Stories from Phnom Penh: Part 1

After hanging out in Siem Reap for the two full days and three nights, we took a very crowded bus to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. We arrived pretty late in the evening, but were able to check into our hotel in the Riverfront district and go eat some tapas at a Spanish restaurant. We kept the itinerary for the next day pretty relaxed, as we were in walking distance of the National Museum and the Royal Palace. In the late morning we hit up the National Museum, which offered an extensive collection of sandstone pieces, among other things, and more insight into Khmer history.

The halls of the museum opened up onto a beautiful garden and didn't take that long to completely walk through. Then, in the afternoon, we visited the beautiful Royal Palace. Using a visitor's brochure borrowed from our hotel, I acted as tour guide, reading out the brief descriptions of each building from a map of the grounds. It featured the throne room and other more public buildings used by the royal family. 

This pavilion above hosts banquets and other large events, and faces the street on the opposite side with a huge picture of the king displayed so that it can be seen from the park plaza along the riverbank.

The palace grounds are also home to the Silver Pagoda (above), as it is colloquially known, so called because of the silver tiles that comprise the floor of the temple. It is also known for the emerald Buddha image within (sadly, no pictures allowed).

Stupas like this surrounding the temple held the remains of the famous former kings and queens (and a princess) of Cambodia. Once we were finished with the palace we wandered over to the riverside to enjoy some Dairy Queen Blizzards in the afternoon heat and walk along this pleasant path at sunset.

We had made late evening dinner reservations at Friends, another training restaurant for young people looking to gain the job skills needed to secure employment. We were glad to have made the reservation ahead of time, as with Haven, it was extremely busy. The food was incredible, though, as we each ordered different kinds of fruit smoothies (mango and passion fruit lassi for me) and four tapas dishes to share. My favorite was the zucchini and cheddar fritters.

Friends is part of a larger, Cambodian-run organization with several restaurants in Southeast Asia. Our program director must have mentioned it to most of the students looking to travel to Cambodia, as we actually ran into some of our classmates in the restaurant who were also passing through Phnom Penh!

We knew that the next day would be solemn, as we planned to tour a killing field and an interrogation prison from the days of the Khmer Rouge, a political movement responsible for a massive Cambodian genocide in the 1970s that eliminated one quarter of the population. It's not the happiest subject to blog about, but extremely important to understanding Cambodia as a country and the global implications of the events. Just a head's up, that's going to be the focus of tomorrow's post.