(Part 6) The Heat and Holiness of Cambodia: Phnom Penh in a Day!!

- April 20-21, 2019, Black Saturday to Easter Sunday.

- Phnom Penh is not always on everyone's mind when thinking of tourism in Cambodia as most tourists gravitate to Siem Reap, for obvious reasons. Siem Reap is the heart of Cambodian tourism as the ancient glory of Cambodia can be found there, not to mention the ease of accessing Siem Reap because of the numerous direct flights to Siem Reap. However, I've always been curious about Phnom Penh, simply because I haven't heard a lot of people talking about Phnom Penh! I had a vague idea of what there is to see in Phnom Penh, but I wanted to experience Phnom Penh first hand.

- I was supposed to have two full days to explore Phnom Penh, bust because of my flight schedule blunder (read about it here,) I had to squeeze everything that I needed to see in one day. Thankfully, my hostel had a reasonably-priced private whole day tour via tuktuk (25USD) of the must-sees in Phnom Penh, and they were all in my itinerary. I had a few more places on my supposed itinerary, but those were just my "reserve places" (i.e. places that I'd only go if I had time.)

- After a hasty breakfast at the hostel restaurant, my tuktuk driver drove me to the main structure of the capital city - the Royal Palace. This palace, known for its green-and-yellow roofs, was built in the 1860s when the capital was moved to Phnom Penh and has been the royal residence since then. It has three main sections: the side of the Moonlight Pavilion (too bad I wasn't able to go to this part of the palace), the central section with the throne hall, and the Silver Pagoda section. The other smaller buildings of the palace are used as ceremonial halls, government offices, or exhibit halls for tourists. The Silver Pagoda, which is commonly known as "Wat Phra Keo," which houses the green-crystal Buddha of Camboda. This green-crystal Buddha, sometimes also called the "emerald" Buddha, is a national treasure of Cambodia. The details of the palace and the adjacent pagoda reminds me so much of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, where its own Wat Phra Keo with the Thai emergald Buddha and the murals of the Ramayana epic is located beside the actual palace (click here to see my trip to Bangkok.)

Royal guard costumes (Would like to take all of them home!!)

Royal attire.

Side of the throne hall.

Tha main throne hall.

Mini Angkor Wat.

Silver Pagoda.

Stupas that serve as royal tombs are found all around the Silver Pagoda.

Found this incredible location where the Silver Pagoda peeks shyly between flower bushes and small trees.

Ramayana murals all around. The Ramayana is called "Reamker" in Cambodia.

Ensemble.

White elephant hall.

- Right across the northern side of the Royal Palace is the National Museum of Cambodia. Recognizable for its red color and ornate structure, the museum's architecture is an exhibit by itself! Built in the early 1900s, it has been the home of one of the greatest collections of ancient Khmer art since it was opened. However, it did have a brief period of turmoil and threat during the communist era, when the museum was closed down and some items were either damaged or stolen. The museum itself was not too big, although the exhibit was impressive. The only thing that puzzled me was that the museum was quite open, meaning to say the sides of the museums that faced the garden did not have walls, only pillars. Wouldn't this make the centuries-old items on exhibit be more vulnerable to the elements (or even human activity like theft)? I don't really know. I just hope that they will be able to preserve all the museum's treasures well..

Welcome to the National Museum!!

A Vietnamese dong son drum.

Buddhas and more Buddhas.

Performers' headdresses.

Reclining Vishnu.

Courtyard. Notice how there aren't any walls facing the garden?

- From the museum, I went up to the northern part of the downtown, passing by the riverfront, and reached Wat Phnom. Way Phnom might not win against other Buddhist temples in the capital in terms of size, but reigns in terms of altitude. It is the highest temple in Phnom Penh as it is located on an ancient man-made mountain in the middle of the city. It was built in the 1300s, and is the center of Phnom Penh.

Riverfront.

Wat Phnom.

The temple itself wasn't that big.

Prayer hall.

Main stupa.

