Cambodia: Phnom Penh
- Will Boddington
- Feb 6, 2018
- 3 min read
We were all a bit dubious heading to Phnom Penh as we'd heard plenty of stories from other travellers that they'd had money/bags/etc. stolen and there's not too much to do there anyway, so safe to say none of us were too excited for it! But we were all interested in learning more about the Killing Fields and going to the Genocide Museum, so we planned to make it a quick trip. Luckily, none of us experienced anything like the tales we'd been warned about. Our first night was spent on a walking tour organised by our hostel. We were taken to a quirky night market consisting of pubs made out of shipping containers, then continued past a bridge over the Mekong river, to a Hindu temple where people were queuing to pay their respects and leave incense sticks, before visiting a street stall selling every kind of insect imaginable! A few of the group were brave enough to try cockroaches, frog and whole chicken foetus but most of us gave it a miss...
Finally we headed back past the Independence monument and saw several groups doing aerobic routines on the street which we joined in with! It was a great way to see the city in a more positive light, as well as meeting other people from our hostel.
The next morning we visited the Genocide Museum. We all opted for the audio tour, and spent a couple of hours being guided around the site in our own time. We learnt that the prison was originally a high school, but the various classrooms had been turned into rooms of torture for the resident prisoner, consisting of only a metal bed, shackles, and a tin ammunition box which prisoners had to use as a toilet. Several of the rooms included a black and white photo of how the prisoner was found when the Khmer Rouge were finally defeated - these were a really disturbing sight, especially as the majority of rooms also still had visible blood stains. There were also several stories on the audio from Khmer Rouge guards, as well as from a few of the survivors and the less fortunate's relatives, which were really emotional. Out of about 20,000 people who were held there, only 7 people ever survived. We then travelled to the Killing Fields, the site where thousands of people were brought to be executed. Again we all chose to do the audio tour, and were guided through survivor accounts detailing the abomination that took place here. We also found out that the keepers of the grounds were regularly finding new bits of clothing and bones as the climate slowly moves the earth around. These were visible in clear containers, as were bones and skulls of the victims.
We all left here feeling very somber; it was most disturbing that Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, was still in power for the first few years of our lives.
Once back at the hostel, our group finally parted ways - Jess on a flight back to China and James on a bus heading to Laos. We spent one last night with Aarti before catching our bus into Vietnam the next morning. Accommodation: Mad Monkey, 2 nights, $6 per night for a dorm room.
As expected, this branch of the Mad Monkey hostels was exactly the same standard as the others we have previously stayed in. The hostel restaurant and bar was across the road from the hostel reception and the majority of the rooms, so it was easy to sleep at night and the rooftop bar was perfect for socialising. Our dorm room was clean and there were two wet rooms for the ten of us in the dorm to use, the same as we'd had previously. The food in the restaurant was slightly expensive but it was all so good, it was worth it for the easy meal. 8/10.
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