We arrived in PP from Bangkok late in the afternoon. Lane discipline, let alone direction are pretty irrelevant as a swarming mass of mopeds, tuk tuks and everything else with wheels goes nose to tail. Our hotel is awesome, owned by French, great design and layout, check it out on;
www.lamaisondambre.com
each room is named after a movie, ours is "In The Mood For Love"! I'm not adverse to romance but, it's a little disconcerting to ring down to reception and say, "this is Mr Parsons in the mood for love.....
Downtown revolves around the river front with lots of bars and hotels, the river Sap is a tributary to the mighty Mekong delta. Locals gather en masse to do exercise classes watched by the drinkers and smokers massed in the tourist ranks! The Mekong is blue, flowing through five countries while the tributary is brown! It's busy, and having not found the restaurant we were looking for we went back to the hotel to enjoy an al fresco dinner and, then a great sleep.
Weather's great and after a walk to get a recommended breakfast you become aware of wide boulevards dating back to French colonial rule, from which Cambodia gained independence in the 50's. We had an obligatory tuk tuk tour, this is a carriage connected to a moped, of the city to get the lay of the land. It's at this point we have to plead naive ignorance as we see lots of Gary Glitter types with young girls and boys in tow, it's quite disarming to see in proliferation. Apparently, they mainly come from the provinces and have been subjected to abuse. In one of the rare cases that reached court, the girl's mother was also complicit! There was a leaflet at the tourist office entitled Child Sex Tourism which Angelka held up to her face whenever she was confronted by it!
The Royal Palace is quite a tour, apart from the main pagoda which is shut as the ex King, who died in October, is lying in state. We then visited an amazing Buddhist temple called Wat Phnom which is full of idols and amazing friezes.
The food, cafes, attractions, tuk tuks are all cheap and you could get by on $75 a day for the two of you very comfortably. Everybody that we have come into contact with has been friendly and quite charming!
No trip to PP would be complete without a visit to the killing fields. The enormity of the Khmer Rouge's genocide is contained within one monument. 3 million of the countries 8 million died between 1975-9! Our guide lost 8 members out of his 10 family members. Incidentally, he was allowed to answer all of our political questions relating to pre 1979 but none subsequently! His licence depended upon it! At this point it should be pointed out that the current Prime Minister used to be a member of the Khmer Rouge! At the site, 8000 skulls were found but it has only been 75% excavated. I'll spare you the details but its another reminder of man's inhumanity to one another in our lifetimes, usually in pursuit of some political or religious idealogy.
On to Angkor Wat, the last wonder of the world we've yet to visit....