I arrived home mid-morning yesterday. Can’t really say that I am happy to be back. The trip was way too much fun, and as crazy as it was, it was way too relaxing. I enjoyed not caring if I was clean, not worrying (too much) about safety as we did crazy things, only caring where the next curry might come from.
The adventure started very, very early on Monday morning. Debra arrived about 1 am and our flight to Phnom Penh was scheduled for 6:45 am. So we had about 3 hours between airport trips. There was not much sleeping. First stop in the airport was the coffee shop, which conveniently had free foot massage machines. We took advantage and as we caffeinated and we massaged. The flight was pretty empty, so we were able to get our own rows for stretching out. We were pretty giddy at the start, but each managed to snooze a tiny bit on the flight.
Thanks to the one hour time difference, we arrived in Phnom Penh, just after 7 am. We got to our guest house, navigated the crazy stair case (each stair was different height and width, luckily we managed not to kill ourselves on them) and settled in for a bit. After arranging our bus to Siem Reap for the next day, we negotiated a tuk tuk ride out to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek.
The tuk tuk ride was a total adventure. Choeung Ek is outside of the city, so we had a long ride and almost hurt ourselves laughing. While cars mostly stay in their lanes, tuk tuks do not always follow the normal rules of the road. When making a right-turn, the tuk tuk would move into the on-coming traffic as it merged it’s way over to the right side of the road. At one T intersection, it was every vehicle for themselves; total madness. We eventually weaved our way through, only tapping into one moto, and headed down a wet, dirt road. It was a pretty steep drop and the tuk tuk slid a lot, once sliding into the moto in front of us (no one even bruised, but lots of laughter).
The Killing Fields are very depressing. Everyone walks around with a sombre expression, barely speaking. Near the entrance is a glass stupa filled with skulls recovered around Choeung Ek. You are encouraged to walk through the inside, and most visitors do, looking slightly ill and totally mortified. The silence in the stupa comes naturally as no one knows what to say, think or feel. After the stupa, you can wander through the grounds and see the holes left from the mass graves. There are signs indicating where the buildings once stood. As you walk along the back fence, there are cute children that will pose for photos for $1 and give you a well rehearsed speech of sorrow as they beg for more dollars. By the third child you know most of the lines of the speech yourself. Some kids are better at selling it than others, we took pity on two of the first boys we saw. All in all, it was a very depressing stop.
On our way back to the guest house, we heard what sounded like screaming kids coming up behind our tuk tuk. Turned out is was a truck full of pigs being taken to market. They were standing on each other up to about 3 deep (Do you still hear the screaming, the screaming of the lambs pigs?).
We negotiated with our driver to drive us all day for $10. Because our next stop was closed during lunch time, we stopped at our room and power napped for an hour before heading out to lunch and Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. Lunch was at the ever so cute, outdoor cafe Boddhi Tree, and the first of many, many curries.
The Khmer Rouge was very good at documenting the torture inflicted on their victims at S-21, a former school. In the first set of rooms you see where victims were tortured. Today you see the beds, the leg irons and maybe some of the items used to torture the victims. Each room contains a photo of a victim being tortured. I don’t even want to think about the stains that remained on the floors and walls. From the torture rooms, you moved to rooms and rooms of photos of the victims. As each prisoner arrived at Toul Sleng, they were photographed and documented. The documents were lost, but the photos remained behind and are now displayed as a reminder. There were a few boards of photos of very young children. I realised that those children were my age, or would have been had they not been systematically murdered. From the photos, you moved into the prison cells. There was a lot of history to read, but most of the museum was visual evidence of what occurred at the prison.
We had a bit of time left before everything closed and needed to lighten the day up, so we headed over to the Royal Palace and silver pagoda. We had about 30-45 min to run around the grounds and take in all the beauty.
At dinner time, we left to guest house to see that our tuk tuk driver was still hanging around outside, so for a few more dollars we had him take us to the river, to eat next to Tonle Sap. When we arrived, we were the only non-locals in the place. As the evening wore on, we laughed as we watched group after group of tourists walking in holding the same Lonely Planet book, their finger conveniently marking the page.
On the way home from dinner, with a different driver, our tuk tuk stalled. In the middle of the intersection. We jumped out and helped push it across the road. Luckily our driver got it started again and took us the few remaining blocks home.
It was a great day in Phnom Penh.