Phnom Penh

Arriving to the capital of Cambodia was a little bit like landing in Bangkok; another surprise, especially considering what nightmare this country went through not that long ago. First of all it is huge, you can drive for hours and still not reach your destination and it is very nicely resaturated. Funny though that instead of names the streets have numbers, but actually I liked it this way; very logical and almost totally apolitical - save the Mao Tse Tung Boulevard :) To be fair, the country is very far from anything like communism, the competition created an excellent value for your money, much less "copy pasting" in business and no price cartels at all, unlike in Laos. So we like the place.

After squatting at the budget travelers hot spot on Street Nr. 93 at the Lake Side we started out with the Royal Palace, which is a real beauty. Nicely renovated with manicured gardens it is the sister of the one in Bangkok, but somehow more serene and peaceful - maybe because there are hardly any tourists. The next day we rented a motorbike and immersed in the local traffic, which bears the same traffic characteristics as any of the other SEA countries we visited so far; if I will not lose my sense of humor I will compose a post about the "Alternative Traffic Rules in Asia".

But anyway, the driving was not more chaotic than before, except that we did not have a real map and the signs are really really poor. After driving an extra 10 km finally we found the Museum of Killing Fields, which is a terribly sad memorial of something similar to what happened in Europe under the Nazis. Except that this outrageous mass crime was committed within one nation, not even between ethnic groups, but grotesquely the "New People" against the "Old People". (Old People stood for everybody without discrimination who lived in a city and/or was considered part of the intelligentsia, the New People meant everybody, who lived in the countryside and was basically illiterate) The referred museum is built on mass graves, prison and forced labor camp - one out of hundreds throughout the the country with a tower like pagoda filled with the bones and clothes of the deceased. If you want to know more about the Red Khmers and this part of Cambodia's history, there is a museum in Phnom Penh about the period in a former school, which the Red Khmers used as their torturing and exterminating institution. We rather choose to see a documentary film, "Death and Rebirth" in the Meta House made by former East German film makers in the beginning of 80's - not totally free from socialist propaganda, but still extremely informative about the happenings in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime.

Though before you rush to participate a program in Meta House I would like to warn you, that there is a probability, that something similar will happen to you, too: half an hour after the advertised starting time one of the organizers stood up to announce, that she is terribly sorry, but she does not have the film. A second later it turnes out that the film in question supposed to be shot the day before; after some confusion it turns out that the organizer does not know what the day is and finally relieves everybody with a cute laughter that everything is all right, she thought it was Sunday, though it is Saturday, the film will be soon shown. Until another half an hour passes and she makes another announcement that no one finds the DVD in question. By this time half the audience leaves, luckily we entertain ourselves respectively with a gin and tonic and beer, undisturbed by these events and about two hours later to our greatest surprise the planned film began.... Now had I done something so silly it would not have been a great surprise, but this was a lady in her late 60's, obviously the director of the institution. :)

As our last program in Phnom Penh we visited the former Russian Market, where some years ago you could buy hash or for the more aggressive a Kalashnikov. Today the range of choice is equally wide, though illegal in a different, somewhat more sophisticated way: you can acquire any of the latest softwares for as much as 2 USD and on the next stand you can choose from pig's ear and Khmer antiques....