Phnom Penh

This little dancer loved the audience!
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Before moving on to Cambodia, we stayed in the border town of Chau Doc and were able to take a motorbike ride out to the countryside and up a small mountain to see the sun set and the town below. The clouds didn’t cooperate with our sunset, but we enjoyed the ride just the same. The following morning, we once again found ourselves on the Mekong river for a long ride into Cambodia.

We really weren’t sure what to expect in Cambodia as we really don’t know much about it. Our first stop was in the capital city, Phnom Penh. It’s a very busy city in a country that has had a very difficult and tragic history with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. We really didn’t understand all of this fully before our visit.

Impressive footwork!
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Our first day, we visited the Tuol Sleng Musuem (a former Khmer Rouge Prison) and the killing fields of Choeung Ek (where many of the prisoners from this prison were killed). Again, this was a very emotional day to learn how the leader of the country turned its own people against one another to eventually kill almost one third of the total population between 1975-1979 (1-3 million depending on the source) and revert to an agricultural, peasant nation. People were either exterminated if found to be intellectuals or they died of illness, starvation as they were forced to work the fields relentlessly for very little food or rest. Many families had to lie about their education and separate from one another in order to hopefully have some survive. Sadly, many of those recruited by Pol Pot’s army were children themselves and were brainwashed to spy on their own families and maybe even kill them. We also tried to understand the political implications of the Vietnam war had on enabling Pol Pot to gain the power to do this to his own country and how we really hadn’t heard anything about it as it was overshadowed by the Vietnam war. We secretly carpet bombed large areas of Cambodia as the Viet Cong moved in. If you haven’t read or seen the film “The Killing Fields” – you should. I made a point to read it while I was here and it summed up the history that we learned here pretty well but in a very personal standpoint from an American reporter and his Cambodian reporter/assistant that lived through it.

Mmm Mmm Good!! Just like Mom used to make!!!
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It’s also no wonder that this country has many remaining problems with poverty, orphans, HIV, child sex, etc. and the good news is that they are now getting more help internationally to assist them especially the youth. This is especially important as 50% of the population is younger than 17 years of age. It was nice that Intrepid and our tour leader support some local causes. We ate at one restaurant that supports orphans which was quite good – Veiyo Tonle. The highlight here was that the children performed traditional Khmer dancing as well which was wonderful to see as they really seemed to enjoy it (as well as all of our attention!). The other restaurant that we went to for lunch that supports the restaurant training of street kids was Friends. This was also very good and recommended.

Our wonderful dinner at a traditional Khmer home.
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On a lighter note, we found the Cambodian people to be very friendly and enjoyed getting to know our tour leader and our local guide. One of our highlights here was being invited to dinner at the home of our local guide that we spent the day with learning much about the history here. We saw what a traditional Khmer home looks like and found that four families actually live there together (extended family). The meal was definitely one of our favorites with a fabulous curry (that they only cook on special occasions), spring rolls, fried bananas, soup, pork meatballs, and a stirfry. Of course, the kicker here was that we were served fried tarantulas!!! I fear spiders probably more than any other living thing, so I couldn’t make myself try a tarantula, but Scott did. By the end of the night, I was actually open to holding a live one in my hand (see the goofy picture – it’s pretty sad!). Once we had our fun with the live one, he went in the spider wine that was fermenting in the corner of their house.

Nice that they were served on a plate anyway....
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Lastly, we visited the beautiful Royal Palace in the center of town and enjoyed our strolling on the streets without anyone honking at us (how nice!!!).

Now on to Siem Reap….