Finally in Cambodia

A country we are really looking forward to. I will describe our stay here in two posts. The first which is about our time in Phnom Penh and the second post about Siem Reap.

We chose to live down by the river, some interesting pubs along the street we discovered when we arrived. A lot of focus on lightly dressed ladies. Well you can´t be lucky all the time when you book online 😊 The hotel had an roof pool and that was nice because it´s REALLY hot!

The big reason we chose a few extra days in Phnom Penh was that there are a lot of historic places to visit. We chose to start with ”Killing Fields” A terrible place with terrible memory but important not to forget what happened here. About 2,000,000 million people died under Paul Pot and that was in terrible circumstances. If you were highly educated, had glasses, soft hands or whatever he felt posed a threat, you were executed. Children were killed so they  death wouldn´t revenge their parents. Children were killed by holding them in their feet’s and hitting their heads to a tree ……. Adults by knife or poison. There are several 100 ”Killing fields” in Cambodia. Our guide had survived himself and could tell us how he and his brother and mother fled to hide. He was young and if they had caught him, he would not be alive today. He showed palm trees with edges as hard as a saw, these were used for sawing off body parts. If you get there, put money on a guide, it’s worth it. We also saw bone remains and clothing remains that remained where it was found. They have chosen not to dig up these fields.

S-21 Tuol Sleng Prison

We also visited S-21 Tuol Sleng Prison opened on August 19, 1975 in Phnom Penh. Schools were taken and rebuilt into prisons with extremely small cells where the prisoners were chained. They were detained here for questioning and torture for information. If you had not spoken within 3 months, you would have died. The methods used were terrible. Only about 7 people survived and today only two are left alive. They still spend their days in the prison grounds to tell their story. We bought their books and it will be interesting reading, when I’m ready. It is so hard to imagine that someone can stand behind and incite these horrors and when you now see history repeat itself but Russia in Ukraine you get scared. That man can forget so quickly.

The city of Phnom Penh it self is very big and warm I recommend booking a hotel with pool. We were warned to have something in our hands or a bag was hung over the shoulder from several people. It is apparently very common to drive past on a moped and pull it. We also had pocket theft when we were on massage, we often take an evening massage and have done so the whole trip, wonderful end to the day when you are a little tired but in Phnom Penh, we did it only once, unfortunately we had just taken out money and while we are getting a massage, they exchange our two 100 dollar bills for copies. You can imagine the look on our faces when we should pay in the store the next day and they say it is copied money …. No fun experience. I was not so fond of the city more than the historic sites. Experienced it as a bit unsafe, and extremely expensive. We had plans to go around more but made the decision to just visit Anchor Wat and then head on to Bali. But before Bali its was time to take the bus to Siem Reap. We always try to take the local transport and it always work fine. We have an app called 12go that works all over Asia and is perfect when you book. You search for your trip and book it right away.  Our driver also got us som treats for the trip :-O