After our quiet time in Sihanoukville we was both extremely looking forward to getting on with our sight seeing in Cambodia and our next town of Phnom Penh. Arriving at the hotel we discovered that it was only a short walk to the riverfront, bars and restaurants so we had struck lucky with the location. Dropping our rucksacks we headed off for a walk around and to get some tea. One of the nicest looking bars along the front was an Irish bar called Paddy Rice. It immediately caught our attention due to the advertisement of the showing of the Lions rugby tour which we was keen to watch. We decided to have some dinner here so sitting out side and tucking in to our tea we watched the busy street. We soon realised sitting on this street wasn't a great idea due to the amount of beggars and child street sellers that pester you. There are also alot of women with small children begging here and one of them in particular made us fairly angry. We noticed one woman walking past begging, holding a small baby probably around a year old and another small two year old boy in tow walking behind. The two year old had no clothes or shoes (except for a tiny pair of undies) and followed closely in his mothers footsteps. The road that the bar is on is manic with cars and motorbikes and she decided to leave the little boy sat by this road on his own for around twenty minutes while she continued begging further along. Finally she reappeared after the staff from the bar went over to the little boy to stop him wandering off on his own and crossing the road. The whole bar couldn't believe what they were seeing as the little boy started to fret for his mother and when she eventually came back the staff had words with her about leaving him alone. It was then a different begging woman walked close by to the boy and discreetly smacked him on his head to make him cry; Looking over her shoulder to see if anyone had seen she then scampered away, probably to enhance the chances of people giving him money. It really was disgraceful at the neglect shown to this little boy in order to beg. We saw this mother and child on a number of occasions. Another time he was hiding behind a car stuffing money into his underpants!
The following day we had organised with the TukTuk driver to take us to the Killing fields and the S-21 genocide museum. The S-21 genocide museum is actually an old highschool which was then transformed into a prison in 1975, Tuol Sleng, which was used to torture people and keep them till they was transported to the killing fields for execution. The prison was huge and as we wandered around each of the buildings there was collections of photographs and display cases of the evidence of violence that went on there. Again a very strong photo exhibition and it was hard to look at some of the images of the tortured people. One of the buildings was left completely as it was found and we wandered around the cells in which they kept their prisoners. It was a very interesting exhibition and gave you a huge insight into what the prisoners went through before they even entered the killing fields. The TukTuk driver continued our tour and we arrived at the killing fields 14km away. Looking from a distance, it looks like a large memorial garden as the front is manicured and the side is an orchard. However as you walk around and listen to the audio headset it show things that you would otherwise walk past without realising what went on, for e.g. a palm tree in which the guards tore parts of the bark away to use as weapons to slit peoples throats. Many mass graves were exhumed over the years and as you reach the back of the killing fields there are signs that tell you what was found in each one. There are display cases of bones and teeth found which resurface every year because of the rainy season. There was also a tree which was used to whack small children against and then they tossed them into the mass grave beside it. Adults were beaten with garden instruments in order to save on bullets and a large tree was on show in which speakers where hung off its branches to play music loudly at night to cover the screams of the people dying. Many graves wasn't even exhumed because over the years a big pond developed and covered them, so there are probably many bones still left in the earth. To finish the tour you end up at the memorial building which has over 8000 skulls and thousands more bones encased. It was quite upsetting to look at and listen to the headset as it described what happened there and what people went through. After a long walk round and another exhibition to look at we was fairly tired and headed back to the hotel.
The following day we decided to have a wander around the royal palace. A beautiful site which housed some amazing buildings and temples and some lovely paintings of gods and scenery. It was great to see some nice architecture and made a change from our usual activities. It also made us more excited for Siem Reap as we looked at the miniature Angkor Wat sculpture knowing we would be wandering round it soon.
Unfortunately we got back to some news that are passports would be delayed in getting back to us from the Thai embassy. Our application for our 2 month visas to Thailand would take a little longer to be completed so now our trip to Siem Reap would last for 10 days instead of the 5 in which we had planned to stay, and our passports would be forwarded onto our hotel there. Unfortunately as our application landed on a Friday afternoon and the start of a weekend, it also didn't help with the delay.
I think we would prefer to spend our delayed time in the smaller quieter town of Siem Reap then spend it all in the city busy hectic city of Phnom Penh. Also we got a great deal on our next hotel in Siem Reap: the New Riverside Guesthouse looks fairly posh and is a bargain at $20 per night as it includes breakfast and has a swimming pool. Yay! We rounded off the day nicely with a trip to watch the Muay Thai fighting at the local television studio. Always a great night out.
However all in all Phnom Penh turned out to be quite a nice city and I was fairly impressed with it's layout. Although a little dirty and smelly in some places it was still well worth visiting and we was definately impressed by the history of the city, even though some of it was sad. We are now heading to Siem Reap to visit the amazing temples of Angkor and the famous Angkor Wat: this is what I planned as our main reason for being in South East Asia so I am fairly excited that the time is now upon us! Bye for now, Hayls and Jonathan x