Phnom Penh

Subtitled: If Being Pooped on by Animals Is Good Luck, I Should Buy Lottery Tickets

After Kilimanjaro, Monju and I bade farewell to Africa and embarked on a 20+ hour flight to Asia, my next continent, first stop: Cambodia.  Well, actually, the first stop was in Dar es Salaam, the next in Doha, the next in Saigon, and only then to Cambodia  -- but Cambodia was the first destination.  We arrived in Phnom Penh in the late afternoon and spent our first evening settling in by becoming acquainted with Khmer cuisine at Malis (delicious) and with traditional Khmer massage at our hotel (amazing).

Knowing that the Khmer Rouge historical sites would be a necessary portion of our visit, we opted to see them on our first full day in Phnom Penh, to ensure sufficient time to recover emotionally and have a less depressing experience during the rest of our stay.  In town, we visited S-21, the high school-turned-prison in which the Khmer Rouge tortured and often killed individuals accused of being hostile to the regime (although they moved most of the executions to the killing fields after they ran out of space at S-21 to bury the bodies).  The photographs of the prisoners taken during intake are displayed in some of the old classrooms, and the emotional impact of the display -- the faces staring back at you from black and white photographs -- is impossible to put into words.  In other rooms, the instruments of torture are on display alongside photographs showing how the Vietnamese army found each room, including the bodies of prisoners who were hurriedly killed before the place was abandoned.  Although it was a pretty nice day outside and the gardens were quite pretty, the place had an oppressive feeling that was difficult to shake.

Next our tuktuk took us a little ways outside of the city to visit the Choeung Ek Memorial, otherwise known as "The Killing Fields."  Despite the definite article, it is only one of ~300 such locations in the country.  This particular location was primarily used for executing S-21 prisoners and their families en masse, usually by forcing them to kneel over trenches and hitting them on the head with a blunt instrument (as the audioguide explained, bullets were too expensive).  The location, which was a Chinese cemetary before being put to its more sinister use, really is beautiful.  It's easy to stand and admire what appear to be small, gentle, rolling hills until you learn that those hills were formed by mass graves, some excavated, many not.  The site is both effective and affecting; the audioguide is really informative and, at times, eerie (as when it plays what the victims would have heard as they were dying: Khmer revolutionary songs being blared from a loudspeaker along with the whir of a generator).  Additionally, a stupa has been built to honor the victims, and it houses many of the bones that were exhumed from the mass graves.

In need of some emotional uplift after such a day, we looked first to our stomachs by going on a street food tour, which began with a welcome drink on a rooftop bar with great views of the city.  We then visited the markets and tried various fruits, insects, reptiles, as well as more usual proteins (ribs and pork belly: yum!), ending the evening at a local BBQ restaurant.  The experience went a long way toward curing my spiritual malaise.

A change of pace was in order for the next day: we'd booked a "behind the scenes" tour at the Phnom Tamao animal sanctuary and refuge through Wildlife Alliance.  I was a little concerned that it would be anticlimactic after our safari experiences, but I shouldn't have worried: the animals in Asia are different from those in Africa, and we were able to get up close and personal with a few of them.  VERY personal, in my case: we were allowed in with the juvenile monkeys and one of them felt so relaxed with me that he relieved himself on me -- not just once, but twice (the culprit is pictured on my head below).  I tried to take it as a compliment after the first time, but after the second time, I decided I preferred hanging out with Lucky the elephant (pictured on the left).  Lucky's friend Chhouk, another elephant, injured his leg in a trap and has a pretty amazing prosthetic.  (Sad sidenote: the prosthetic was made by a school for making prosthetics, a skill for which there is great demand in Cambodia due to numerous landmine injuries.)  For dinner, we made our own street food tour, revisiting the rib/pork belly place from the night before and trying all of the noodle variants in the market.  Although perhaps a bit gastrointestinally risky, we suffered no ill effects.

Our last day in Phnom Penh began with a cooking class, which Monju had to miss due to a camera emergency.  Her loss: we made deep fried tarot spring rolls and fish amok.  The spring rolls were fresh and good but nothing too special.  At the risk of patting myself on the back, however, the fish amok I made (see picture below) was the best I had on the trip.  Full disclosure compels admitting that its superiority was likely due to the fresh ingredients, not my culinary skills, but I felt pretty accomplished nonetheless.

Having resolved the camera issue, Monju joined me for an afternoon visit to the National Palace.  Unfortunately, we'd both forgotten about the requirement that visitors' knees be covered.  To avoid a trip back to the hotel to change, we purchased $3 plastic drawstring pants.  The pants' sartorial inelegance was outstripped only by their incredible discomfort -- let's just say that on a hot day, nonbreathable plastic pants are not an optimal clothing choice.  The palace itself was good to see, but nothing too special, especially without explanatory plaques -- for example, we visited the Silver Pagoda without realizing that's where we were.  We ended our visit to Phom Penh on a fun note: dinner and drinks with a friend of a friend who works at UNICEF.

A few closing thoughts:

(1) Nobody seems to walk in Phnom Penh and walking in Phnom Penh is terrifying.  I'm sure these two facts are related, but I'm not sure which is cause and which is effect.  I suppose it would've been easy enough to take a motorcycle tuktuk everywhere -- it's generally $1-3 per ride and there were always a plethora of drivers offering to take us ("Tuk tuk? You want tuk tuk?").  But it's still hard to justify doing so when you're only going a 10-minute walk away.  Of course, a justification occurs to you when you're stuck standing in the middle of an intersection with tuktuks, motos, vans, cars, and other various vehicles zooming past you, but by then there's only a 5-minute walk left.  And so on.  Eventually you learn how to take the leap, step confidently into the street, and weave your way through the bustling traffic -- but the learning process is not a particularly pleasant one.

I may be exaggerating a little bit.

(2) Somewhat relatedly, the preferred method for disposing of trash is by leaving it on the ground.  Supposedly it gets collected, but in the meantime there are still piles of trash around, requiring further vigilance from pedestrians.  Add in the plethora of sidewalk eateries and you're generally walking in the street even when you aren't crossing it.

(3) For all that, I genuinely liked the city, and I don't generally like cities.