January 6, 2007
Rest Day Phnom Penh: Walking tour and Tuol Sleng
Breakfast is included in our room price, but the food is disappointing. The coffee is thick bitter slurry we could not stomach back in Indonesia, guess we should have picked up on the name of the Guesthouse....Bali Guesthouse.
So, we walk to the boulevard for a second breakfast and then do the walking tour recommended in our travel guide. We start at Wat Phnom, a temple on the only hill in sight. There is no view though and a couple dozen beggars, street kids and people with missing limbs all trying for some Riel. And then, we walk past the brand-new US embassy and the train station towards Psar Thmei, a huge domed building that houses and surrounded by a large market. It looks very hectic, and we choose not to go in.
Next door is a tall shopping center, possibly the only one in Cambodia. We go all the way to the top floor through a restaurant and onto a balcony and have a great view over the city. We continue our tour past the Victory monument and the Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship monument. It's getting hot, despite a strong eastern wind. We leave the Grand Palace for later and return to the riverfront for lunch.
Later in the afternoon we take a tuk tuk to Tuol Sleng Prison, or camp S-21 as it was called during the Khmer Rouge days, ruled by Pol Pot 1975 to 1979 to create a "master race" and creating a communist-style, agricultural utopia. This compound was built as a High School but transformed into a prison where over 17,000 people were interrogated and tortured before being sent on to the Killing Fields for execution. It's a sick place where an out-of-control government disposed of its perceived opposition while the civilized world watched. We watch an hour long movie on two of the victims who came through this place.
About 4:30 we take a tuk tuk back to the hotel. We meet up for dinner with the two Dutch couples we leaped frogged with from Battambang.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 1 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |