Mandy: 3rd – 7th December
After travelling back down from Vang Vieng we spent another couple of nights in Vientiane before flying out of Laos to Cambodia. It gave us a chance to re-visit some of our favourite cafes and to find that the horrid (loud) Chinese theatre and fun fair stands had disappeared from opposite the BBQ restaurant! It reminded me of when Tom Hanks in the film ‘Big’ went back to the plaza where the fortune teller machine was to find that the carnival, with the machine, had moved on. Anyway….. It was good to see Lay and his staff again at the Moonlight Champa Guest House and to meet and chat to a British couple in their sixties who were travelling in a similar fashion to ourselves.
So on with what we found out and saw in Phnom Penh……
Wat Ounalom is a temple located on Sisowath Quay in Phnom Penh and is the headquarters of Cambodian Buddhism and proudly houses ‘an eyebrow hair of Buddha’ I kid you not. I thought the ‘Buddha tooth temple’ in Singapore was a gem of a find but an eyebrow hair! Come on, they are clutching at straws! I am sure there will be a ‘mole hair of Buddha’ Temple somewhere too (chuckle) There are lots of footprint of Buddha temples around as well! I don’t mean to be disrespectful but I realise I am coming across that way. Apologies to any Buddhists reading this.
One of the Security guards at a place we visited had bugs and insects piled up on the window sill, he stood nibbling at them like we would if they were peanuts. (I really don’t understand why they eat them) Oh and talking of peanuts, bars often give you some pan-fried nuts with your beer which look very similar to a certain beetle thing that often lands on the table. So you have to make sure you look carefully at what you are picking up when you are chatting and eating the nuts!
Another ‘thing’ that appears at your table along the river front bars is the fake monk! We had read that monks do not beg for money, they collect free food as we have said before but they do not ask for money. Therefore when you see a monk begging around the bars you know he is fake, that coupled with the fact that a table of locals were shouting “fake monk, fake monk, fake monk fake monk fake monk! (I can’t sing you the tune but I think you get the idea). The other night he came in again in his dark brown robes looking more like Friar Tuck than any monks we have seen throughout Asia. He had a little bowl and was using it to collect money as we were sat eating our local rice dish. Glen said “I’m going to put a blob of sticky rice in his bowl if he comes to our table” he does make me laugh. I think the monk heard him because he didn’t come to our table! (chuckle) He reminded us about the fake army guy who went around begging (or should I say demanding) in Luang Prabang. I couldn’t take a photo but it may help you to imagine him if I tell you he didn’t have any teeth, or hair and didn’t wear a top just a pair of combat trousers and a tin hat which he took off as he came in to the restaurant (the tin hat not the trousers) and then stood by each table and stuck out his hand in a sort of obnoxious/military way.
We heard the sound of the Tuk Tuk drivers saying, “Tuk ….TUK,TUK” every time we stepped out of our hotel, It sounded like a b****y hen clucking which became irritating. Which reminds me, did I tell you about the staff in one hotel in Laos who, although lovely young guys, were slightly annoying becuase we caught them teaching the caged Mynah bird to crow like a Cockerel! As if there weren’t enough crowing Cockerels there anyway!
I think you probably realise that I have been trying to avoid talking about our visit to the ‘Killing Fields’. I couldn’t begin to put our feelings in to words and I am not eloquent enough to do the horrific subject and the poor Cambodian people’s plight justice.
It’s difficult to imagine that at a time when I was a teenager living in Marshfield, moaning about double Maths, listening to Radio Luxembourg, putting posters of pop stars on my bedroom walls and wearing cherry lip gloss that unimaginable things were happening in Cambodia. Not even their own people were fully aware of what was going on when they first found themselves being ruled by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime. He would spend the next four years ordering the torture and murder of men, women and children and starving and working others to death; a quarter of the population at that time. This blog is not the place to write the full details of what went on in what was named Kampuchea between April 1975 – January 1979 but if you ever get a spare hour, look it up.
