Phnom Penh is mightier than the sward

I don't actually know if they have sward in Cambodia. Work with me. We passed through a bit of the country on the bus here but mostly along a well-developed road (although you could buy fried locusts at our one stop, it was next to a big cafe and generic market so hardly noteworthy).

[This entry - and the text I've added about Angkor a couple of posts below, don't miss it - are a bit more detailed than usual as we have friends visiting the same places shortly]

I don't have too much to say about Phnom Penh - we booked for 2 nights and see no great need to extend. It's a pleasant place to spend 2 or 3 days but no great attraction in its own right. You can see a bit of a French influence - a few wide boulevards and a lot of cafes and bars spilling out onto the pavement, especially along the riverfront.

On our first day we stuck to the riverfront - reports say the rest of town is not entirely safe after dark and there's not too much we want to see.

We hopped down to the Royal Palace, which suffers a bit by comparison to Bangkok. The best (or most novel) bits - a big frieze and an art deco pavilion dedicated to Napoleon III - are both in serious need of restoration.

However I can recommend a rooftop bar called Chow for sunset - on the riverfront just north of the turn-off for the Royal Palace - nice view along the river and you can also see the sun set in the opposite direction (happy hour 4-8 made it thankfully a lot cheaper than it looked!).

On our second day we took a little tour in the morning to the Killing Fields at Choueng Ek and Tuol Sleng (aka S21), a school converted to an infamous detention and interrogation centre - now the 'Museum of Genocide'. ($4 each for the minibus was good value, we think.)

The Killing Fields are quite chilling. There were hundreds of these death camps across Cambodia, but this was, I think, the biggest, due to its proximity to Phnom Penh. The most obvious thing to see is the stupa, a partly glass tower that houses the nearly 9,000 skulls excavated from mass graves here. It's a Buddhist monument. I do admire the Cambodian attitude - terrible things happened here and they won't forget them or cover them up, they're going to use them as a reminder to themselves and the rest of the world. The guide (you do need a guide) spoke very soberingly of all the men, women and children murdered here (the Khmer Rouge killed up to 3 million out of a population of 7 million) and how his own sisters had died of starvation. Every time it rains, they find more bones, teeth and clothes in the ground here. (30 year old clothing has survived surprisingly well. I have just a little scepticism about this, but I think that if they are laying it on a little for visitors, their motives are good, as I noted above.)

Being sceptical is an important theme in one exhibit at S21 - a Maoist Swede who was part of a group invited to visit in 1978 during Pol Pot's reign. He took photos of what he now realises were events staged for his benefit and wrote stupid things about how good it was that they had got rid of money so they can all grow rice. The exhibit contrasts his thoughts then and now.

Apart from that, they've preserved a lot of cells (there even seems to be blood on the floor, although again I'm a little sceptical) but the exhibits aren't in a great state and nothing is a really compelling reason to visit. (If anyone does come on a tour, start with the last 2 buildings which have most of the text.) We should perhaps have got a guide here too.

My mood was brightened a bit at the very end by noticing that the icon for the ladies' toilets were perfectly standard but the men's were as pictured.

We picked ourselves up for the afternoon with lunch in a tiny bookshop/cafe just north of the Riverhouse, which Lilly boldly claimed to be her best meal of the trip so far.

We strolled up to Wat Phnom (fairly missable though the monkeys on the hill were cute - and a girl showed us a cage full of birds and tried to sell us one for a dollar. I'm not quite sure what we were supposed to do with them) and over to backpackers' central by the lake. The lake was muddy and entirely missable and almost everyone we saw looked hungover, but it was all very cheap.

A quick trip to the central market - its architecture is much-praised but I struggled to see why, though a lot was closed for renovation and the stalls offered nothing new.

We them came across a great ironic name for an English bar broad - Huxley's Brave New World - "Home of the English pint glass"! - with photocopied English papers (e-mailed from the UK?). Having mocked it, we spent a couple of hours sitting on its balcony reading the News of the World and the Guardian, and playing on their free pool table (not on the balcony). (All pool/football tables seem to be free, maybe because they have no coins to operate them.) [Joe - one street over from the river, c.street 140, if you feel a craving. Nice place, though the waitress did stand watching us play pool.]

Topped off the day with a great Vietnamese beef stew in the Riverside bistro. Hopefully this bodes well for Vietnam!

Major disappointment this morning when I saw the lead sports story in the local daily paper. We're missing another world cup! Disabled volleyball, to be precise. Cambodia is hosting and had a good win yesterday. Good luck against Slovakia, guys.

As I write this we've just left Cambodia - defected from Mekong Express buses to Sapaco, where the seats are a touch bigger and they have only used their TV and speakers for 5 minutes. So a definite upgrade. Had to get off twice at the border - once with bags in tow - but Sapoco handle all the processing so after a little standing around it's plain sailing.  Just before the Cambodia-Vietnam border, Cambodian side, in the middle of nowhere, is a little strip of Vegas-style casinos. They look very new, possibly still under construction. But why there? There are casinos in Vietnam.


If only we'd got an earlier bus I could shout "GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!" right now. Maybe tomorrow.