Phnom Penh

As you've probably guessed, this blog is going to be a depressing one, so apologies in advance for that! Yes, entering Cambodia proved to be another culture shock, although not as bad as coming into Vietnam. Phnom Penh, for an Asian capital, is actually quite relaxed and calm, which was a nice surprise. The striking thing here is the poverty. We saw scenes like this before when we were in Indonesia a few years back, but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with it a second time. Small children are constantly begging for food and money, and at night we saw whole families camped out on just a blanket by the side of the road. It breaks your heart, and you know that even if you gave them the whole contents of your wallet it wouldn't change a damn thing.

The sights around the city are numerous, but those which most tourists (including ourselves)come to visit are those linked to the history of the Khmer Rouge regime. Our first stop was Tuol Sleng, originally a school but taken over by the Khmer Rouge in the 70s and turned into a prison where thousands of innocent people were interrogated and tortured before being sent off to be executed. These days the site is a museum dedicated to the victims; there's a chilling account of the atrocities committed, photos of the victims and accounts from relatives of the victims and from the few survivors, tiny cells where the victims were held, and more. It's not for the faint hearted (I was close to tears on several occasions) but as with the War Remnants Museum that we visited in Vietnam (which had similar exhibitions on the Vietnam War) I learned so much history - history we really should be more aware of since it happened in our lifetime - and got a better understanding of, and sympathy for the people here and the current situation in these countries.

Our second trip in Phnom Penh was to the Killing Fields at Cheung Ek, which was the final resting place of the above victims. Such peaceful green fields, it would have been hard to imagine what had happened here had it not been for an enormous memorial filled with the skulls of the victims, which brought back all the sad feelings of yesterday's trip.


On a happier note, it's only 16 days until Christmas Eve!! It doesn't seem Christmassy at all here in spite of the efforts of some guesthouses and restaurants who put up christmas trees with fake snow (not really sure why since the majority of people here aren't Christian). Mikko saw a Santa Claus walking down the street the other night. Then again, we also saw an elephant :-)

Tomorrow we move on to a place called Battambang. I don't really know much about the place but it's a convenient place to break up the journey before we take a boat trip onwards to Siem Reap where we'll do some SERIOUS temple trekking!