Anyway, I Went to a cheap hotel but didn't see any people there.I decided to stay for one night just to have a rest . In the morning after the tours, i could move on to another hotel.(The stay ok hotel )
The next morning,I visited the killing fields (Choeung Ek)and then the genocide museum [Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum] . It was some experience that the locals really want to learn from. I never knew there was an overthrow of the king in 1970 and civil war ensued until '75. Soldiers marched on the streets one day (April 17th 1975) ad the locals cheered them on ,not knowing what was about to happen for the next 3.5 years. The Genocide museum shows pics of many of the inmates who were murdered.
The Killing Fields (Choeung Ek)
Site of the killing fields of Choeung Ek.
If you do come here, Listen to the audio if you can.
It's REALLY sad though
Skulls of the slaughtered
The clothes that they wore can be seen on the bottom section here
This was used to damage\ inflict injury on peoples skin due to its sharp edge
A lot of the rooms were torn down soon after 1979
At the back of the fields, there are tranquil chairs where you can relax for a couple of minutes and enjoy the view (if that's possible)
More views
The killing tree
The magic tree
The Genocide museum (S21) :
After seeing the killing fields, the tuktuk driver drove me to S21. This place contains documented evidence of all the prisoners that ended up here. It's fairly gruesome as they show some pics of the deceased people also. You can see the various torture methods on display here along with many prison cells.
Here are just a few pics..
Nothing has changed in this room since it was used all those years ago
Sounds like there was no room for individuality here
Introduction to the torture method that was used below
People would swing from the rafters until almost passing out.
then they would be lowered into the urn full of water
The courtyard
The prison cells are dotted around the courtyard
A view from inside one of the cells (you can touch both sides of the cells at the same time)
Looking down the corridor
On a completely different note, The tuktuk driver got bored while I was looking around the area so when I came out of S21, he was nowhere to be seen.At least, I recognised his vehicle...as the rains were back in force. 20 minutes later, up he popped wondering where I was!
This was 45 minutes rainfall
I reckon I needed to clean my head so I went for a jog around the area. While going for the jog, I took a few snaps of the local monuments.
The market is that way!
Independance monument
The lights close to the independance monument at nighttime
And they change colour!
The old mixing with the new
Note the TV screen beside the wat
I just went to a local foodshop where I was able to buy tonnes of stuff with some iced tea thrown in
The omelettes over here go well with chilli sauce!
Guys playing keepy uppy with a small ball
looks a bit like hacky sack
Very common pasttime here
This is the seafront where everything happens in Phnom Penh
(especially being accosted by 4,000,000 tuktuk drivers\drug dealers\pimps\etc)
nice pic by the riverside
keeping Phnom Penh safe from something (I guess)
Dance party (Phnom Penh style)
Look, the best thing about Asia is the street markets!
Quail anyone?
Actually, tasted good
This is what the street looks like to e when I do not wear my glasses
Harry Potters dinosaur made an appearance here
After I changed hostels, I went for a walk down by the lakeside. At one point, I encountered 6 tuktuk drivers within 100 meters (not an exageration) and the amount of things they were offering me compsred to the guys in Siem Reap was stunning. I didn't know you could buy opium anywhere! It's really annoying when they see someone harrassing you but then, they will come over to you STRAGHT after the last guy had harassed you and try to sell anything to you. It got really annoying but you have to remember, these people do have nothing....EVERYTHING seems to be for sale here. I can't remember it being this bad in any country . Getting off ther bus, they would shout at you to get you a good deal for a hotel or to get you a cheap tuktuk journey to a hotel. During a jog , when I appear to be on the verge of feinting while i am jogging, I would get 3 or 4 people coming up to me looking for money.During a tuktuk tour, the driver would ask if i wanted to go to a shooting range (to be honest, that would be my least favourite place in the world to visit) so I wsould firmly say no before he would still drive in that direction. Some tuktuk drivers would shout at you as soon as you left the hostel and this would happen the whole way up the street....aaarrrrggghhhh!!! at least some of thr tuktuk drivers seemed genuinely friendly. One guy started chatting to me about my lakeside t-shirt wondering if i had bought it here. I had picked up on the cheap back in Ireland but he told me that there was a lakeside place a few years ago before the ''assholes' of a government decided to demolish it infavour of an apartment complex. progress, how are you!!
Some people have a good way to get my attention though, A woman who was trying to get me to come to her restaurant said to 'to go to her bar' and then said, 'theres a hairdressing place upstairs also'...I had to ask her again to repeat the last part as I didn't expect someone to say that!!
I went for a walk this morning. i was looking for an all you can eat buffet but I did not see any around :-(
At one stage , I sat by a park bench and a Cambodian girl (maybe 20 years old) shouted over at me... I went over to her and she told me about her lifestory. She was living destitute on the streets. She finished school when she was 11 but she had a good grasp of the English language as well as Khmer and Vietnamese and she had a really dark sense of humour.... She had to work as 'a lady' when she was finished with school and she had a fierce sore throat...I didn't really know what to say to her
but she seemed like a nice girl who was unlucky in life. She said she was able to make money out of the barang (foreigners) and that's how she made her income. She actually looked in a bad way.Apart frm being malnorished, she had a chipped tooth. I hate taking pity on people as pity is a cr*p emotion. I gave her some money and went on my way (That sounds terrible but I didn't know what to say) to her as I guess she was trying to drum up some business at one point.)
