Phnom Penh

We somehow managed to be in another SE Asian capital city during a festival. One might think this might be cool or fun, but in places where efficiency, rules, free flow of information, and crowd control barely exist it can be annoying and unfortunately in the case of Phnom Penh's Water Festival, deadly. (A day after we left there was a stampede in here during the festivities where 350 people died.) Our bad luck with Cambodian buses streak continued as a trip from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh should have taken 4.5-5 hours ended up taking 8. Why might you say? Well, we don't really know (shockingly); all we know is that about 15 km outside of the city we got stuck in gridlock for 3 hours. Not traffic, gridlock. As in no movement for 3 hours. Of course no one knew what the deal was but thought it might be related to the 2 million people descending on the city for the annual Water Festival, which marks the end of the rainy season, and because we had become accustomed to not knowing what was going on ever, we accepted our fate and waited. But once we hit the 3 hour mark, we got a little restless and eventually hired a tuk tuk to try to find us another route into the city. Another reason to never ask why in SE Asia came to us as we quickly got into town by simply taking another road. I may be an inpatient American but come on! Is there no communication in this country?


Anyway, we eventually made it to a hotel (with HBO! for only $20!), but called it an early night figuring we planned to stay another night in Phnom Penh (We didn't. All the buses from here to Saigon on the day we wanted to leave were booked so we had take - our last thank God - another night bus.) + we had a busy and quite depressing day planned for the following day (more on that later).


As much as we didn't want to, we sucked it up and did some touring of the Khmer Rouge's Choeung Ek killing fields and Tuel Sleung prison, which was a former high school converted into a prison/ torture facility during their regime where only 7 people survived. Visiting both of these places, I had never felt such disgust and profound sadness at what humans are capable of. My reaction to visiting 86 mass graves, 8000 Cambodian skull memorial, a guillotine, and blood spattered floors was visceral. I'm sure it's the feeling one feels when visiting the concentration camps. One positive thing that came out of this touring was our experience of riding on the back of some guy's motorbike to and from these memorials. Duncan, me, and some Cambodian man all squeezed onto a motorbike (helmet-less....don't tell my mom) whizzed through the streets and outskirts of Phnom Penh, just like we had seen natives do throughout our journey. It was scary but exhilarating. And quite convenient, as the guy's tire blew out right as we arrived at our last destination. It had been on my list of things to do before leaving SE Asia.


After we returned we were in the thick of the Water Festival extravaganza. We had heard how good the food was in Phnom Penh but didn't really get to experience it because most of the restaurants we had on our list were closed due to the festival. Then we had to get on the night bus to Saigon. 


Some pics:


The hard to describe/ capture via photo Cambodian Water Festival:

Skulls of 8000 victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide at the Choeung Ek Killing Fields:

No picture from the 3-person motorbike ride. We were going so fast, we were afraid we might lose the camera.