Cambodia: Phnom Penh

Our original plan was to spend only a week in Cambodia exploring the Angkor temples in Siem Reap. But as Reed learned about Cambodia’s recent history and how everyone was forced out of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city, by the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s, he said he really wanted to see it, so we went. We spent a week in Phnom Penh.

Where We Stayed

We arrived to find that our apartment – in an apartment hotel – had not been booked. We used a third party site (one we hadn’t heard of before, lesson learned) and they just didn’t book our place. Luckily, an apartment was available but only for two of the seven nights of our stay, so we stayed there for the two nights and found two rooms in a hotel called Okay Palace Hotel for the remaining five nights. The hotel was more than ok (but less than fantastic); it had a pool and was centrally located, and that was really all that mattered. It also had a gorgeous view of the Royal Palace and the conflux of the Tonlé Sap and Mekong Rivers.

Observations

A few observations about Phnom Penh:

• The heat. On a map, Phnom Penh is southwest of Bangkok, northeast of Saigon. We expected the weather to be the same: hot and humid. It was, but the heat was so much more intense every single day. There are no sidewalks and not a whole lot of trees in the center of the city, so the heat was just unbearable. There’s a scene in one of Anthony Bourdain’s Cambodia episodes where he says to his cameraman, who is filming in the sun: “I can literally see you wilting before my eyes. It’s like watching fruit rot.” Accurate.

• The smells. At all times, Phnom Penh smelled like a mixture of trash, sewage, exhaust, and a fish market, with occasional whiffs of cilantro. At night, the food carts were out so the smells alternated between unpleasant and barbecue. A week is a long time to spend in Phnom Penh.

• The petty crime. We were warned to be mindful of pickpocketers and we were. But Robby went to get a massage one afternoon. After the massage, on his way back to our hotel, he stopped at the pharmacy to pick up some things and took out a $100 bill to pay (US dollars are widely accepted). The pharmacist told him that the bill was counterfeit. We had just taken money out of the ATM so Robby connected the dots. He went right back to the massage place, said “you robbed me!” and the real $100 bill was promptly returned. They took the bill out of Robby’s pants during his massage. We later walked through the Russian Market (there is nothing Russian about it; its name is derived from its popularity amongst Russian expats in the 1980s) – a place where one can find any sort of souvenir or knick knack, including counterfeit bills of all currencies.

• The parks. We found TWO! But the folks there kept petting Ari and Miles. They were well intentioned but too touchy feely, so we didn’t stay long.

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All that said, there is something just heartbreakingly beautiful about Phnom Penh. Under the grime, the architecture is stunning and you can feel that it’s still bouncing back from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge and S-21

We did not shield Reed from learning about the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. It was eye opening for him (and us) to see the effects of the near destruction of an entire culture and the killing of an entire generation. But we did debate whether to take him to S-21, a former detention center formally known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and the Killing Fields, where tens of thousands of people were brutally beaten and murdered by the Khmer Rouge. In the end, we decided that he should see S-21 and skip the Killing Fields. I visited both in a previous trip to Cambodia, and I will never forget the sight of a glass shrine filled with 8,000 human skulls at the Killing Fields. It is the stuff of nightmares and Reed did not feel good about seeing it. (S-21 is very inappropriate for little kids so I stayed back with Ari and Miles.)

S-21, located at a nondescript former high school, was a torture and detention center used by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979, and about 20,000 individuals were imprisoned and tortured there before being sent to the Killing Fields to die. Upon arrival, prisoners were photographed and required to give their detailed autobiographies. Many of these photos and autobiographies are on display, as are the torture devices and gallows used by the Khmer Rouge. Reed: “It felt scary being there thinking about the fact that people had to sleep chained together on the floor, and were tortured and starved. I just can’t believe people can be so evil.”

Robby and Reed were guided through S-21 by a woman who lived through the genocide. She was a teenager when the Khmer Rouge rolled into Phnom Penh in April 1975, armed with guns and rifles, claiming (falsely) that everyone needed to evacuate because the Americans would be bombing. Her father and brother were killed almost immediately; she and her mother marched for 30 days to a rural province in northwest Cambodia, where they spent the next several years working hard labor in the fields, eating almost no food. She miraculously survived. Robby was curious about how Phnom Penh was repopulated after the Khmer Rouge fell, but she couldn’t really answer that question.

