Phnom Penh

Our flight had nine people going back – you know they weren’t busy when the steward gave you a little nod of recognition. Since we’d met up with the French guys once in Angkor, and they raved about their hotel, we gave it a try. We got a taxi for $4 and eventually found the Keon Mean Guesthouse (next to the cheesy landmark bar “The Cathouse”) on Pasteur and 51^st Street. We paid $7 for a huge, clean 3^rd floor, attached bathroom room with a huge balcony overlooking a typically busy, chaotic street.

The place was owned by a Chinese-Khmer family, and only the youngest daughter of the family spoke any English. The central market, a huge army building surrounded by hundreds of vendors was just around the corner and it wasn’t far from everything we wanted to see. A big smiling moto driver greeted us as we walked in to the hotel and gave us the motorcycle driver gesture (vroom, vroom!) and a “moto mister?” I gave him the two-handed “wait” gesture – we might have needed him later.

As soon as we got settled, we got the daughter to order us a taxi to take us to the Killing Fields. We felt like $10 was a lot to pay to go 15 kilometers south of the city, but it was boiling, and the driver said the roads were terrible – we trusted him! On the way, we dropped by the Vietnamese embassy to see if they’d finished our visas early. The official didn’t crack a smile as he looked at our receipt and pointed saying “tomorrow”. “Yes we were just checking if they were done early…”. He looked at us blankly, “Saturday. You come tomorrow”. OK… we figured this would be what to expect from the Vietnamese bureaucracy the following week, and the airport would later confirm that.

The roads were bad. Just outside Phnom Penh, craters started to appear in the road bed – small at first, then huge ones. I started to see why designing a lunar rover that wouldn’t break would be such a difficult task.

The Killing Fields was a lot different than we’d expected – we imagined vast fields with bones piled up all over the place – in reality it was much worse. The “fields” themselves were small holes, perhaps 5 meters by 3 meters where hundreds of bodies would be crammed in together. Our angry guide was quick to point out the serrated palms the Khmer Rouge had used to cut throats in order to save bullets, as well as leg bones and even teeth all over the place.

Almost half of the “graves” had been uncovered, and a 15 meter high glass case memorial had been built filled with the skulls and clothes of the victims. Seeing the “categories” [Asian Female 15-24] and [Asian Male 55-64] surrounded by skulls almost made you want to throw up. Again, being there by ourselves amplified the horror and sorrow we felt. Our guide easily solicited a $2 personal donation (for him), and we drove back in silence.

We were dropped off at the infamous Happy Herb’s Restaurant, facing the Mekong River. Happy Herb’s was a notorious pizzeria restaurant which served great food – and you could make each of the entrees “happy” (an additional topping of weed) if you asked the waiter. Chad said that when he went in with another guy, the guy ordered “happy garlic bread”. When Chad ordered just plain old “garlic bread”, the waiter gave him a knowing, wide eyed look and asked “would you like that…. Happy?”. It was much too early in the day for us to be ordering “happy”, but we did enjoy the pizza!

In the afternoon, we woke up from an “avoid the sun” nap, and when I walked out on the balcony and looked down to the street I was greeted by the same smiling moto driver that I’d seen before. He gave me the same gesture as before, and all I could do was smile and nod – turns out he had waited – for four hours!

We decided to check out the National Museum, and when we asked the driver how much, he said “up to you sir”. Was this the same “up to you” that we’d encountered in Indonesia? No. It really was up to us. Basically we paid 500 Riel for short trips (one kilometer - ok, we were lazy, but it was damn hot, and moto’s were much more fun than walking) and 1000 Riel to just about any other destination in the city. Driving on the back of a moto, you really saw how chaotic driving was. With no stop signs, no traffic lights, and almost no boundary for left and right sides of the roads. It was chaotic, but we loved driving around on motos - you not only saw the city, but felt it. Besides, drivers were forced to be so aware of everybody else that a kind of logical system emerged from the chaos. This was true even when you were going straight against the traffic, slowly making your way to the opposite side of the street. We ended up using Um Sohka (our smiley moto driver) just about every time we went outside. He would wait for us wherever we went, and he found anything we needed. One time I gave him a dollar and he drove off and found me a Bangkok Post.

The museum was good, but we were glad that a) we’d been to Angkor already and B) we’d passed Lap Tek’s religion/history course. That night, we ate at the Cathouse – possibly suggesting why my burger didn’t taste like beef. Unless you wanted to be entertained by the hostess/waitresses/taxi girls, I would have preferred to have left this place alone.