- At around noon I had a few moments to shop at Psar Thmei, or Central Market. This giant art-deco style building was built in the early 1900s as a market, which it is still today. I saw that the market was quite organized, with souvenirs on one end, clothes and accessories on another, and everyday things like toiletries in another. Prices were slightly cheaper than in Siem Reap, but the products had less variety than those from the markets of Siem Reap. Psar Thmei is the largest market in Phnom Penh, and although it was the only market in Phnom Penh that I visited, there are other markets and souvenir shops spread across Phnom Penh in case you have more time to go around the city.

- By the way, don't forget to haggle, and make sure you know the quality of the products that you're buying! I wanted to buy two bracelets made of plastic turquoise-like beads from one store and it told me that each bracelet was 20USD each, but 36 for both. I protested as I knew they weren't real stone, as the saleslady was insisting. I told her that I'd give 3 USD for both, and she stormed back to her seat and ate her food. I went to one of the many stalls selling the same kind of jewelry, and found the same bracelets. This time, each cost 5 USD, and I was able to haggle it down to 7 USD for two bracelets. I still think 7 USD total for both bracelets was expensive, but definitely way better than 36 USD for two!!

Psar Thmei.

Interior grandness.

- I asked my driver if we could have lunch since it was way past noon. He said yes, and when I asked where we'd have lunch, he told me, with a smile, "at the killing fields." I thought it was quite morbid for him to say that, but as I was driven by my driver for around 30 minutes, I saw less and less of the high-rise buildings of the city, and more and more of the wilderness. Later on, we arrived at a small restaurant in front of the killing fields. (What a sight, right?)

- After my simple lunch of Cambodian fried rice, I went inside the Choeung Ek Killing Fields. I know I visited a killing field in Siem Reap a few days prior (click here,) but Choeung Ek is not to be missed. It is one of the biggest and one of the most accessible killing fields across Cambodia. Visitors can also know more about how the killing fields were used through the audio guide.

The memorial stupa.

Please read.

Inside the stupa....all these bones and skulls were arranged by age.

- The killing fields were the last places that prisoners would see before, well, they were killed. They were widely used during the Khmer Rouge Era, or the communist era of Cambodia, under the rule of Pol Pot; this period was also known as the Cambodian Genocide, as mass killings were held to those who were suspected of and arrested for being capitalist. The perception of "capitalist" by the communists ranged from educated people, professors, doctors, celebrities, people who spoke a foreign language, who were in contact with anything foreign, or who used "Western" or "capitalist" things like glasses or western-style clothing, and so on. It was heartbreaking to know that the people brought to these fields like Choeung Ek from the prisons ranged from innocent babies to the frail elderly. They were brought in by the hundreds per day from the various prisons. Accounts say that loud music like communist marching music was being played consistently so the cries of those who were being killed will not be heard by those who were kept in the holding area, and by people passing by outside the killing fields. The communists said that the Cambodians were "not worth a bullet," so they were killed the "traditional way," such as poison, maces, clubs, spades, bamboo poles, and other tools mostly used for farming. Children and babies were killed in front of parents, or parents were killed in front of their children. Babies and small children, in particular, were held by their feet and had their heads bashed against the "killing tree" until they died. There was also a rule that once you kill a member of the family, you need to kill all members of the family to avoid having someone seek revenge in the future. Today, whenever it rains, pieces of bones, teeth, or clothes continue to emerge from the grounds of the killing fields - just when they thought that they have excavated all the mass graves. It is a curse from this dark past of Cambodia, and a constant reminder of what humans can do to each other.

Clothes of victims unearthed from the mass graves.

Bones from floor to ceiling.

More clothes.

The killing tree.

Bones from the mass graves.

Choeng Ek, at some point, was a Chinese cemetery. This grave, for example, is proof of Choeng Ek's earlier incarnation. This Chinese grave was from before the Khmer Rouge Era.

