2 weeks in Cambodia: Phnom Penh

It's been a long time since I last wrote a blog post and I have so much to catch up on that it's hard to know where to begin again. The last few months have gone something like this: 

Home to England -> Kyoto for exams -> Cambodia -> Tokyo, Hiroshima & Kyoto -> England again -> settling back into Kyoto for second semester. 

Since I don't really need to write about England, and definitely don't need to write about my exams, Cambodia is the next place to pick up from. I flew down there at the beginning of Spring Break to join my friend Imogen for 2 weeks. I've never been to South East Asia before, and never done the whole travelling/living out of a hostel deal. To tell the truth, I've always been a bit scared of the idea because I have weirdly low energy levels and get exhausted from a weekend away from home let alone months of travelling. But since I was in Asia already, and could pop over relatively easy for just 2 weeks, it felt like a perfect opportunity to get a small taste for it. 

Since I was a newbie and my friend is more of a seasoned traveller I let her do almost all of the organising (very unnatural for me!) and she came up with a schedule for visiting the 3 top destinations in Cambodia - Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, and Siem Reap. 

Phnom Penh:

Monks at the riverside

Part of the Royal Palace

Stupa at the Royal Palace

Veggie spring rolls with peanut butter sauce & vegan sushi

Beginning in Phnom Penh is a hell of a way to start Cambodia. The capital city actually seemed to have quite a bad reputation between other travellers - it's extremely busy, dusty, there's a lot of very visible poverty and it doesn't have the same beautiful scenery as some of Cambodia's other destinations. But, perhaps because I was full of energy and everything was so new to me, I thought it was amazing. Since me and Imogen were arriving separately, my first task was to get a Tuk Tuk from the airport to our hostel. It was the perfect way to get thrown into the hectic city, and I spend a half-terrified half-fascinated hour watching street vendors, people carrying ladders on motorbikes, stray cats and dogs and absolutely 0 road rules. 

Once I had found Imogen and got settled we were free to explore the city for a couple of days. Highlights were spotting Theravada monks everywhere (noticeably different to Japanese monks because of the deep orange robes) and seeing the grounds of the Royal Palace where the King of Cambodia still lives. The difference in wealth between locals and travellers is no more clear than in entry costs for places like the palace - for foreigners, $10, for Cambodians, 4000 riel which is $1. 

My friend is vegan and so I also had the first of many absolutely delicious vegan meals during our stay. Imogen and I both definitely like our food and whilst fancy meals shouldn't really be part of the traveller budget we used the "treat yourself" excuse a few too many times.

Human skulls inside the Stupa at the Killing Fields (not own photo)

A trip to Phnom Penh should include a visit to see the Killing Fields (Choeung Ek) about 10 miles outside of the city. This is one of the sites where the communist Khmer Rouge regime, under leader Pol Pot, mass murdered Cambodians back in the 70s (it's estimated that overall, he killed about 20% of the countries population). Pol Pot was a name I had come across before, and I knew that Cambodia had a 'dark history' of some sort, but as always it's hard for these things to sink in until you're made to sit and look at the evidence for yourself. 

The fields have been turned into a Buddhist memorial site, and visitors walk around the mass graves at their own pace whilst listening to an audio guide which tells you exactly what happened. The whole thing was explained in horrific detail but with great sensitivity. What struct me most is just how recent this all was; it's weird to think that my parents were alive and around my age whilst it was all happening. But then again, I suppose my future kids will look back at some of the stuff happening in the world today and find it bizarre that myself and the rest of the world just... kept on going with normal life. I was also sad to learn that, even once the regime itself was displaced, it took so many more years for the people responsible to be properly condemned. Pol Pot himself was allowed to live in comfort, only being sentenced to house arrest 20 years later in 1997, and then dying peacefully a year later.

One more thing which struck me during the visit was the stark separation between tourists and locals. The site was surrounded by a high barbed wire fence, which a child and an old man were begging outside of at one point. Whilst we all walked around plugged into our audio guides, feeling sorry for this poor country with an awful history, we simultaneously ignored the poverty going on literally next to us. It was horribly ironic and I'm still trying to process exactly how I feel about it. Anyway, it's something worth reading more about and definitely an important place to visit whilst you're in Cambodia, since it's still dealing with the consequences today. 

I was originally going to do just one post about Cambodia but I seem to have written more than enough about Phnom Penh alone, so I guess this will be split into 3 parts. Next up, the beaches of Sihanoukville.