Exploring Cambodia's Capitol

We arrived in Phnom Penh on Monday evening after a full day on the boat and bus.  As Cliff and I were discussing where our hostels were and how we were going to get there we realized that the two places (with two different names) had the same address.  We shared a tuk tuk to that address and discovered that ours hostel was one and the same.  After we settled in and had a shower we left to go have dinner at a restaurant along the river.  We were both surprised at how modern and built up Phnom Penh appeared, especially in the touristy area on the water.

We were both pretty tired from our Mekong adventure, though Cliff had mentioned that his friend from high school now lived in Cambodia and was in town celebrating his friend's birthday.  Neither of us much felt like going out, but Cliff's friend who he had been texting all night wouldn't take no for an answer.  The next thing we know a chauffeured Mercedes Benz is pulling up to the curb and Cliff's friend, J., is getting out.  Cliff had warned me that J. was a bit of a high roller, but this was way more than we expected.  Apparently J.'s father owns a number of casinos along the Vietnam border and J. has just recently opened a few of his own.

We rode in the car to the city's only casino, which looked right out of Vegas and is owned by J. friend's father.  Playing at one of the tables was the Prime Minister's niece who is apparently friends with this whole circle.  We first went to a club downstairs where we sat in a curtained room and J. ordered a bottle of Hennessy.  We were only downstairs for less than half an hour when J. announced that we were going upstairs to a VIP suite.  There were only about eight of us by upon entered the first room, J. announced he wanted the "bigger room."  We got the bigger room complete with a pool table, huge bar, three or four slot machines, a wraparound couch and a karaoke machine.  The room could have hosted a party for several hundred people let alone the eight of us!  While Cliff played pool with J. and a few of the other guys I scanned the karaoke machine for all the none-Chinese songs.... not the easiest of tasks.  The liquor was free flowing, but luckily since the waitress was only half filling the shot glasses (which I would then dump into a bigger glass with soda) I didn't end up drinking that much.  Everyone else was another story.

The wildest part of the night was when we asked J.'s friend whose birthday it was to show us some of his work as an actor.  He put on a Cambodian music video he starred in and sang along for us to the lyrics.  Apparently J.'s friend is an up-and-coming Cambodian superstar!

Suddenly J. announced that he was hungry and though it was already 2:00am it was decided that we were all going to a restaurant to eat.  By this time the party had dwindled down to five, including me, Cliff, J., the birthday boy and the casino owner's son. We took two chauffeured cars to the restaurant where J. insisted we have a private room.   He then proceeded to order a ridiculous amount of food.  There was pork, rice porridge, snails and to top it all off turtle soup!  I tried a few snails and ate the broth in the turtle soup, but only tried a tiny taste of the actual turtle.  To be quite honest, the meat looked kind of nasty, though I guess it's actually a huge delicacy.  About an hour in, I was exhausted and full and honestly ready to go back home.  Finally at 4:00am, J. drove us back to our hostel and Cinderella's coach turned back into a pumpkin.

It was honestly really crazy to see the massive amounts of wealth that were concentrated in that one area.  J. must have spent several thousand dollars in that one night alone.  It's really sad when you compare it with the extreme poverty that exists in other parts of Cambodia.  Just that morning we had been walking through a poor rural village and that night we were partying with the Cambodian movers and shakers.  Apparently you're not even allowed to gamble in Cambodia if your Cambodian... unless you're one of the elite.  It was really interesting to see, but left me more than a little bit uncomfortable.

The next day both Cliff and I slept in past noon since we had gone to bed so late.  I knew Cliff was probably a bit hungover so I left while he was still asleep to have a leisurely brunch by the river.  Cliff was out when I got back so I decided to wander over to a temple I had seen from a distance nearby our hostel.  It turns out it was the Wat Phnom or Hill Temple, which occupies the city's highest point.  According to legend, the first temple was built in the 14th century by a woman named Penh to house four Buddha sculptures she found floating in the Mekong River.  It's supposedly where the city got it's name.  It was one of the most ornate temples I've ever seen, but I guess it was pretty standard for Cambodia.

