We were backing on our ourselves for only the second time on the trip so far. Shanghai is the only other city we'd seen twice, even then we'd only stayed there a night each time. For Phnom Penh, we would be spending 4 nights. We had another early bus booked to take us on the 5 hour journey, through the small Cambodian villages and dusty countryside. We got picked up again from our hostel then carried on to the bus station to pick up those who had made their own way there. Before long we were off and bumping down the road towards Cambodia's capital. The road surface made it almost impossible to read, as we couldn't hold our books still enough to see the words. Instead, we made do with browsing out of the windows at the jungles and lines of child monks wandering by the edge of the roads. We both tried to get some sleep but again, the ride just wouldn't let us drop off. Time soon passed though and we were soon threading our way through the suburbs of Phnom Penh, dropping some people off at the airport along the way. There was another large group on the bus whose Cambodian tour guide had asked (and paid) the driver to drop them of at their hotel rather than the central bus station. Sensibly, during our single evening in Phnom Penh earlier in the week, we'd walked to where our hostel was so we would know where it was and what it looked like. After the hotel drop, we were driving down a road which looked awfully familiar and all of a sudden, our hostel flashed past the window. We yelled at the driver, who very kindly pulled over and dropped us off at the end of the road, which saved us 20 minutes of sweaty walking from the bus station. We checked in and cooled off for an hour or so in our room before deciding it was time for a trip to the local supermarket. This was our first hostel since Tokyo that had had a kitchen, so we were looking forward to cooking for ourselves rather than worrying about where to eat for a few days. We stepped out on to the street and were immediately hit by a barrage of "tuk-tuk, sir" from the drivers sitting outside our hostel. We politely declined and walked on and received more offers when we came to the first corner. We could see this was going to be a pain in the backside. Again, we just said "no, thanks" and carried on in the direction of the ATM we needed to find before we got to the shop. We arrived at the intersection where the ATM was and couldn't hear ourselves think for the shouting from numerous tuk-tuk drivers parked up on every corner. This time we just ignored them, got some money and headed off for the supermarket. We found it but it was slightly further away than we had anticipated and we had to weave in and out of a million tuk-tuks in order to get inside. We'd been eating rice constantly, through China, Vietnam and Cambodia, and we were starting to get slightly fed up with it. So we decided it was time for some plain old pasta instead. We also got some chicken, baked beans and bread, so we were pretty well covered. As we were wandering round the shop, we also caught a glimpse of something we had been craving since we had left home and hadn't found anywhere. Marmite!! It wasn't a hard decision, slightly pricey at $6 but undoubtedly it would be worth every cent. We checked out and headed home, still not desiring a tuk-tuk. I'd started to feel a bit nauseous while we were in the supermarket, so we relaxed in our room for a couple of hours before deciding to go down to the kitchen and have some food. I was still feeling quite bad and after 2 slices of Marmite on toast I didn't hang around for some more. It was a quick dash to the toilet and I brought it all back up. Charlotte stayed down and had a couple more slices then came up to check on me. We decided it would be best to sleep it off and so we went to bed.
Saturday
After the previous nights illnesses I wasn't feeling up for trapsing around in the heat all day. We cancelled our plans and shifted everything about for the next couple of days in order to squeeze everything in. Instead it was a rest day, writing up some of the blog, catching up with photos and avoiding tuk-tuk drivers.
