First Big Asian Stop: Phnom Penh

Hey there

Finally getting to the content of this thing, but I've only just gotten wired in my residence in Singapore, so this will be slow in being updated. I figure I'll start up with Asia and try to do this in chronological order. Peter and I did Vancouver for a few days before, but those pics will be up later. And in no way are these all of my pictures, I just want to give a quick summary on here. That, and I've had a long day, so I'm going to sleep as soon as this is done.

So, after ripping my hair out in Singapore trying to store my bag and get some paperwork done, I ran as fast as I could to get a flight the heck out so I could travel a bit. It turns out that registration was a week before I thought it was, so I therefore only had 3 weeks instead of the 4 I thought, so I looked for what would be a good starting point. Since I was already intimidated by Singapore at first (jet lag really sucks, and the heat and humidity here is unreal), I figured Bangkok would be a bad place to start, so I booked the next flight to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Next morning, got to the airport at 4am for the flight.



So, Cambodia definitely looked flat from the airplane. I was not dissapointed there, it makes Saskatchewan look like the Rockies.

Starting the day at just after 8am, I got my visa ($20 US at the airport. As I would later find out, the reason Singapore would give me no Riel, the local currency, is that it is used as chump change. Everything is done in terms of US dollars. If something is less than a dollar, which is often, the change is given in riel, which is about 4000 per USD), then off to get a guest house and off for the sights. Phnom Penh had a lot to see just off the back of the motorcycle taxi (a moto), from the occasional gold building, to the far more frequent tin roof held up by sticks. Everyone has a spirit house outside of their house, and that seems to be the concentration of the families' wealth.
So yeah, that's just a shot from riding on the back of a moto (oh, yeah, Mom, you're not supposed to read the motorcycle stuff)

As I said, I went to Phnom Penh, since it made a good starting point to the trip to get around to some of the sights I wanted to see. Since I figured Bangkok would be too overwhelming, of course I should start my sightseeing at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, the place where the Khmer Rouge regime of the 70's killed tens of thousands of people.

When you first drive up, the first thing you see is the temple, or Stupa. On the very flat land, it's easily the first thing that draws your attention.

The smell of incence is nice, and it was rather sunny. It's very easy to see how pretty this little temple is.

That is until you notice the thousands of skulls that fill it up.
Intimidating, yes. And a bit strange how the genocide that happened here is a tourist attraction. but then, I was a tourist visiting it, so what do I know.

So, after the stupa, time for a stroll around the fields themselves. Not that big of an area, but with signs like this dotting the place, adding helpful tidbits in broken Engrish about how many headless corpses this particular site had in it, I found that it took me a while to get through it all.
The pits are everywhere, and you just sort of amble through them. At this point, the only thing that I can think of is how many different butterflies are here. Seriously, I have never seen so many different colors and shapes, not to mention so many together in one spot, as I did here. There's a temple of skulls right behind me. Strange country so far.


After the killing fields, it's a 20 minute moto back to the city to the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum. This was a highschool before the Khmer Rouge turned it into one of their worse prisons, from which only 14 people ever came out of alive.


A lot of it is just something like this. A room with a picture and the torture device in the middle of the room. Other rooms have stories about victims from family members, or some of the "before and after" pictures taken by the Khmer Rouge for their records. I have a few more graphic photos around, but I had to stop taking pictures after a while, it got to be pretty extreme. There's no tip-toeing around what happened here.


So, after cells and things, I'm still jetlagged, so I went back to my room for a quick nap. I figured a pretty picture was needed, since this first brush with Asia was more gruesome than I thought it would be.

A wander around the city was next. Two rivers meet in Phnom Penh, the Tonle Sap and the Mekong. There's a whole different set of slums over by the river, with street vendors and starving animals all over the place. Almost everything is in disrepair. But there are some really pretty carvings, and flowers carved out of coconut, and children all over the place playing soccer in every available space. Avoiding the games can be tricky, since vendors take up the sidewalks, and the traffic doesn't follow any particular side of the road, so you just have to walk out slowly and make sure they notice you before trying to get across.


Amidst all this activity, are government buildings, like the one below. I think this is the entrance to the palace complex, though from a funny angle.

There are very few buildings over 2 stories high, and absolutely no towers to speak of. However,


there ARE elephants. I figure that's pretty cool.

There are also a ton of Buddhist monks about. Apparently there's an academy for them here, so they line the streets. When trying to dodge traffic, a good rule is to go with the monk, since drivers tend to actually try to avoid them more often than the whities.


A quick turn from the Tonle Sap drag brings me to the only hill in the city, which houses Wat Phnom, or, "Temple on the Hill". the name Phnom Penh means "hill of Penh", Penh being the woman who found some statues at the site and started the city, according to local legend. Everyone in the picture is looking off to the side, since they're going to go feed some of the scads of monkeys that cover the place.

That night, I was eating in the guesthouse, and got talking to some Irish lads. I had been thinking about heading to Siem Reap the next morning, since I have now seen most of Phnom Penh's sights. They were going to be doing the same thing, so we all book on a bus together, and shipped out the next morning. Wave to the Independence Monument on the way out, and off to Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor.

Day one in Asia was certainly different than I expected.