Sue And Graham's Excellent Adventure: Phenomenal Phnom Penh

We made it to the capital of Cambodia from Vietnam via minivan to ferry (named the “Superdong”) to bus to minibus to tuk-tuk. Crossing the border proved to be easier than expected after the stories we’d heard about bribes needed to enter the country. We were only weakly asked once to pay, the “health officer” who makes you fill out a form stating if you’ve been sick in the last 7 days, asked for 15000 VND ($0.75) to help him pay for his tea. Really it was more a meager request than the demanding bribe we were expecting. In the end we gave him our remaining dong which was about 20 cents worth.

We found Phnom Penh to be crowded, bustling, and on the move with high-rises in various stages of construction. It reminded us of India on a much smaller scale, with tuk-tuks zipping around, store fronts spilling out to fill the sidewalks and lots of car horns. We also noticed what appeared to be a large disparity of wealth among the city’s residents with Lexus, Range Rover and Escalade SUVs a common sight as they forced their way through the streets packed with motorbike and bicycles.

We met up with Sue’s Expeditors Cambodia counterpart, Sam, who showed us warm hospitality. He picked us up took us to a local Khmer lunch before driving us around all afternoon showing us around the city. Sam also brought along two other Expeditors’ employees who helped show us the sights and gave us some great insights into the Cambodian society. It was welcome change to have a few local guides to lead us around instead of having to figure it all out and we had a great time with our kind hosts.

On our second day we headed a little out of the city to visit the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, better known as the Killing fields, where the remains of 8,985 Khmer Rouge victims were excavated from mass grave,s, 43 of the 129 graves where left untouched. Between April 1975 to January 1979 roughly 1-3 million people (a very disputed number)died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. In the name of the working class and farmers, the Khmer Rouge seized power and ordered the immediate evacuation of the cities and began jailing (and eventually killing) anyone they considered an enemy of the state which generally included intellectuals, teachers, doctors, people who wore glasses, spoke foreign languages, etc. The tour of Choeung Ek came with an audio guide full of personal stories of survivors and former soldiers giving us a better idea of the insane and tragic rule of Pol Pot and the consequences it had on the country.