Cambodia: Part 2

The morning after my arrival into Phnom Penh. The night before I had arrived after dark and made the mistake of allowing a tout con me into taking me to his guesthouse of choice that I didn’t want to stay at. It was obvious that this was a place that paid half the tuk-tuk drivers in the city to bring backpackers to since it was teeming with them in a neighborhood that obviously was away from the main the drag. Because I had decided I didn’t want to stay there I spent a good half an hour having him drive me around in search of other crappy little guesthouses that didn’t prove much better. I finally settled on a cockroach infested room close to the waterfront area and had to pay him extra for the runaround. I was ready to punch the guy in the end.

In search of food.

Finally found something adequate. Sadly, I can’t say Cambodian food is all that good. Most of their dishes are rip-offs of neighboring country’s dishes.

The Royal palace


The National Museum

Tuol Sleng Genocide museum. This was an old high school converted to a detention center where Pol Pot sent several thousand people to be tortured and killed. Read about the killing fields and the mass atrocities that were committed in cambodia between 1975 and 1979 here.

The Rules

Not sure what this means but I made sure I maintained a solemn composure whenever I was around it.




On the ground floor of Building A there were a series of rooms that were used as the torture rooms. On the walls hung portraits of various victims laid out on the metal beds.


Large screens of mugshots taken of detainees before they were sent to their fate. There were hundreds of these pictures spread out through several rooms.















Building C had classrooms that had been divided up into individual cells. In those cells the victims would be shackled to metal bars in rooms that were barely the width of half a twin mattress.







To be sure, this ain’t no “Welcome Back Kotter”

I think the only example of graffiti I saw in cambodia. I have a deep suspicion it was done by a westerner.

Cheap goods abound in the Russian market. Get your pirated DVDs here.

Central market. it was like a giant beehive.


This was the American couple, Amanda and Leighton, that I traveled with while in Cambodia. I met them at the border and we rode to Siem Reap and met up in Phnom Penh together.



Leighton getting a wee bit drunk.

Ramshackle homes along a riverside as we bused it towards Saigon.

The typical traffic.


While we were waiting for the ferry, dozens of peddlers rushed the vehicles to try to sell their wares.


Seeing them really gave you a perspective on how poor the locals are as you witness them jostle each other for that potential sale.

Oh yea, it might look like it’s cold but we were in the middle of the hottest months in cambodia.

I witnessed a nearly full water bottle casually tossed out of a truck and 1 young boy and his friend quickly picking it up to gulp down the contents before the rest of it spilled onto the pavement.

All of the sudden they noticed me watching and ran up to the bus banging under my window trying to get my attention.



Propaganda party signs were everywhere.

She was interesting as she was a very serious business woman who minutes earlier had pulled out a VERY large wad of cash from her bosom. This was the last pitstop before crossing over into vietnam.

Next stop: VIETNAM