- With a heavy heart and a fuller appreciation of the life I have right now, I was driven back to the city to a place where I can learn more about the prisoners just before they are killed. I visited the controversial Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which used to be a high school turned into a prison called S-21 (Security Prison 21) during the Khmer Rouge Era. Tens of thousands of prisons, both young and old and arrested for being capitalist (as I explained above,) were brought to this prison alone - so what more the total number of prisoners if we include the number of prisoners from the other prisons across the country?

Not for the faint-hearted.

Classrooms turned interrogation rooms and prison cells.

Can't imagine life inside the prison.

Rules.

A place where students would run around and mingle was turned into a prison where prisoners could not talk to each other/

- Some classrooms were turned into interrogation rooms, others were filled with narrow brick prisons. Today, most people would only visit the ground level rooms, while a few would go to the second and third floors of each of the three school/prison buildings. The third floor rooms, where I usually found myself alone, was too eerie, especially after seeing some photos of the bloody prisoners who were found in those rooms. It should also be noted that many rooms across the three buildings had some unremovable stains that were color maroon or red. Most of these stains are blood - blood from the prisoners. The worst part about this prison was that the prisoners were supposed to be kept alive for interrogation, despite near-death tortures. If the prisoners were to be killed, the communists would bring them to the killing fields (like Choeung Ek.) Fences were built outside the classrooms not mainly to prevent prisoners from escaping, but rather, to prevent the prisoners from killing themselves to end their misery. However, some executions were also made, or human experiments that also took lives of some. 

Uniform of the communists.

The partial and documented prisoners of Tuol Sleng.

Fences to prevent prisoners from escaping and/or killing themselves.

Cells built inside former classrooms.

Behind the fences in the upper levels

A torture device used to drown prisoners so they'll confess.

At the courtyard.

Lower levels.

- Not many survive the prisons. Only a handful were able to tell their stories. Thankfully, years after this dark era, the United Nations intervened and put some of the surviving communists on trial. Those who were found guilty were mostly given a life sentence. Pol Pot himself, who died way back in 1981, was said to have died of overdose when he heard that he was going to be surrendered to the United States for an international trial.

- After being brought back to my hostel, I wanted to shrug off all the negativity from the Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng although I appreciated everything that I learned from both places. To wrap up my whole journey to the Kingdom of Wonder, I visited the most iconic public landmarks of Phnom Penh, the Independence Monument. It was built in the 1950s to celebrate Cambodia's independence from French rule.

Independence Monument.

I had to time this photo really well since it was rush hour and there were too many cars. I had to wait for the stoplights to become red. Haha.

- That evening I reluctantly had a (non-sketchy) massage, since my body was sore and I was too sweaty. Since I had already checked out from my hostel, I couldn't take a bath before having dinner and heading to the airport. The massage place close to my hostel had a cheap traditional massage, and more importantly, it had a decent shower where I took a long cold bath.

- I had pizza for dinner because I was craving for pizza, but I had a frustratingly funny situation when I was ordering:

Me: How big is your small pizza? What about your medium pizza?

Waitress: The small has 4 slices, and the medium has 6 slices.

Me: Uhh....(because you can't really define size by how many slices a pizza has)....but like how big? How many inches? (Makes gestures showing big and small sizes.)

Waitress: I have no idea.

Well, I still enjoyed my medium-sized pizza, headed back to my hostel, and rode a cab to the airport for my red-eye Easter-Sunday flight back to Manila. I didn't mind spending more time at the airport since I badly needed some air-conditioning. 

A pizza all to myself!!

Back in Manila, just in time for the Easter sunrise!!

Otherworldly.

Hello to all the Filipinos who also came home after their Holy Week trip.

- After a whole week in the heat of Cambodia, I realized that I did not regret going to Cambodia especially since I experienced the splashes of the Cambodian New Year during my first few days. I also had some experiences that I would not rather do again ever, like washing my arms and feet with a bidet of all things, but these definitely turned into good stories to tell. My journey to Cambodia has surprisingly been memorable in many ways, and in the end, I came back home with a bright smile ---- and a really dark sunbrunt skin!! (Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, and Part 5 here!!)