On Wednesday, I went for a run in the morning and then Cliff and I took a short walking tour through the city. We started first at the Royal Palace where the King of Cambodia still lives.  The palace complex features the Silver Pagoda, which is named for the 5,000 silver tiles that cover the floor (that I apparently completely missed.)  We originally walked around the entire walled exterior looking for the entrance only to learn that the site was closed for lunch until 2:00pm.  We finally got inside a took a quick spin around before leaving to go to the National Museum.  That's when it started to downpour!  We went back to the palace and waited underneath a roofed seating area for the rain to let up.  With the rows of seats lined up facing one another it looked like we were all waiting for a bus.  We finally gave up and drudged to the museum while the rain was still coming down.

In the museum, we looked at lots of old sculptures of Buddhas and Angkor-era artwork.  With my interest in archaeology, the exhibits should have fascinated me, but as we started walking through I noticed my forehead felt a bit warm.  Cliff concurred that I felt hot, but instead of taking off I decided to charge on through.  I had a bit of trouble concentrating, though, and by the time we had made our way through and started heading back I was really not feeling all that great.  Of course I instantly concluded that I had caught malaria.

When we got back to the hostel I took my temperature and it was skirting 103.  I went down to talk to the ex-pat owner of the hostel and he ruled out dengue fever and even malaria since it takes seven days for the symptoms to appear.  After talking it over with Cliff who had had a similar experience in Beijing I decided I had a mild case of heat stroke since I hadn't been drinking much water.  It was also pretty stupid of me to have tried to run in the morning since I'm not used to the heat.  The one thing was that I didn't feel nauseous and actually wanted something to eat.  I had dinner, but canceled my bus to Siem Reap for the next day deciding I better wait it out.

Throughout the night my temperature fluctuated and in the morning I woke up drenched in sweat.  I planned to go to the British travel doctor next door, but didn't realize his office closed from 11:30am to 2:00pm.  While I was waiting for him to reopen after lunch, I decided to go visit the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and the S-21 Museum by tuk tuk since I had an extra day in town.

I went first to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, 14 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh, were the Khmer Rouge executed most of the 17,000 prisoners held at the S-21 prison during the reign of Pol Pot in the mid-1970s.  The prisoners were often beaten to death and pushed into mass grave sites to save costly bullets.  The site of the killings was a peaceful orchard, which is now covered in pits where the bodies of the thousands of victims have been recovered rom the earth.  On the grounds now stands a memorial stupa in which is displayed more than 8,000 skulls of the victims and their ragged clothing.  Even more disturbing than that is a tree the soldiers used to use to swing around babies and bash in their heads.  Pol Pot's men killed civil servants, former government workers, intellectuals, foreigners and anyone else they deemed a possible threat along with their whole families.  The shear insanity and brutality of it is unthinkable.

After the Killing Fields I headed back into the city to go to the Tuol Sleng S-21 Museum.  The building once served as a high school but became a prison upon being taken over by Pol Pot's security forces in 1975.  The former classrooms were turned into prison cells, which can be viewed as they were left by the Khmer Rouge with at most just a bed, some chains and other prison implements.  They are also thousands of photographs of the victims, both alive and in some cases after they were killed.  Only seven prisoners were alive at S-21, all of whom had some sort of useful skill, when the Vietnamese finally liberated Phnom Penh nearly four years later.

It was on April 17, 1975, that Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge soldiers first marched into Phnom Penh and ordered all of the inhabitants to get out immediately.  The citizens were told they could return home in three days time, but instead were either killed or conscripted into slave labor growing rice for the new communal agrarian society.  Many of those not killed at the hands of the soldiers died slowly of starvation.  It is estimated that at least 1.7 million people died in the three years, eight months and 20 days of Pol Pot's reign.  It is amazing to me that it was only as recently as January 7, 1979--the day before my older sister was born--that the Vietnamese liberated the almost-empty capitol city.  In that 32 short years, Phnom Penh has come back to life and is thriving.  In spite of its continuing problems with poverty, Cambodia and its people have captivated and enchanted me.  The fact that they are so resilient and have overcome so much is awe-inspiring.  I know they still have a long way to go to ensure that everyone has equal opportunity, but I for one am convinced that with everything they have gone through, they absolutely can do it.