Phnom Penh (16 - 19 July)

First Impression

From the first second you arrive, you only see one big chaos. There aren't any traffic rules so the street is a mixture of tuk-tuks, passengers, cars, and motorcycles driving in their own preferred direction. But after a few hours, you start to see the structure within the chaos created by honking to each other. A unique experience! 

Historic Phnom Penh 

After a day of rest, we decided to go to the Killing Fields (Choeung Ek) and the Tuol Slen Genocide Museum. Both places are sites you can visit to experience what happened in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 when the Khmer Rouge regime came to power. The communistic party led by Paul Pot was striving for a pure new regime by killing the people who where seen as a threat. Most of the victims where intellectuals, teachers, lawyers, doctors but also people with glasses or with soft hands. These traitors were 'collected' and brought to a remote place to be killed. The other part of the society had to work 12 hours a day as slaves to keep up with Paul Pots wish: to become an independent land by tripling the rice production. 

In total one third of the population was killed (3 out of 8 millions people died). Even though the atmosphere nowadays is calm and peaceful, the aftermath is still very obvious in daily life: the majority of the survivals are traumatized and victims are also discriminated in their own town. At the killings fields, bones still pop up when it's rain season. I had a look around myself and indeed, I saw a bone between the roots of a three... :s

Sightseeing

In the afternoon we dropped off Béatrice at her NGO (A New Day in Cambodia), where she will volunteer for 6 weeks by teaching local children mathematics and giving them computer classes. At the accommodation she met a group of international students from Brazil, the Netherlands, France,.. that where also helping out at the AIESEC internship. I was so glad for her that she had friends to support her and help her integrate in the culture!

In the evening we went to the River Side, which is a long 'avenue' next to the Mekong river (the water is brown because of the dirt). It's place full of restaurants and bars to hang out in the evening, cosy place to see when you're in PP! ;)

Before heading to Siem Reap on Friday, we had one last day in PP. Time to visit some other must-sees! First we had a swim at the swimming pool in the hotel because the climate is so hot but most of all veryyy moistly! After our refreshment we decided to visit the Royal Palace. A beautiful complex consisting out of white and yellow building which refers to their religion (Buddhism and Hinduism) all decorated with gold.  

During our visit at the Royal Palace, the sky turned black which predicts a monsoon rain so we decided to leave the complex and go to the roofed Russian Market.  It's called 'Russian' market for the simple reason that a lot of Russian people go to this market. Millions and millions of clothes, bags, watches, food, head phones, ... everything is there! Off course you can't expect that a Gucci or Longchamp bag is real, it's all fake production but that does not take away the fun experience while wondering around and checking out all those things!

The day has ended, we went to sleep and now I'm blogging in the bus that will take us to Siem Reap, where my NGO is! I'm excited!!