Cambodia: Phnom Penh - rebuilding after a dark period
- Where To Go Next By I&P
- Jan 23, 2023
- 5 min read
We took a 6-hours bus ride for 15USD/pax from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. The road to the capital was full of empty green fields, cut by some palm trees and houses built on stilts. The stilts and the numerous ponds covered with blooming lotus flowers made us wonder if the area is completely flooded during the rainy season.
As soon as we arrived in Phnom Penh, we felt that we had stepped into a busy metropolis but still a little bit rustic, a little like Jakarta: some tall towers and even a few highrises, lots of traffic, beautiful temples, plenty of shops selling everything you can imagine with apartments on top, some shopping malls (I've lost count of how many malls we visited...) and a street full of bars for tourists called Bassac Street. The big difference between Phnom Penh and any other metropolis is a clear absence of public transportation and taxis. Everything is done by motorized Tuks Tuks, which does not help reduce our carbon footprint or our foot aches 😖
We were pleasantly surprised by how well lit the city is when walking along the Preah Sumaramit Bvld, one of the biggest boulevards in the city. There we could see the Independence Monument and the statue of Sihanouk, the former king of Cambodia that ruled for a very long time.
We spent the following day walking around the city visiting my parents' childhood homes and the key highlights of the city center, starting with the Royal Palace.
The Royal Palace has been the residence of Cambodian kings since the 19th century and is a beautiful example of Cambodian architecture with its golden rooftops. Unfortunately, it was closed between 11am and 2pm, and once we got in, my Cambodian permanent visa was not recognized and the guards wanted me to pay the foreigners fees ($10USD). Because of the fact that they didn't clearly specify why suddenly my Cambodian visa was not enough, we felt they just wanted to charge us more, so we left. But if you are willing to pay that much, it is probably worth visiting.
In front of the Royal Palace, you can take a walk along the river where millions of pigeons have gathered. If I was a bit of a hypochondriac, I would say that this could be a nest for an avian flu epidemic. 🤧🐦
After walking 15min along the river, we turned to go to the Central Market. On the way, we crossed a neighborhood that was less developed with traditional shops, uncollected trash, and thousands of electrical wires completely tangled together, making us wonder how this neighborhood had not yet been destroyed by a fire. One woman, who was shirtless and with what seemed to be cigarette burns on her chest, was yelling at someone on the other side of the street. Kind of a weird place. 😐
The Central Market itself is gorgeous: a big X shaped building with a dome at its center featuring a big clock making the market look more like a former train station.
Walking north from the Market, we reached the hill of Wat Phnom Daun Penh, a large park with a temple at the top, where the locals were playing some traditional music. But there were also a lot of different types of hornbills, a bird that has a very long incurved beak. They were free, flying all around and eating bananas - no monkeys around as I am sure by now, they are much more interested in ice creams than bananas - see our Ice Cream Monkey 😜🐒
We also went to Koh Pich island, also known as Diamond island. Not sure why, because we couldn't find any diamonds, but we did find a lot of mangos hanging from their trees, with a sign to strictly not touch them! Those forbidden fruits seemed as appealing as diamonds 😋
The area was previously a swamp before it was used to build a new neighborhood with a very Parisian Haussmannian architecture, from the ground up. It even has an Arc de Triomphe 🇫🇷! But, while walking around, we felt that the neighborhood was not inhabited at all: not many shops, very few cars on the street and the apartments looked empty. It was like a Parisian ghost neighborhood.
However, there was a park nearby, called Coconut Park, where a lot of expats and their children were enjoying the proposed activities, so the area is definitely trying to develop.
The following day was Jan 7th, which is the national day for Cambodians called Victory day, the day the Khmer Rouge's regime fell.
The Khmer Rouge (whose main leaders were Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea and especially Pol Pot) had the foolish dream of creating an utopian agrarian society, which led to the death of 1.7M people (a quarter of Cambodia's population at the time) by murder, starvation and illnesses. It also traumatized an entire generation of Cambodians that suffered themselves and/or lost many of their relatives.
We wanted to understand a little bit better what had happened in one of the darkest times of our modern history so we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum or S21.
As the Khmer Rouge was able to take control over most of the country and the capital, Phnom Penh, in April 1975, it created prisons all over the country, S21 being the most famous one.
Prison 21 or S21, was one amongst the 200 prisons that the Khmer Rouge or Angkar created between 1975 and 1979 to imprison, interrogate and torture everyone that was considered a "new people" (any rich, educated, foreign person, or simply anyone who wore glasses, for example) or anyone they believed were against the party.
This former school became a place of torture and great suffering for more than 18 000 people, before they were taken to one of the 300 Killing Fields all over the country.
The museum itself is a poignant reminder of the worst things that can be done by humans, explaining how prisoners were brought there, stripped off of their possessions and identities, imprisoned in the worst conditions before being tortured in the most cruel ways, resuscitated only to be tortured again. Some prisoners were even "used" for medical experiments.
The atrocities committed by the Red Khmer are unthinkable and must never be forgotten to ensure they never happen again.
I was personally shocked by what I saw and can only hope that my relatives who disappeared did not suffer as much.
The ticket to the museum costs 5USD and an additional 5USD for the audio tour, which I highly recommend to understand the full story.
This place awakened an interest in me for this dark period and I shall find some time to document what happened to my family, maybe in a further post. We must never forget!
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