Cambodia - Part II - Phnom Penh

June 11th, 2022

Today we would travel to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

We had Chun pick us up and take us to the bus station. We bade him farewell and headed inside to wait for the bus. Interestingly, there was a little shrine inside which had some fat stacks.

Six hours crammed into a mini-bus later, we found ourselves in the capital city of Cambodia. We grabbed the first guy who offered tuk tuk services and headed to our accommodation, The Artist Residence. So named as it is across the street from an art school and would fill with teenagers working in revit in the afternoons.

We forgot we had to pay cash for the room so Vitali ran to the nearest atm... $21/night got us a submarine with a mold problem (and a loft). There was a single window in the space which had bars and faced an interior courtyard that was full of old ladies chatting and hanging laundry. So we mostly kept the curtain closed. There was a hot plate and washing machine though, so that made up for some of it.

June 12th, 2022

We headed out to explore today. First impressions -- Phnom Penh was more like what I thought Bangkok would be. It was a little wilder, less polished. The internet cabling everywhere was more chaotic. Like Thailand, everyone was wearing slides for the constant on-off of shoes. People seemed friendly.

We walked over to Wat Phnom.

A story about the founding of Wat Phnom from Wikipedia:

In 1372, a wealthy old lady named "Penh" lived on a small hill near the bank of the confluence of the four rivers. One day, when it was raining, Penh went down to the port to take a bath and saw a floating Koki tree in the river and she called the village to fish it from the water. She and the villagers took a piece of wood to scrape off the mud and in the hole of the Koki tree, there were four Buddha statues made of bronze, brass and one made of marble. Another statue was in the form of Vishnu with the hands holding a staff, a chain, a snail, and a lotus flower. Later, Penh assigned the villagers to build an artificial hill and build a small wooden temple on top of the hill to house the statues. She invited monks to pray for the statues and the monks named the hermitage "Wat Phnom" which it is known to this day.

There were quite a few unique elements on this site, like a giant clock, at least two temples, an open pagoda, and several stupas.

Then we walked by a luxury shopping mall where a security guard told me I couldn't take photos outside.

Next, we headed to the Central Market -- a yellow art deco building designed by Jean Desbois and completed in 1937. The way it photographs from the exterior makes it look much further away and larger than it really is. There are no windows -- only ventilation screens. It wasn't disgustingly hot inside, surprisingly.

We saw a lot of replica sunglasses and watches. The watch quality was much lower than in Thailand though.

We wandered around and ended up at the wet market portion of the block. We saw a ton of live (and dead) seafood.

We headed back to our hotel to hide from the heat of the day.

In the evening, we re-emerged, to go check out the night market.

We walked along the riverfront and watched a bunch of party boats float down the river.

We found the night market, which wasn't a nice as the ones we had been to in Thailand. It was mostly knock-off designer clothing? We noticed that was a big thing here -- lots of big labels on clothes like Gucci, Balenciaga, etc.

We left the market and headed back towards our hotel, taking in the night air.

Vitali caught some lightning.

Six stories of revelling.

We stopped and watched the lightning over the river.

And then walked the few blocks back to the Artist Residence.

June 13th, 2022

Today was our last full day in Cambodia. We elected not to visit the Killing Fields or the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which detail the genocide I learned about earlier. Our faith in humanity was at an all-time low, and visiting seemed too macabre.

We walked over to the National Museum of Cambodia which was just across the street.

We saw two cats playing in the courtyard out front.

We had to check our bags outside and I wasn't allowed to photos with my camera inside. But I could take with my cellphone??

The museum was small but filled with tons of interesting artifacts. There was also a contemporary blown glass art installation from the local art school.

In the evening we decided to head to a rooftop bar to watch the sunset and see the Royal Palace, which was closed due to the pandemic.

Luckily it was happy hour so we got two for one drinks.

The view from the bar was great, very good people watching.

Cambodia was great. The richness of culture and architectural history made for an extremely enjoyable visit. Like Thailand, it would have been better to come in the winter when the weather is more manageable.

The next day, we'd fly back to Bangkok. We debated going to Vietnam but the seasons were not quite right for visiting. So we decided to continue our tour through Thailand.