After arriving on the boat from Chau Doc, we got settled in at The Kabiki, a friendly little French-owned hotel. The street to the hotel is blocked off by security personnel because the Prime Minister's residence and the residences of some of his family members are nearby. That evening, we walked to dinner and saw the Independence Monument all lit up.
The next day, our first stop was the National Museum of Cambodia. The museum has one of the largest collections of Khmer art and artifacts in the world. The audio guide was extensive and all 4 of us enjoyed learning about Khmer history and art during our visit.
We ate lunch at Friends, a restaurant that trains disadvantaged children so that they can find employment in restaurants and the hospitality industry. Not only was the food delicious, it was nice to support such a well-intentioned program. Afterwards we headed on to the Royal Palace via this incredibly bright (and incredibly hot) bright yellow square that houses giant pictures of the Cambodian royals.
Our guide explained the murals on the walls to us and showed us the traditional clothes of royal attendants. The entire Palace staff wears the same color on the same day of the week (purple, which our guide was wearing, is for Tuesdays).
We also saw the Silver Pagoda, which is inside the Palace walls. This pagoda is best known for its more than 5,000 silver floor tiles and its 90 kilogram (198 pounds) golden Buddha. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed inside, so we only got one of the outside of the building.
We also saw the giant, ornate stupas that house the remains of royals.
There was also an interesting small exhibit of royal palanquins (chairs on poles carried by attendants) and howdahs (the chairs that go on the back of an elephant for riding).
We returned to the hotel in the afternoon so the boys could swim and we could all relax a bit. We're quickly finding that getting out of the sun for a few hours in the afternoon is the difference between a great day and an exhausting one. The heat and humidity here is unreal!
At dinner, Emmett was excited to order grilled tarantulas, which are a local favorite. As the restaurant menu said, "Cambodian students eat tarantulas like Westerners eat french fries." With Emmett's lead, we all ate various amounts/parts of tarantulas that night. I choked down a crispy leg but stopped there....all 3 boys, however, ate at least a full tarantula. They all agreed the middle part was the tastiest.....I took their word for it.
Halfway through dinner another torrential SE Asia downpour started. We moved inside to finish our meal, and by the time we were done the streets were completely flooded. Our brave tuk-tuk driver managed to finally get to our hotel street (after having to try several different routes because the water was too high), but because he wasn't allowed to drive further than the barricade we had to walk the last 100 meters ourselves, wading through shin-deep Phnom Penh street/rain water. Yuck.
The next day we did something new-- the boys stayed at the hotel with a babysitter for most of the day. Bob and I went to two sites significant during the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s. We felt the sites would be too graphic for the boys (and turned out we were right), which is why they stayed behind. So our first day without our kids in over 4 months was spent at genocide museums. While certainly not the lightest or most romantic of days, Bob and I both learned a tremendous amount about the Khmer Rouge and the events of 1975-1979.
Our first stop was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This site is also known as S-21 (Security Prison 21), and around 20,000 people were imprisoned here during the 4 years of the Khmer Rouge regime. Of those 20,000 people, only 7 are confirmed to have survived, thanks to special skills that they were able to use to stay alive (such as translation or painting). Prisoners were arrested without knowing what they were accused of, and they were viciously tortured (sometimes multiple times a day) at this site.
We didn't take a lot of pictures at S-21 because 1. Pictures are mostly forbidden inside the buildings, to respect those who suffered and died there, and 2. The exhibits, which include detailed pictures of prisoners (alive and dead), torture instruments, and human remains, were so emotionally consuming that taking photos even where they were allowed felt wrong. I did take a photo of the memorial that's been built inside the S-21 grounds, though. And if you want to read more about the history of S-21 and see pictures of some of the facilities, you can click here.
From S-21, we tuk-tuk'ed south of Phnom Penh to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. This site is also called the "Killing Fields", and while it is the most well known it is far from the only one--there are hundreds of similar sites throughout the country. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge killed about 1.7 million people from 1975-1979, or about 21% of the entire Cambodian population at the time. Prisoners were brought to this site and beaten or bludgeoned to death because the regime didn't want to waste money on bullets to shoot them. Their bodies were dumped (or fell) into mass graves.
The audio guide (which was excellent) mentioned that, particularly after heavy rains, remains of victims rise up from the mass graves and are still found--40 years later. There was a torrential rain the night before we visited this site.....and, as we walked along, Bob and I saw not one but two sets of human teeth visible in the dirt. As well as pieces of clothes that had also risen up from the mass graves and been gathered up into piles. It was a sight I won't soon forget.
The memorial stupa in the center of the site houses more than 5,000 human skulls. They are grouped by age (from children to elderly people), and many have been shattered or smashed.
The day was an extremely heavy one, but I'm really glad that we went to both sites. Bob and I learned a lot about recent Cambodian history and we were able to share this with the boys later (without exposing them to really graphic images). We talked with them about what Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge wanted to accomplish, about the millions of people who were killed by the regime, and about the effects of that genocide on the country to this day. The violence and killing was so extensive that almost everybody in Cambodia was directly affected in some way.
For our final day in Phnom Penh, we didn't have much planned since we'd seen most everything on our list at that point. The highlight of the day was attending a performance of Cambodian Living Arts. This group is dedicated to teaching and expanding traditional Cambodian arts, particularly since 90% of Cambodian artists were murdered during the Khmer Rouge regime.
The show included a variety of traditional Cambodian dances, including a buffalo sacrifice ritual, Apsara dancing, a traditional fishing dance, and other dances. We try to see at least one performance in every country, and this was our introduction to the Cambodian performing arts. It was a great evening and a great end to our time in Phnom Penh!
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