The metal beds the prisoners were chained to while being tortured are still in the rooms, along with various devices they used to torture the prisoners.
After our intense day seeing the remnants of the Khmer Rouge massacres we enjoyed a sunset on the lake to wind down. The lake was in the middle of PP, and in the middle of the lake was a floating village built on wooden rafts.
Just outside of Phnom Penh on the way back from the killing fields. We rented a moto for the day and had fun melding into the chaos and narrowly avoiding death on the streets of PP. You see, there really are no rules to driving...none. Sure, there are "lights" and "lanes" and "stop signs" that you are supposed to obey, but no one does. Very often you turn left into oncoming traffic and just drive in the wrong lane until you can get over to the right one.
You may be asking why an elephant is walking down the middle of a very busy street in the middle of PP. I wish we could tell you, but this scene was not uncommon; we saw another elephant in our lane the day before.
A Cambodian gas station. The other popular method of distriubtion is filling empty liquor bottles with gas and selling them on the side of roads. It took us a while to realize it wasn't liquor. Occasionally you'll run into a "normal" gas station.
Mike on our moto bike with lots of room to manuveur.
Phnom Penh to the Border: Off the Beaten Track in Cambodia
Forget 7 in a Honey Bucket...try 9 people in a Toyota Camry! Booyeah! We rode with 7 other people (granted two of them were very small children, but still!) in a "share taxi" from PP to the border of Cambodia/Thailand. Altogether a 8 hour journey in class and comfort...or maybe just class.
Luckily, our younger co-passengers were well behaved, relitively quiet, and incredibly (incredibly!) cute. They also smelled better than us...since our supply of fresh clothes was running thin (read: non existent). Their father bought us all kinds of goodies: jackfruit, a "doughnut" like object, and an egg like our little friend is eating.
A sign that Cambodia is still recovering and developing is the unpaved and bridgeless roads. Here's one of the four car ferries we took on our way to the border. Luckily, they had enough interesting foods for sale at each crossing to keep us occupied. Mike had what can best be described as a snowcone with green peas in the bottom and half a can of sweetened condensed milk on top (which he is currently addicted to).
