17/18-11-08

bericht voor Trijnie: probeer niet eens te begrijpen waarom ik dat soort onzinnige vragen stel, maar ik heb inmiddels uit betrouwbare Vlaamse bron begrepen, dat het een fabeltje is, dat Belgen nog steeds waterkonijn in restaurants eten.
En wat die andere vraag betreft: daar gaat het ook goed mee!

Dear all,

Finally a normally working, having a normal keyboard and very cheap (0,5 $ / hour) Internet connection, inside and one just opposite our hotel! And I can see again! I changed one of my contact lenses 2 days before departure and my eye-doctor was right when he warned me, that I would have difficulties with reading, which turned out to be very true 1000s kilometres from home ... So tonight I got within 1/2 hour a pair of good reading glasses incl. solid box for only $ 42.

I continue with yesterday 17-11-08 morning. Very disciplined we left 10 minutes before official departure time. Our group turns out to be the more and more weird, no homogeinity at all, but it does not bother us at all. We form our own group of 4 often accompanied the evening for dinner by the Dutch guide.
Long drive on not so good road from Kratie to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Some stops on the way for drinks and lunch, and also because of a technical problem with the bus, which fortunately was fixed very quickly. The stops are always interesting, lots of things to see (people, seriously overloaded cars, rice fields, ...), friendly people, not pushy at all and often ready to be taken for a photograph.

Interesting stop at spiderville Skuon, where huge deep-fried spiders are offered for a snack. We both tried a leg, it tasted quite nice, but when I tasted the hairs of the leg, I had to spit it out .... Our local Cambodian guide ate it all, incl. the body, aaarhhh... And believe it or not, after being caught, they got their teeth getting out in order avoiding from being bitten ... No idea what the name of this species is, maybe a nice question for Lilian!?

Around 5 p.m. we arrived at Phnom Penh. The name of this city has definitely a magic name for me. I was a teenager during the Khmer Rouge horrors, and I remember the news stories about it, but it was for me in a far away Asian country and here I am, 30 years after the end of the Pol Pot regime, in the city where it all started on 17 April 1975. Because of heavy traffic, and even traffic jams inside the city, we arrived slowly and we gradually noticed the change of the country side into modern buildings, still often varied by wooden simple, very simple, houses. Such also in the city centre, with dirty, very dirty streets.
After having checked in in our hotel, we went off by tuk-tuk (4 wheels moped taxi) to an Indonesian restaurant: having 3 Dutch in our group not living in the Netherlands, we were dying for some sateh with "pinda"-sauce... What a deception: it was closed! Next to is the FCC, the Foreign Correspondents' Club, famous beyond the borders of Cambodia, where we enjoyed a - for Cambodian level - expensive diner with my first wine and dessert during this trip.
We were seriously warned for bag snatchers and pickpockets, so we left our belongings in the hotel safe and stayed closely together while returning home. Armed robberies do occur in Phnom Penh, but are rare and I reckon that by taking the same precautions as in Paris or in Amsterdam, things are not that worse. The only serious problem is, is that the police is not protecting tourists, so it is better to avoid any problems ....

18-11-08
The 4 of us we organised a long day. We hired for $ 25 a tuk-tuk for the full day, who picked us up at 7.15 a.m. to get to the Royal Palace (still used by the King and his wife; those private parts are not open to public). That was a little too early so our tuk-tuk driver, Mr Ba (or something like that ..) brought us to a wonderful coffee place, finally my first serious espresso! Cambodian coffee is quite terrible to drink.
We tried again at 8 a.m. and this time the gates of the palace were open (official opening hours are not always respected). Unfortunately it was a raining a bit and later on even more serious (and today we have been told, that a serious storm zone is approaching us from Thailand) so the yellow, red, orange colours of the roofs of the buildings of the Royal Palace were not that vivid. This palace is compared with the Bangkok's one, but we reckon that the latter is much more interesting with much more variety. It can be that the grey weather influenced our appreciation. Absolutely highlight is the Silver Pagoda, with 5000 silver tiles weighing 1 kg each; the life seize gold Buddha weighing 90 kg decorated with thousands of diamonds and the Emerald Buddha, believed to be made of Baccarat crystal. The latter we do not understand, because for us Emerald is not the same at all as crystal. Lilian, another search for you?!
Beautiful Throne Hall as well, still used for instance for ceremonies as the presentation of credentials by diplomats.

Having read a lot before our departure to Cambodia about the Khmer Rouge horrors, we of course had to visit the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. I am sure that some of you saw the impressive film " The Killing Fields" showing in a very good way the incredible happenings of that era. We hired a guide during our tour of this museum or rather just a field with some holes of the excavated mass graves - because of a lack of money, 43 out of 129 communal graves have been left untouched - and a glass Memorial Stupa showing the skulls of more than 8000 victims. Fragments of human bones and bits of cloth are scattered around the disinterred pits. It is a peaceful place today, masking the horrors that unfolded here less than 3 decades ago.

After this rather emotional visit, frankly commented by our guide, who was too young having lived itself this period, we needed a break, so we went to a nice restaurant for a good lunch.
The restaurant was just in front of the Tuol Sleng Museum, the formerly High School taken over by Pol Pot's security forces in 1975 to be turned into a prison known as Security Prison 21 (S-21). This soon became the largest centre of detention and torture in the country: 17.000 people held at S-21 were taken to the killing fields of Choeung Ek. Altogether, a visit to Tuol Sleng is a profoundly depressing experience. The sheer ordinariness of the place makes it even more horrific: the suburban setting, the plain school buildings, the grassy playing area where children kick around balls; rusty beds, instruments of torture and wall after wall of disturbing portraits of tortured victims conjure up images of humanity at its worst. It demonstrates the darkest side of the human spirit that lurks within us all.
We also watched a powerful documentary made by amongst others the French TV channel FR3 about the true story of a beautiful woman and a regional Khmer Rouge leader, who are made to pay for their love story considered as a crime with imprisonment and execution at S-21 prison.
Oef, that was tough.... and what I got out of it as being the worst thing that even nowadays still exists the distrust among the Cambodian population. As maybe said before the today's Prime Minister Hun-Sen is a former Khmer Rouge soldier and corruption is overwhelming. However people are not ready for a change, out of ignorance - people on the country side hardly receive any proper education - but also out of fear : maybe the next leader is even worse than Pol Pot!

We ended the day with a visit to Phnom Penhs boulevard Sisowath, interesting, but not really after all we have seen today....

Dinner tonight right at the corner of our hotel. I left Arjan and the other 3 right after this dinner to write this blog but before I had a talk of over an hour with 2 taxi drivers waiting for our hotel and speaking extremely well English, and one of them even French. I was surprised that both are not having a better job. Well the reason of that is very simple: corruption! If you do not have the right connections, you will not have the right job.
One of them told that he witnessed this afternoon a car accident, caused by a big car - number-plated RCAF Royal Cambodian Air Force - to a simple bicycle; the car did not even stop, because nobody will bother the RCAF ... One of them was very pessimistic about their near future, the other more optimistic, but I do not see how things may change in the right direction as long as the present political leaders remain in power.
For a poor country as Cambodia, the number of huge - in Europe very - expensive cars is impressive and one should not wonder where the owners get the money from.

OK enough serious considerations, time to get some sleep. Tomorrow morning we are planning a visit to the Central Market and a Lonely Planet walk in Phnom Penh, before heading off to our next destination!

A (I am afraid that he is already sleeping right now) & I - Phnom Penh, 18-11-08 - hot