This trip marks my third time in Cambodia and it leaves me heartbroken each time. The Cambodian government is run by former Khmer Rouge soldiers (absorb that) and it is clear that corruption prevails. Basic necessities like healthcare, education, and proper waste management are not high on the government’s agenda, and there is no infrastructure to support the rampant development (see above re smells). I could write a treatise on this topic but I’m going to end it here. If you want to learn more about the Cambodia genocide, here are a few sources to get you started: history.com, BBC, End Genocide.

How We Spent Our Time

We did a whole lot of walking and exploring in Phnom Penh.

We walked through the Central Market, a stunning dome-shaped market with four arms branching out of it and countless stalls with people selling everything from clothes, art, cheap sunglasses, and fake Rolexes to fish, meat, and produce.

We did some kid-centric activities like visit a Reptile Cafe where the kids got to hold snakes, lizards, and a tarantula – all while enjoying a fruit smoothie.

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Our hotel hosted a free sunset boat ride. Phnom Penh is located right where the Mekong River and the Tonle Sap River (which leads to Tonlé Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia) converge and the boat ride took us along both. It was a really nice evening and it was interesting to see the emerging skyline-to-be. There is a whole lot of construction going on, and Phnom Penh – and its skyline – will be very different in 20 years.

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We needed to get away from the smells and bustle of Phnom Penh, so we hired a tuk tuk and spent a day visiting the small, rural island of Koh Dach, located in the Mekong. Koh Dach is known as the silk island because it has a long history of silkworm cultivation and silk weaving. A decade ago, nearly every household had its own loom but the rising costs of silk production caused many weavers to seek work at the garment factories in Phnom Penh. There are still local weavers, and we visited with one family as well as a silk farm.

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Phnom Penh’s history made our walks through town interesting but it was not our favorite place. Siem Reap, on the other hand, is a charming city that we loved, and we look forward to sharing our time there soon.

Thoughts and Musings

Tuk tuks. A regular word in Miles’s vocabulary by now. The Southeast Asian version of Uber – known as Grab – has a tuk tuk option in Cambodia, and we opted to take tuk tuks everywhere.

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Art. There is a pretty cool art scene in Phnom Penh. I fell in love with an artist who takes inspiration from apsara (ancient Khmer dance) ballets. We visited his studio. His work is stunning and can be found on Instagram @dinartcambodia.

Candies. As I mentioned, we did a whole lot of walking in Phnom Penh. Every so often, I would find Ari with a single wrapped candy in her hand and could not understand where she was getting them. Turns out, she was taking them from the ancestral offerings that line the storefronts. We had a talk about ancestors and offerings that left her somewhat confused, and a further talk about not eating candy found on the street.

Coffee. We found these fantastic tin coffee presses in Vietnam and we’ve been using them ever since to brew our coffee. They weigh nothing and were a couple dollars each.

T-Mobile. We cannot sing the praises of T-Mobile’s One Plus cell plan enough. We have been to 6 countries so far and we have not had to buy a single sim card, nor have we paid any data roaming charges. The plan is so simple and easy: $140/month for 3 phone lines, unlimited data in nearly every country, unlimited texts (including international), and unlimited minutes except 25 cents per minute for international calls. I have not included this information because I loathe AT&T (though I do) but because this has made our travels infinitely easier.

Our Packing List. We wrote about the gear we packed here and the clothes we packed here. We are nearly five months in and can say that we packed very well. We replaced some of Ari’s clothes because of stains and holes and Robby bought a shirt, but we have otherwise managed very well with the clothes and gear we brought. And, incredibly, we have not lost a single item to date.

Final note: we potty trained Miles just over two weeks ago. He’s doing great so far and got through a 5 hour drive and a 3 hour plane ride with no accidents. We are so very very happy to be past that stage.

As always, thank you so much for following along! x