7 hours on a bus to Phenom Penh - nothing exciting to report on that, just glad to have made it in one piece peacefully after the stories I heard. PP was a lot nicer than I was expecting - clean, put together, and just a cute little town. We only had that day to see the town so we hired a tuk tuk for the day to see S-21 Tou Seng Prison and the Killing Fields. What a depressing day. I had no real knowledge of Cambodia's history before; its just not taught in school like European and US history is. The Poi Pot regime is so recent, so fresh in hisotry too. The museum had so many photos and personal stories of events that happened just 30 years ago. Even outside the museum, there were many people begging for money and it was obvious they were landmine victims or somthing equally as tragic. Then we rushed out to see the Killing Fields. I just can't phatom the horror of the prison and the fields. What those people experiend, its just horrifying to think about. The fields closed and we headed back to town just as the sun was setting. Such a beautiful sight!
Cambodia architecture was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. So different from Vietnam! The people are also so different: so much darker and shorter than the Vietnamese. It was such a striking difference as soon as we crossed the border.
That night in the Phnom Penh may just have been my favorite night of the whole semester. Definitely of SE Asia so far. Had a delicious Indian dinner then went in search of a happy hour. A group of guys invited us to join them for a free drink, so how could we refuse? Tehre's no way to transfer the greatness of that conversation to the page, but it was a great night with a Kiwi, Australian, and a few Americans just shooting the breeze and celebrating the Kiwi's upcoming child. The Kiwi, Stanley, is 60 years old, been in Cambodia since 1988, married to a 28 year old local woman, and just found out his wife is pregnant with their 3rd child. Phil is 40 something and had been living in Cambodia for 4 years. Th was traveling around SE Asia and just never went back to TX. Joseph had been working in Japan for 2 years and is travelling around before going home for the first time in 2 years. All of them had interesting stories to tell. We ended the night all too soon and it was time to move on to Siem Riap.
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