Tragedy and Majesty

Tragedy and MajestyWe headed off late in the morning after a sleep in to have breakfast in Phnom Penh. After dodging the flocks of Tuk-Tuk drivers we found a nice little place to eat around the corner from the hotel. With a good breakfast in our bellies we headed back into the scrum to pick a driver. We ended up choosing a driver that spoke English in a great Aussie accent and it took us ages to figure out he was in fact from Phnom Penh. He’d been taken under the wing of some Aussie ex-pat and he spoke a bit like a local from central Australia or maybe north of Perth. He had Australia and Perth written on his Tuk-Tuk as well as the inside part of the roof being covered in stickers of people with him and of him with his family and many other interesting things.

We headed out to the Killing Fields to see the sad history of the people of Cambodia. I don’t really know what to say about the Killing Fields except that I believe it’s is a place that everyone who visits Cambodia needs to visit. It is hard to write about the experience, it’s not like Battambang where there was so much to say about that day that we could gloss over it. We knew that we’d have to take our time and pay our respects and on entering the site we both got chills. When you first walk in you see the large Stupa that was built to hold the bones of the dead that had been unearthed. Only about a third of the site has been excavated so far and they know that they have only taken out a small portion of the dead. We took our time at the site, reading all the information and looking through the small museum on the site. Drew and I were profoundly affected by what we saw and read. This is a testament to the character of the wonderful Khmer people who have overcome huge adversity to become the wonderful, welcoming and happy people we are meeting everywhere in Cambodia. These sites are both a stark reminder and a memorial and we are grateful we chose to do it.

We headed to the Royal Palace in our Tuk-Tuk (The only one like it in Phom Pehn) and said goodbye to our charismatic driver. The Royal Palace is another awe inspiring place and the wonderful buildings that we were allowed to see were amazing. I hate to draw comparisons, but I don’t think it was on the same scale as the pimped out Thai Palace. It is however, amazing in more subtle ways. The artworks inside on the walls are from many hundreds of years ago and the fact that any of it survived the Khmer Rouge is amazing in itself. So many places we’ve visited have been breathtaking despite people apologising that it was more amazing before it was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. We love it anyway. The Royal Palace did have something that the Thai King didn’t have. The Royal Palace has a huge building that has a floor completely made of Silver Tiles. Most of the tiles were covered in carpet so you could walk through the Pagoda to see the wonderful museum quality objects that the King has made available to be viewed, but you can still see the silver tiles. Even though you’re not meant to step past the rope and onto silver floor Drew and I did possibly inch forward a little too much just to stand barefoot on the floor.

We headed back to the hotel and dropped some stuff off at our room and then headed out to see the night markets. We may have got to the markets a little early but we wandered around with all the locals looking at the food and clothes and many other items available for sale. It was slightly underwhelming when compared to some of the markets that we’d seen already so we headed off down some dark back streets checking out the local parts of the city…