Day 141: Phnom Penh

Throne Hall
see all photos »

Full day of land based excursions today, starting with the “Happy Morning” in central Phnom Penh, before the “Sad Afternoon” at genocide museums and memorials (quotes per our guide Manaya).

The Royal Palace is first on the itinerary and its stunning, much grander in scale and style than we’d expected. Within the complex there are a number of standalone buildings, mostly slightly temple like but with the ‘spikey’ roofs traditional in Khmer architecture. As the king still resides here not everything is accessible, but we do see the inside of the Throne Hall, Dance Hall (a previous king was a dancer?) and the Elephant Stables. We also take a wander inside the Silver Pagoda temple which has a tiled floor made of over 5 tonnes of the aforementioned precious metal, a 90kg life size gold Buddha inlaid with almost 10,000 diamonds (one large one of 25 carats) and its centrepiece Emerald Buddha (which is actually Jade, the original being stolen some time ago).

Phnom-enal

Iron House on left
see all photos »

Within the grounds we walk are also the Elephant Stables (now full of paintings of past and present royals and a huge model of a coronation procession); the Kings Waiting Hall which has a balcony for the purpose of mounting elephants ;and the very out of place Iron House, a ridiculous present from Napoleon apparently.

Later we visited the National Museum and its collection of artefacts, mostly statutes, from pre to post Angkor periods. Most of the statues are of Hindu or Buddhist gods, but some are mixed representing both – here in Cambodia the national religion changes with the Kings and as such has shifted between the two many times over many centuries and whilst currently most of the people are Buddhist the two happily co-exist today. The museum itself has a beautiful courtyard in which to find a shaded spot and rest a while.

Throne Hall
see all photos »

As expected the afternoon is pretty depressing, starting with our trip out to the Killing Fields about 16km outside the city. So far they have exhumed 86 of 129 believed mass graves, Khmer Rouge records having been found detailing the disposals of the horrific body count, and the skull and bone remains placed in a modern ‘stupa’ built in memorial. (The stupa is 50% glass and you can clearly see the thousands of skulls piled up in there – poignant but grim, so I’ll spare you all a picture)

Kings Waiting Hall
see all photos »

On the way back to the city we stop at what was once the Tual Sleng suburban school, but in 1975 became the infamous S21 detention centre. The cells aren’t great, but then we expected that. What does make more of an impact is the photo gallery with pictures of hundreds (if not more) of the 17,000 men, women and children who suffered here before being herded to one of the nearby killing fields to die. Telling us of the rise and fall of Pol Pot (Brother No 1) and the impact on the Cambodian people, our guide’s tangible emotion is a reminder that these atrocities occurred in our lifetime.

Dance Hall
see all photos »

After dinner on board we get ashore ourselves, grab a tuk-tuk, and head down to the world famous Foreign Correspondents Club. Its a nice enough place for a drink, but we’re not so sure why renowned, so we make a couple of stops in other bars as we wander back along the riverside to the ship - before they shut up the dock gate for the night!

Despite the gloomy subject matter of the afternoon we really quite like what we’ve seen of Cambodia's capital and its emergence from the recent horrors.  As such we're a little sad not to have more time to explore the old French colonial streets, temples, restuarants and bars – something for the next tour perhaps!