Sunday
Normally our rest day, we'd swapped and it was to be one of our busiest days in a long time. Our first port of call was the Olympic Stadium. Phnom Penh has never held an Olympic Games and actually, has never even come close to hosting one, you've got to admire their optimism though. The stadium was actually built for an South-East Asia Peninsula Games in 1963, that never went ahead due to political reasons. Subsequently, the stadium was used as an execution site by the Khmer Rouge. When we got there it looked as though it was still under construction and there was no way we could access it through the huge and busy construction site. We decided to move on to our next port of call, which was the Independance Monument. It was a 20 minute walk along a road that seemed to specialise in selling only motorbikes and scooters. Soon enough the monument loomed up ahead and we crossed the busy road trip get a better view and some photographs. While we stood there admiring the monument a tuk-tuk driver pulled up and started shouting at us from the road. We ignored him, hoping he would go away but he got out and walked over to us trying to make small talk for a little while he gave up and went all in by trying to get us to use him to get to the Killing Fields and do a tour round the city. He would not understand that we didn't want to use him, when we wanted a tuk-tuk for any reason, we would get one ourselves. Reluctantly, he gave up and left us to our sightseeing. Next to the monument was a statue of King Father Norodon Sihanouk, who was the King of Cambodia from 1941-1955 and then again from 1993-2004, we took a few snaps and carried on. Next stop was the Wat Botum park, which had a large Cambodia-Vietnam peace monument in it. We wanted to take a photo but two separate groups decided to meet one another for the first time at the top of it and then proceed to have an entire conversation. Like the Brits we are we sat there and waited patiently for them to finish rather than shout at them and cause a scene. It did make us laugh when we realised the couple next to us were also British and also waiting quietly for them to move out of the way. An ironic cheer went up when they eventually moved on but they were oblivious to their ignorance. Lunchtime was upon us and Charlotte picked a road nearby that our map said was really good and contained some Boutique shops and some good cafes. We found the boutique chocolate shop first and thought we'd deserved a small treat. They produced and sold small chocolates like you'd find in a tin of Roses but they were all different colours, designs and flavours. We picked 4 different ones out to share between us, opting for Pineapple, Strawberry, Caramel and a local flavour that annoyingly neither of us can remember the name of. We tried them one by one in the afore mentioned order and they were all good, until we got to the last one, which was delicious, which makes forgetting the flavour of it all the more annoying. It was a nice shop, but slightly expensive for what you got. Our map informed us of a cafe down the road somewhere but after walking to the end it was nowhere to be seen. We figured it must be hidden somewhere, so we backed on ourselves and low and behold there it was, right next to the chocolate shop we had just been sitting in. We went in, had a nice, cold drink and a tasty sandwich each.
After our brief break from the sun we were back out heading in the direction of the National Museum of Cambodia. We aren't usually ones for museums but decided to take a punt on this one for a bit of a change of scenery. We walked up a road that just casually had half excavated holes in the ground that motorbikes were edging their way around on the pavements to avoid falling in, made a turn and we were there. Unfortunately, this is somewhere else where the tourists have a different set price for entry that the locals do. Our £5 fee didn't seem a lot when we paid it but when we found out the locals pay about 10p, we weren't particularly impressed. The museum is Cambodia's largest museum of cultural history and its leading historical and archaeological museum. Some of the rooms did give good information about practices of the local people and religions and it was very interesting to read all about it. On the other hand it was bulked out with thousands of statues of Buddha as well as other deities that had been collected from around the country. Still, we covered the whole museum, taking photos of what we could take photos of and admiring what we couldn't. After completing the museum, we still had one visit remaining for the day, the Royal Palace. It was only a short walk round the corner so it only took us 5 minutes to get to and we followed the crowds to the entrance. We didn't get much further than that though, as there was a large sign greeting everybody, informing us that we wouldn't be allowed in in vest tops or shorts above the knee. I was okay but Charlotte was guilty of both. We could have bought clothing to cover up with but decided we didn't want to go with that option. Instead, we would return the next day with appropriate clothing. We needed something to fill the gap of the Royal Palace but couldn't really think of anything to do. We wandered along the side of the Mekong River, admiring all the international flags waving in the wind. We found a bar on the other side of the road and decided to sit down and have a beer but this also turned out to be a disaster. Instead of noticing that they had customers, the staff were more interested in removing beer cans from a shelf. We waited for a few minutes but gave up and left, as we were never going to get a drink from them. Instead we headed to the local supermarket and picked up a couple of cans of Cambodia beer each to have with dinner. We had chicken and pasta with tomato sauce and I'm sure the beers were better than the ones we would have had by the river, cheaper too!