The commemorative stupa below is filled with 8,000 skulls, the remains of just some of the victims found in the mass graves at that site (one of about 196 across Cambodia). We have chosen not to put photos on this blog of anything closer than this view or any of the graphic photos of what we saw there.
The ‘Killing fields’ site was very well presented and organised. When we arrived we were given a handset and earphones for an audio tour, with voices and memories of some of the survivors. Visitors were encouraged to walk around the site in silence whilst listening to the information. It was very shocking and moving. I won’t say any more. However what I will tell you is that when we came out an hour or so later and walked up to our waiting Tuk Tuk driver he looked at us and said “are you angry”, well I was angry at what I had learnt but I thought it strange that he would want to talk about our experience as he must have driven 100’s of tourists there. I didn’t want to talk about it to be honest especially to a Cambodian when he may not be able to understand everything I was saying, but I couldn’t ignore his question so I started by saying that yes I was angry, saddened of course, but very angry, I started to explain that what I had learnt had left me annoyed. I had so many more questions unanswered especially about the United Nations’ and western world’s reaction, etc after the event….. Glen then butted in and asked why I was talking about our visit to the Tuk Tuk driver. “Well he asked me if I was angry!” I said, Glen looked at me and said “he asked if you were HUNGRY”… Oh god! I felt such a fool (Chuckle) and off we went to get lunch.
I feel like a brownie or girl guide. Not only do I carry a piece of string to use as a washing line (and tubing accessory!) but I have safety pins and needles and a selection of colourful threads etc. I have been happily sewing up holes in our backpacks and buttons back on to our clothes etc. This is a sheet we had in one hotel! What about that for Asian darning! I could teach them a thing of two! Not sure how I resisted re-darning this with my white thread now I think about it!
Probably not a blog subject but that hasn’t stopped me before…… It’s just as well we are travelling alone and not in a communal room in a hostel. We were sat on the bed in our room before going out one evening and we were getting hungry so I put some nuts in a bowl and was drinking water when I suddenly remembered we had a little bottle of cheap Laos Rum we had bought. I was very excited to have remembered, got muddled and excitedly asked Glen if he fancied a nipple!? (Chuckle) What I meant was a tipple or a nip of rum lol! Happy days! (Glen has vetoed his reply!!)
The people in Phnom Penh were friendly and happy but the streets were dirty and strewn with rubbish. People would leave their rubbish bags out in piles and then they were opened and sorted through by very old people and or very young children. We saw one little girl about five or six on her own in the dark collecting cans and bottles at 10.30pm at night in the empty street. We passed two families every night who slept on the same corner of one street, each family consisting of three generations, with their babies sat naked on the dirty pavements. All the while huge and expensive 4B4 cars were driving by!
This is not a 4B4 in the foreground, but in the showroom behind is a Rolls Royce a 4B4 Porsche plus a few very common (over here) Mercedes.
As we walked along we would smell beautiful floral aromas from a frangipani tree or from a cart selling flowers for a temple. Then suddenly we would smell the stench of the drains or the rubbish stacked around a tree or on a corner. Men seemed to pee anywhere along the side of the street too. Phnom Penh was not my favourite place so far.
Youths were openly dealing marijuana on the street, some just blatantly selling it and asking us as we walked by, others came along selling Travel books but when we said no thanks they would show us bags of weed in between the books! Glen thought they could have been a little more creative and sandwiched the drugs between such books as, Bill and Ben’s art of Potting or maybe Percy Thrower’s Encyclopedia of Gardening.
There were lots of beggars. Disfigured beggars worse than Java which is saying something, women with babies begging, fake monks begging and little children selling friendship bracelets carrying babies on their hip as they went. Mum you would be bankrupt within an hour of arriving there!
There were local food carts along side western style restaurants like KFC. Beggars nearby the expensive cars….. Phnom Penh was a city of extremes.
We met and spoke to some friendly laid back ex-pats and locals when we were there but after only four nights in Phnom Penh we were ready to move up north to Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor.
Posted with Blogsy
Brings back so many memories! So lovely to read what you are doing! Cx
Fascinating!!!! Glad you are both well and enjoying your travels! xx