Holiday with Tess- Yaay! Part 1 – Phnom Penh and Kampong Speu

So for the last just over two weeks Tessie has been over visiting the wonderful land of Cambodia. Unfortunately it is all over now , but we can (okay I can) still live vicariously through this blog.

So arrival was no drama really, she arrived on the Sunday after I spent a weekend eating and lazing around in Phnom Penh (as I usually do). Everything went surprisingly smoothly, no delays or anything and the weather was quite mild which must have been nice coming from the ice chamber in oz.

The next day we launched into sightseeing and decided to go visit the Royal Palace (which I haven’t been to this time) and National Museum. Of course, we had slept in and the palace was closed so we wandered up to the National Museum and had a looksie. Lots of nice statues and stuff. Luckily this time I was prepared with a wad of hundred rial notes to placate the nice old women who implore you to make an offering to the Buddha statues (think a whole museum pretty much full of Buddha). Its really interesting to see how Hinduism and Buddhism intersect here though. We then headed off to the Royal Palace which was actually quite spectacular, having not been there for a few years. I think Tess felt rather vindicated in her long skirt in the heat when the skanky backpackers in front of us in the line had to buy sarongs and giant pants to get in.

We then retired to the pool , a luxury unheard of in the speu!

The next day we did the sad side of Cambodia, to the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The Killing Fields were a bit outside town but were quite interesting and sad. There were ditches where bodies had been excavated and a few open ones (obviously no bodies in them and they were filled with water from the rain). It was quite surprising that the victims were sorted to go into different pits, like women in one, kids in another. There was quite a moving statement in broken English as well. Of course there was the ubiquitous dickhead wandering around with a hammer and sickle t-shirt quite unaware that this genocide was done by a self declared communist regime.

In the middle is a large stupa containing the remains of some of the victims sorted by gender and age. I know some of you think that this kind of tourism is kinda sick and I suppose it is. But I think seeing is believing that people can be so evil. And no-one here is asking for your bleeding heart, they just want you to know what happened here which goes a long way to explaining Cambodia today.

Next was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. I have been here a few times, but I discovered there was a whole half of it which I had never seen for some reason so it was new to me. This is a former high school in the middle of Phnom Penh that was turned into the interrogation centre for the Khmer Rouge. Of the 17,000 people that went thoruh (KR kept meticulous records including photographs of each victim and their ‘’confession’’ which are displayed), 7 people survived (all of whom were discovered by the Vietnamese soldiers when they liberated it). The cells are pretty much how they were and many of the torture implements are there as well. There are several rooms which have just a rusted bed in them and a picture on the wall of when the Vietnamese came (usually of a body having just been killed by the retreating KR).Very chilling.

The next day we headed to the Speu. We hopped into a more than usual crowded van (Tess in the cab with the driver and another girl and me in the back with about 20 other people). It was so hot and the car would not start so the guys kept pushing the van into oncoming traffic down the road hoping the engine would turn over. Thankfully it did. Not an auspicious welcome to the Speu!

I think Tess enjoyed the rustic charms of the Speu but it kind of has to be seen to be believed, especially the market. Tess did great, even going to market a few times to buy fruit and bread in Khmer!

Unfortunately I got called away to work the afternoon we arrived, then worked the next day and had to spend the night in Takeo province preparing for a rice handover ceremony which I helped with the next day. So Tess was definitely on her own in the Speu!