Monday
Today was the day we would finally be taking a tuk-tuk. The Killing Fields are an absolute must for anyone who visits Cambodia, as they show a very recent dark side to Cambodia's history. We had a tuk-tuk booked through our hostel and it was nice to see that he actually worked for the hostel, his tuk-tuk had the name of our hostel emblazoned on the side. This also meant that we were charged a price that is set by the hostel, so there was no haggling with the driver before we left. He was a nice chap and he let us choose where we went first, the fields or the prison. We opted for the Killing Fields as they were a bit of a trek out of town. We headed out through the hustle and bustle, took a turn off the main road and just like that we had entered rural Cambodia. We twisted and turned through the dusty road and pulled up outside some slightly unassuming gates. We entered, paid the entrance fee and donned our complimentary audio guides. Charlotte and I were determined to make the most of this visit and while we were there we listened to every entry that the guides had programmed on them. They contained about 20 main stops and the majority had side bits to listen to on top of them. All I can say about the Killing Fields is how horrific they were. It was an incredibly interesting experience but at the same time, it was worse than Auschwitz and the 2 Nuclear Bomb Museums in Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. How anyone could commit the atrocities the Khmer Rouge did against anyone, let alone their own people, is absolutely beyond my comprehension. Nobody was spared, men, women, children, the elderly, if they were shipped to the Killing Fields, they were goners. The worst part of the entire morning was when our audio guide directed us to an innocent looking tree known as "the Killing Tree". During the Khmer Rouge regime, officers would kill children and babies by swinging them at it by their feet. It was just terrible. Add that to open graves and boxes full of bones, it was nothing I'd ever really expected to see or hear. What brought it home even more than other examples of genocide or mass murder that we had seen in places, was that it was so recent. It was before our time but it is still fairly fresh in the minds of our parents who can remember when it was actually happening. The final stop was a macabre monument built for those who lost their lives. It contained Nagas and Garudas (mythical snakes and birds) in keeping with religious Cambodian architecture. Inside, it contained all the skulls that had been dug up from the area and they had been classed by age and cause of death. It was slightly creepy but well worth a visit. After we finished, we tried to cheer ourselves up by visiting a souvenir shop and picking up a pin badge that covered the whole of Cambodia (you've got to enjoy the little things!). It was a really interesting tour and we both really enjoyed it, in a morbid sort of way. Our next stop was linked in with the Killing Fields as it was formerly 'Security Prison 21' used by the Khmer Rouge between1975 and 1979. It is now called 'Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum' and shows what life was like, as well as many photos of the prisoners who passed through the prison. There wasn't as much to see here as at the Killing Fields but it was still interesting to see how the prisoners were kept during their time in the prison. The buildings at the prison had been preserved as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. Some of them still contain the beds the prisoners were tortured in. Some rooms portray individual account of the very few people who survived the prison, of whom one of them sells his book at the prison, although we couldn't locate him. There was even one room put aside for interviews with former members of the Khmer Rouge who are still alive today. We didn't find it as interesting as the Killing Fields but it was just as horrifying when you consider there were only 5 or so survivors from the 4 years that the prison was operating. We met our tuk-tuk driver outside and he ran us back to the hostel as we had no need for him for the rest of the day.
After a quick pit stop at the hostel we were back pounding the streets of Phnom Penh, heading in the direction of the Royal Palace. We were fairly hungry after quite a long day so we went for the cafe we had been too the day before and had throughly enjoyed and had pretty similar lunches this time round. We got to the Palace and this time were appropriately dressed to be granted access. It was more like a Cambodian Temple than a palace and we were just wandering around admiring the architecture, rather than heading inside. We stuck with it though, slightly bamboozled by the 7 year old French boy strolling around in a dress but that's just people today for you! There were some Pagodas to admire and statues of white elephants. There was even a large model of Angkor Wat in one of the courtyards. We avoided this though, preferring to see the genuine article when we got to Siem Reap. After an hour or so we exited and headed in the direction of home after 2 very long and tiring days. We had enough time left for one more highlight though. As we were walking down the road towards our hostel, Charlotte shouted out "Seagulls!!", to which I thought, that's strange, we are nowhere near the sea. I looked up though and there happened to be a bar called "Seagulls" whose name was flanked by the crest of Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club on either side. Just goes to show you are never that far from home and it was slightly disappointing that we had only just found it, if i'd gone in with my shirt on, I may have got a free beer!
Christmas beckoned and our next stop in Cambodia was Siem Reap.
James and Charlotte
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