Phnom Penh

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Sorry for the lack of contact over the past few weeks. As you may have guessed I have been having an amazing time traveling in Cambodia with my friend, Lou. I arrived in Phnom Penh and settled into a guest house, which I quickly realised couldn’t be Lou’s first home from home and after spending the night having food poisoning …it was time to move on! I dragged myself out of bed and moved to a lovely guest house with air conditioning, a rare treat but necessity as Cambodia seemed to be 10 degrees hotter than Laos!! Luckily due to circumstances which will never be discussed again (sorry to mention it Lou!) I was able to have a day in bed before I met Lou at the airport. We had an emotional reunion and made our way to our guest house. Luckily the one thing Lou remembers from that first tuk-tuk journey is seeing a huge black rat running across the road in front of our guest house…perfect! It seemed to be the place for animals to dwell, as we had a small puppy camped outside our door and later in the week we were greeted by monkeys on the road.

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Throughout our time in Phnom Penh both Lou and I were feeling slightly fragile so we spent the morning’s sight seeing and the late afternoons and evenings relaxing and catching up. On our second day we had lunch in a restaurant on the riverside and wandered along the river to the National Museum and Grand Palace. The Grand Palace was a beautiful building with gorgeous gardens, including a miniature Angkor Wat. We saw the ornate silver floor and the emerald Buddha in the Silver Pagoda. Throughout all of these wonderful sights Lou and I were both wearing very flattering white t-shirts we had to hire…the making of some fabulous photos!

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On our next day Lou and I immersed ourselves in the history of Cambodia. In Laos I had read a book called ‘First they killed my father’ which I thought had prepared me for the day ahead, how wrong I was. Our first stop was the Tuol Sleng genocide museum, which was the former Khmer Rouge S-21 Prison. Over 10,000 people were held as prisoners, tortured and killed in just 3 years. The prison was a former school and we saw how the classrooms had been changed into individual cells, were the prisoners were shackled with chains fixed to the walls or the concrete floors. Before the prisoners were placed in cells they were photographed and these photos were displayed throughout the museum. A chilling and emotional reminder of just some of the lives lost during the genocide.

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Our tuk-tuk driver also drove us to the outskirts of Phnom Penh to visit the Killing Fields. The first sight you see as you walk through the gates is the monument which has been built in memory of the lives which were lost. Inside the monument are a small number of the skulls and human bones which were excavated from the site. As we walked around the mass graves Lou pointed out the human bones which remained in the pathways. My main memory from that day is seeing a tree next to one of the graves. The ‘killing tree’ was used by the soldiers to knock the child prisoners unconscious before they were added to the grave…they were buried alive.

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An emotional day which I am sure will remain in Lou and my thoughts forever.