PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA

This morning Chris and I made another obligatory stop on what a woman we met in Fiji half-jokingly referred to as the "Southeast Asian tour of death and destruction": Namely, the Killing Fields of Cheung Ek,15 kilometers southwest of Phnom Penh, and one of Cambodia's most famous (or infamous) tourist attractions. This is the place where over 17,000 civilians were killed by the brutal Khmer Rouge regime (1975-79), many of them transported here after being held and tortured at Tuol Sleng (see yesterday's entry). It was made famous in the film The Killing Fields, which if you haven't seen, you should run right out to Blockbuster and rent right now. That's okay, I'll wait.....

Anyway, as you might imagine, it's a rather disturbing place. At the entrance to the site is a 17-story monument to the victims, featuring glass walls that hold 8,000 human skulls exhumed from some of the mass graves. Chilling, to be sure, but not as much as the mass graves themselves, dozens of partially filled-in pits covered with grass and marked with signs detailing the number of bodies found in each (usually in the hundreds). One of the most disturbing moments was when I noticed that there were pieces of human bone, teeth, and bits of clothing poking up through the dirt everywhere, including the paths we were walking on! There are so many remains here that it's impossible to account for all of them, and in fact many of the mass graves haven't been exhumed, and are being left as-is. At any rate, all the exposed bones brought home the fact that this was the location of a very real, and very recent, horror.

After paying our respects to the dead, we headed back into town and had our tuk-tuk driver drop us off at the National Museum, a smart-looking red building consisting of four open-air galleries surrounding a central courtyard of palm trees and lotus ponds. Most of the treasures contained in the galleries are sculptures and small stone and metal artifacts from Cambodia's long history, including many from the famed Angkor period. Lots of Buddhas and Shivas, elephants and such.

Chris and I then walked a block or so to have lunch at a cool tapas eatery called Friends, which has a really interesting concept: It's a restaurant that hires former street kids and trains them for the service industry as servers and chefs. The kids, mostly young teens, were really professional, and the food was great--we stuffed ourselves on a whole slew of tasty dishes including honey garlic meatballs, roasted chicken with mangoes, and sweet potato fries with curry mayonnaise. Really good stuff!

Our third attraction of the day (not counting the restaurant) was Cambodia's Royal Palace, which in a lot of ways is similar to Thailand's Royal Palace--from the courtyards, murals, and ornate halls right down to their own version of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha! This palace is beautiful in its own right, though, and perhaps its most outstanding feature is the so-called Silver Pagoda, which is covered in silver floor tiles and lined with cases holding hundreds of small Buddha sculptures.

Cambodia Fun Facts:

• Money is a little confusing here, because they use both the Cambodian riel and the American dollar. A lot of times you pay for things in dollars, and they give you change in riel (apparently they don't use American coins, just bills). But one place gave me my change in Thai baht!
• Almost every car in Cambodia is either a Corolla or a Camry. I feel right at home here! :-)