Day 19, Sunday 9th May, Phnom Penh

My hotel is Indochine II, I think in 130th Street, a block away from the riverside road.
It has good wifi in the room and a desk, air-con and a fridge, and a reasonably roomy shower, all for $20 a night in the center of the nation's capital, but otherwise it is not preposessing, and the area was messy, rundown and rather sleazy. However, I soon found that most of Phnom Penh is like this, at least what I saw on my extended walks.


I set off down the riverside walkway in the direction of the royal palace. The walkway is a wide paved strip, about 25 metres across, between the road and the river, on which a couple of boats with families were moored or puttered around.


The walkway had a thin row of struggling trees planted near the riverside, but apart from that it was open to the blazing sun and understandably empty. Here a small group is taking advantage of a tiny patch of shade for a game of cards, which seemd a popular pastime.

The road was busy with traffic, the pavement with shops was cluttered with motorcycles, stands, damaged paving and construction sites.

Walking back from the river again, I passed some children playing, then
found the markets, with sales in full swing, among other things a try of crunchy crickets and a table of fish so fresh they were still twitching.

 Market kitchen:

There were no air-conditioned restaurants to be found, except in an expensive hotel. Eventually I settled on a wicker table and chair next to some potplants on the pavement outside a small guesthouse a block back from the river to have some breakfast.


I considered renting a bike, as the town is quite flat, but I should have done that back near the hotel, so I continued towards the palace area, passing a mother who was rocking her baby in a hammock and had given it a modern toy to play with, a mobile phone.

At 10:45, they said the palace and the silver pagoda were closed (til 2 pm), so I went on further, hopping from tree to tree along a green strip with what looked like a war memorial on it, finally reaching the independence monument, shaped like Angkor Wat, on a big roundabout.

By now I was not so far away from the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, so I kept on walking, zigzagging down larger and smaller streets, avoiding one with a smelly channel of water next to it, until I got there.

At last I got a good shot of a bicycled broom seller, who are common in this country. The brroms are made of natural materials, presumably in the countryside.

And here is a mobile recycling unit, beeping a plastic horn to announce that they will collect plastic and metal. A drop in the ocean of Cambodia's garbage problem, but nevertheless ...

Tuol Sleng was a school, which the Khmer Rouge converted to a prison and interrogation centre when they took Phnom Penh and evacuated the inhabitants to forced labour in the countryside. The museum has few exhibits, just the buildings, the classrooms used as torture rooms with metal bed frames and a few imprecise photos of torture victims on the walls. The main exhibit is the huge collection of photos of the people who were imprisoned and killed there, including a large number of children who were class enemies. 

Classrooms converted to small cells by rough brick walls:

At the museum I saw a book recommended by John le Carre titled The Gate, by Francois Bizot, describing his early imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge and later the evacuation of the French Embassy after the fall of Phnom Penh. I bought a copy later on from a street stall and read it on the bus to Sihanoukville. A fascinating eye-witness account.

To get back to town I started offering moto-drivers 2000 riells (50 cents) for a ride to the royal palace, thinking it was about time I tried this cheap method of transportation. Several refused, so I kept on walking and eventually one chap consented and we set off down the broad avenue from the independence monument towards the river. Unfortunately his English was nil and we sailed past the palace entrance and only stopped after I had remonstrated several times. He asked some other people what I wanted and was correctly informed, wanting to turn around again but I had had enough and decided to give the palace a miss and walk back to the hotel a few blocks away. I slid off the vehicle, skinning my shin, gave him the money, which seemed OK for him, and decided I would not bother doing that again.

Here is a guy fixing a tyre on the main riverside road. The pavement looks relatively tidy here.

Here is a sex-tourist bar called "The Meeting Place" a block away from my hotel:

The old colonial architecture is still much in evidence, but mostly run-down and ratty.
Here a corner kitchen, doing the washing up.

There was a selection of touris hang-outs on the main road but none with air-con or much appeal to me, so I ended up paying a bit more for some Vietnamese spring rolls in the Lemon Grass Restaurant next to the hotel.

Around midnight there was a lot of noise on my floor of the hotel. Someone drunk and giggling kept falling down, then later on a male voice kept on producing a strange noise between a grunt and a shout, with no apparent motivation. About 1 am I went downstairs and alerted a guard outside, who woke a receptionist sleeping on a stretcher in the hotel lobby, who said he would deal with it, but didn't.

So I didn't see much of Phnom Penh, what I saw did not impress me, and I don't intend to return.