A really weird thing happened to me today, I went to visit the Russian market and when I got there, I browsed around the area for about 20 minutes before I sat down at the food counter and ordered some noodles. The woman beside me started chatting away to me how she was on holidays with her brother and her friends. She said she was from Kuaka Lumpur but I told
her that she had a strong Filipina accent.She said she was originally from Sabah.(Eastern Malaysia) We were chatting away for a good 1/2 hour while I finished the noodles. She was telling me she had a daughter with a guy who did a runnuer with his family to the states.She proceeded to show me pics of her daughter and asked if I would be interested in coming over to her place so her daughter could chat to a European. As I had nothing better to do, I said 'ok' and herself,her friend and I headed back to her place. When I arrived there, her brother started chatting to me about the usual stuff, 'what are you doing here?' 'what sport do you like?' 'why do you walk in the rain and refuse to use a tuktuk (That one is specific to me!)?'. Then he told me his trade was working on a cruise ship and would I like to see a few tricks (but not to tell anyone) At this point, I recall one guy I met back in Indonesia (Sam) told me about a friend of his who was invited back to a house to play some friendly games of cards and ended up being scammed out of A LOT of money. I started to become suspicious. The guy brought me into his bedroom and his friend sat down beside me. He started showing me some tricks like predicting the next card in the deck. This was cool. Then, he got the chips out on the table.At this point, I REALLY started smelling a rat. I told him that I am not playing for money but he insisted on showing me the tricks anyway (poker tricks).After showing me the tricks he mentioned that a guy 'Assiss' had won a lot of money the day before and he wanted to make money back off him and we can easily make money off this guy.(Oh yeah, before he started talking about assiss, he mentioned that I could pay a visit on his ship and we could work in tandem to win big on the poker. He would put in 5000 , i would put in 5000 and we could make 200,000 no problem.
Now, I used to mess about on paddypower.com betting site at one time and I played the 'hi-lo' game.I put 100 euro in the account and at one point , my account was worth 650 euro. Then, I decided to try to win more by betting higher. I lost the 650 euro in less than 2 hours. I had never felt so crap in my life .At that point, I decided not to bet again if possible (I never want to go to Vegas!!!))
Anyway, back to the guy, I told him about my hi-lo story after he mentioned the $5000 -$5000 money scenario. He then told me , 'no problem' , he will put all the money in and we can work together to make a fortune .I would take 30% ,he would take 70%. I smelled a pile of rats at this stage. All I wanted to do was get out of the house. In fact, I was wondering if they had put something in the tea. Actually, I wondered that for a second but then i drank the tea because I was thirsty! Anyway, once he saw my reaction to his 70-30 idea, he wanted to show me how easy it was to make money. So he turned to the friend who was sitting beside me and she got really excited. I think she had done this before. He got two 100 dollar bills out of his pockets and gave 1 to me and 1 to her. He mentioned Assiss would be over today and when he comes over ,pretend that the woman sitting beside me is my tour guide...At this point, I threw the 100 dollars back to him and stood up. He continued talking like Paul Mckenna (the hypnotist guy) in a relaxed manner. He ushered me out of the room and we had a brief 2 minute chat about football before the motorbike came to pick me up and drop me back to the hostel. That was the weirdest couple of hours that I have experienced on my travels AND I never got to see the original womans daughter (assuming she existed!!)
I almost forgot, during the intial part of our conversation, I told him about the scams that were pulled at the turn of the century as regards premier league football - e.g: bet that a match finishes 2 - 0. After 60 minutes, if the score was 2-0, somebody would break the floodlights. The game would be abandoned but the result would still stand as long as the game lasted over 60 minutes...Another one was...who would be the first person to kick the ball into touch.Lots of footballers deliberately kicked
into touch on kickoff. I guess these bets no longer exist but the guys eyes really lit up when I told him about this. I was kind of surprised he didn't know the floodlight failure one as it originated from Malaysian crooks and he claimed he was Malaysian. To be honest, once I saw him throw 200 dollars on the table,nothing could keep me at that house for longer than 5 minutes! Baring in mind I kept telling him about scam stories, I guess he knew he was wasting his time with me...I hope someone else doesn't fall for it.
Addendum:
A few days after this happened , I was staying at a place called Kratir and I mentioned what happened to a guy who has been living in Phnom Penh for the last 7 months. He was telling me that this is a common scam in Phnom Penh (instigated by Filipino gangs) where someone hangs hangs around a market and then they get you back to their place where you get fed some kind of drug which makes you relax and they manipulate the money out of you. It is quite common for them to pocket $5,000 at a time. They get their money by frogmarching you to an atm where you hand over the money and you are too drowsey from the drugs to know what you are doing. While I was telling the guy my story, i mentioned to him about the cups f tea and he said, yeah - they were probably putting something in the tea....dang, i guessed that myself - but I was thirsty at the time!! I said to him that I was in control most of the time, then he said that the guy could have been concealing a weapon ....i replied .....hhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmm
Let's just say I got lucky with that one.(In case you are wondering ,the tricks that he showed were pretty run of the mill tricks anyway but I was happy to be driven as far away from that house as possible by the motorcycle driver!! Even when I was on the back of the bike, I wasn't really convinced the guy was taking me back to the hotel but alls well that ends well!!)
Phnom Penh is some place but I think it's best to move on. The palace seems to take over half the cty and the other half is a combination of pollution/floodwater/pimps/prostitutes/market stalls and tuktuk cars (which apprently only arrived in this country after the year 2000.)
Onwards to a town called Kratie where I hear they have dolphins and other bits and pieces..
p.s: I have started seeing a few people more than once again so I am back on the well worn trail! I bumped into Ben and Rhianna here and I hae no doubt ill bump into them again once I reach Kratie.
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