Adventure to Asia: Cambodia Pt. 2

Saturday, July 26: Phonm Penh

We took a bus from Siem Reap to Phonm Penh. I was kind of nervous because I heard bad stories about the roads. The guy in charge of our hostel told us that he just went to Phonm Penh and he saw some guys head run over on the side of the road. Luckily, it wasn't that bad. When we arrived in Phonm Penh we were immediately bombarded by tuk tuk drivers. We were told they were a scam, so we just decided to walk to our hostel. I figured out the route using Google maps, and it wasn't too bad of a walk. Our hostel was only about 5 streets over.

After settling in we decided to go to eat. Phonm Penh, and all of Cambodia, is REALLY dirty. There are piles of garbage every where. It's also really hard to walk down the street because the sidewalks are all taken up by anything you can think of so you have to walk in the street, but there are also so many cars and motorcycles. I'm surprised we didn't die. We ate a place called Chat N Chew. We both tried fish amok (which is a must to try when you go to Cambodia) and we finally tried the Angkor beer.

That night we went to a night market with two girls in our hostel room. One girl was from Holland and the other was from Canada. The night market wasn't that great, not like the ones we went to in Chiang Mai and Siem Reap. It was mostly just fake clothing. Then we went back to our hostel and turned in for the night.

Sunday, July 27: Phonm Penh

The next morning Jillian and I took a tuk tuk to the S-21 museum. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge they turned this school in the city into a prison where the tortured and killed those who were against their regime or not ethnically pure and their children. It was sad walking through the grounds.

After walking through the S21 museum we rode to Killing Fields where they took people from the prison and killed them in mass graves. The Killing Fields were much further away, about an hour, and the road was so bad I thought I was going to fall out of the tuk tuk. I didn't take any pictures at the Killing Fields because it just didn't feel right. You are given a head set and then you follow a map around the ground. You could still see bones, teeth, and fabric from clothing in the grounds. You could also see the mass graves, although they removed most of the bodies and buried them somewhere else.

We were hungry after walking through the Killing Fields so our tuk tuk driver showed us this little restaurant to eat at. We then drove back to Phonm Pehn and walked through the Russian market. Since it was pretty much the same things over and over again we didn't spend much time. We went back to our hostel and hung out with some of the people in our room. Later on Jillian, our roommate, Pagie, and I headed to a restaurant called Empire. It's also a movie theater, but we didn't go see a movie. I ended up getting fish and chips because I was craving potatoes and I was tired of eating rice. Then Jillian and I went to a bar and spent some time then headed back for the night.