Phnom Penh

Thursday we took a $6 bus to Phnom Penh.  A very inexpensive way to take a 5 hour journey.  The bus was mostly locals, and about 1/3 foreigners.  Not a particularly comfortable way to travel, but a chance to see the countryside and to catch up on the latest Cambodian and Thai pop videos and music blasted through the bus.  See my previous posts about the standard of driving.  I note also that the bus' horn would have sounded at least 3-5 times per minute throughout the 5 hour journey - a nice combination with the Cambodian pop.  The driver sounded the horn each time we dodged a truck, another bus, a car, a motorbike, a bicycle, pedestrians or livestock.

 

My experience of PP began with being horribly harassed while getting off the bus and trying to collect our bags.  The tuk-tuk drivers were very insistent (and even physical) but ultimately we picked a driver and headed off to our hotel (Boddhi Tree - ok, but not special).  After we'd settled in we went out to explore the city.  Wat Phon, the temple-mountain (a popular attraction) is a horrible waste of time.  An extremely unimpressive temple on a little hill, riddled with beggars.

 

We then walked along an ugly highway and other roads through extremely dangerous traffic until we found the Royal Palace about a half-hour later.  You can't actually go into the Royal Palace, but the grounds and pavilion around it, which you can visit, totally suck except for a nice emerald buddha in a pagoda with a floor of silver tiles.

 

Fortunately, the National Museum was really good and our first positive PP experience.  It was not particularly informative, but the pieces of ancient sculpture and other antiquities (dating back as far as the sixth century) were very impressive. A number of pieces from the Angkor temples, removed here for safe-keeping, along with sculptures from other earlier eras.  Some fantastic huge stone heads from Angkor Thom and some of the most beautiful pieces of sculpture I've seen.

 

After that, drinks at the Foreign Correspondents Club (a very atmospheric colonial-feel bar upstairs and overlooking the harbour).  We felt very much like we were in a bubble away from the outside PP (for western tourists) of constant harassment - and it felt like a timewarp back to the pre-revolutionary days of the 1960s.  Followed up by dinner at Friends, a restaurant run by an NGO as part of a project to train street kids in the hospitality industry (thanks for the recommendation Jon) - a great experience and great food.

 

Today before we left PP we managed to get to the Killing Fields, the Tluong Sleng museum (S21) and the Russian Markets.  The Killing Fields and S21 were just unbelievably depressing - sites of unimaginable killing and torture during the Pol Pot regime.  The S21 photos of torture victims (before and after) are horribly affecting, as were the paintings of the torture scenes displayed next to the actual instruments of torture.  The place had a very strong feeling of evil and sadness and was absolutely horrible.  The Killing Fields don't actually have that much to see - other than the monument with glass walls and filled with thousands of skulls which left me feeling empty and sick and almost numb and a whole series of holes which used to be mass graves. 

 

On a totally different note, the Russian Markets were actually good - they are used both by tourists and locals and gave a taste of life of the Cambodians living in PP.

 

Overall, we weren't that sorry to be leaving PP this afternoon to begin the next leg of our holiday in Malaysia.