Day 22: Phnom Penh (Friday, July 18)

Today we left Vientiane in the morning - check out our hotel's sweet, old school London cab. Laos drives on the right, not the left, so curious that they have a British car, but whatever.

We flew into Phnom Penh (and bumped into Andy and Harsh from UCLA on the plane) and spent the afternoon checking out the sights there, and we had an evening flight from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap on Siem Reap Airways (aka Bangkok Airways). We couldn't check-in for our Siem Reap flight until 5pm, but we were able to store our bags at the airport lost and found, so we grabbed a taxi and went to the National Museum. If we thought that Vietnam took long lunch breaks, Cambodia is much worse... most of the sights are closed from 11a-2p!!

The National Museum is worth visiting because it houses a lot of the Buddhist art that used to be in the temples in Angkor and other parts of the country. To protect them from looters, they are stored and preserved in the museum. There are a lot of really sad aspects to Cambodia, but one is that the illegal antiquities trade is robbing them of a lot of their heritage. Folks steal statues or the heads of statues and then sell them through the black market in Thailand. One of the statues in the museum had been missing a head until they posted the statue in some database and the Metropolitan Museum of Art recognized it as matching one of the heads in their collection. Fortunately, in that case the head has been returned to Cambodia and the statue is whole again. If the theft wasn't bad enough, it seems as if most of the thieves are actually police officers or other government officials. The portrait painted for us was one of extreme corruption - everywhere. Anyway, back to Phnom Penh. Since nothing else was open, we went to have lunch at Frizz which is pretty close to the National Museum and Royal Palace Museum. It was traditional khmer food, and it was really, really good. Viv had a chicken and eggplant dish that had excellent flavor - very good smoky eggplan flavor (though it did look like a pile of goop on rice) - and Matt had grilled chicken flavored with khmer spices - also excellent.

After lunch we hurried over to the Royal Palace, not really sure what to expect. At first we were a little shocked at the $6 entry fee - well above anything else we had been charged on the trip - but the information book that came with it was reminiscient of a western museum and definitely appreciated. The palace itself is remarkable. We took a bunch of pictures of the buildings, but you're not allowed to take pictures inside - too bad. We weren't sure we were going to make it over there, but it was definitely worth it. Don't miss it if you're in Phnom Penh.

We jumped on a tuk tuk and went to Tuol Sleng, the high school turned prison (S21) which housed an enormous number of prisoners (estimates from 16,000-20,000) - almost all of whom were executed under the Khmer Rouge. This is a truly depressing museum - similar to the holocaust museum or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It starts off tame enough - showing prison beds and torture implements - not dissimilar from the Hanoi Hilton. Next, though, you start to appreciate the magnitude of it all - there is a room that houses nothing but chalkboards covered in pictures (essentially mug shots) of the prisoners. While the Khmer Rouge were ruthless, they were also asurdly organized, photographing every single prisoner. The final building is by far the most moving, though, as it contains both photo exhibits related to books that have been published (chronicling the lives of those involved in the revolution and those who lost family members to the Khmer Rouge) and ultimately a display of skulls recovered from the Killing Fields, complete with autopsy report on the type of skull and trajectory of the bullet through the skull. I won't post any pictures, but it is truly a mind blowing experience to reflect on what happened here in the mid-70s. The hardest aspect to come to terms with, for us at least, is that there was no apparent rhyme or reason to the killings - it was a strict power play. They started by killing the residents of the cities (who they perceived to be against them), but ultimately they killed most of the volunteers that signed up to join their side, as well.

We needed to get back to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap, but there are no taxis to be found in Phnom Penh - only tuk tuks. We really weren't relishing the ride in a tuk tuk (Phnom Penh was surprisingly bustling with cars, trucks etc, and the air was reiminiscient of Bangkok or Saigon - not so tasty!)... but with no other option, we ended up in a tuk tuk and made it in time for our flight. Tomorrow we get to start exploring the Ankorian temples... and then Ashish, Amanda and Matt K are joining us in the afternoon.