Phom Penh

We’ve negotiated the visa on arrival desk (check your change carefully), walked through customs and used the wifi at Burger King to give us a chance to find our bearings and prepare for the usual onslaught of transport providers who litter so many global airports. There is a public bus for 1,500riel just 100m away but it stops about 2km from our hotel and it’s raining heavily so we settle on a tuk tuk. The tuk tuks here are different to Thailand. They are more like chariots that can seat four Westerners or probably about eight locals facing both forwards and backwards. Fortunately, the passenger area is dry though many of the riders themselves get soaked by the rain.

I had read that the traffic here is terrible but it is merely reminiscent of the Indonesian island of Java with the exception that there are more large late-model SUVs here. I feel no anxiety or nerves at all riding in the melee. The tuk tuk ride gives us a chance to take stock of where we are. So much is now familiar after a few trips to South-East Asia. There’s the usual configurations of shops and stalls, the hectic traffic, the damp-affected buildings and the tropical greenery forcing its way through any crack or crevice that it can.

The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide is not a place for the feint hearted or weak of spirit. But the people who were imprisoned were not as fortunate as us to have the choice to leave or turn off their audio tour if things got too rough. Over a four year period, some 20,000 lives were lost here. The magnitude is made even more terrible when you see how relatively small this former-high school complex is.

On a personal level I am again moved by the willingness of the world to turn a blind eye and ear to stories of secret prisons, torture and murder. I wonder how much we as humans have actually learned from places like this and other similar memorials worldwide. In the words of German Ambassador Baron von Marshall when speaking about Cambodia’s rebuilding and future:

“It reminds us to be wary of people and regimes which (sic) ignore human dignity. No political goal or ideology however promising or important or desirable it may appear can ever justify a political system in which the dignity of the individual is not respected.”

I am afraid to think of how many more memorials like this will be required in other parts of the world in the future.

Make no mistake about it: Phnom Penh is loud. The sound of traffic along the main roads is constant. I can only imagine how dusty the air must get here during the dry months when there’s no water to hold down the grime. All the online guides recommend against walking here due to the tight squeezes you will find yourself in but Paul and I always ignore that advice. 

We meander along the Mekong River stopping to take some photos and avoiding the scammers. First is a man who approaches and starts telling us things as though he’s our guide. We tell him that we are just going for a walk. He persists. I speed up to walk off. Paul manages to shake him shortly thereafter. Later a second man will try to strike up a conversation as we enter a wat(temple). He tells us he likes our shirts. I’ve read about this con and tell him we’re not interested. He becomes agitated and persists. We walk into the wat with purpose, dropping him. He calls out after us that he’s “not a tiger” and that he was “just being friendly” and that we should “not be so rude”. Cons are the same the world over too. 

Kandal Market is not far from Wat Ounalom. It’s narrow lanes are packed with vendors selling meats, vegetables, fruits and flip flop shoes. Ladies sit in raised wooden stalls butchering meat on the stall floor using huge heavy cleavers. Others separate the various gizzards of chickens into different bowls. It’s loud and smelly but still pleasant. We are not of great interest to the marketeers because their primary source of income are locals so walking through here is quite easy.Read more