cambodia 1

our first stop in cambodia was more out of necessity than anything else...we took a bus from the border to a town called stun treng...it's the first real town after the border...most travelers don't stay more than one night...i met a cute irish boy who invited me out for drinks:)...a redhead:)
we did walk around stun treng for a while, during which time i ended up with heat exhaustion...my first of many times dealing with this...we learned that atms in cambodia dispense mostly dollars...and lots of prices are quoted in dollars...change is given in a combination of dollars and riel...they don't use US coins, only the paper money, so cambodian money is used in place of the coins...for stuff at markets, of course you pay in riel...(approximately $1USD = 4100 riel)...the next morning we caught a bus to kratie...
like stun treng, there isn't much to see or do in kratie...the reason to stop there is to use it as a base to go 15km upriver to see the irrawady dolphins...they're freshwater dolphins, and they're endangered...i hired a motorbike driver (i wanted to drive myself, but i wasn't going to drive a motorbike w/out a helmet, and the place i asked didn't have helmets!) and enjoyed the ride...the dolphins themselves aren't exciting and entertaining...they don't jump out of the water like flipper...they just come up to breath every 2-3 minutes, then go back down...i've gotta say, they're not very pretty...it looks like their noses and heads were smushed flat against something...you can hear them breath when they surface...females have a baby once every three years or so, and keep the baby with them until it reaches about 40kgs...(which happens to be about 2 years i think)...the guy poling my boat said there are about 50 dolphins in this pod, and that it's easier to see them during the dry season (now)...during wet season they head farther up river...
in kratie i tried my first kralon...a khmer food, it's sticky rice and red beans and some coconut put into a bamboo flute...soooooooo good!
from kratie we went to the capital of phnom penh...it's a whole LOT more lively than vientienne...there are a number of interesting markets around town, and it's easy to walk everywhere...(not that that discourages every single moto driver from slowing down to ask you want a ride)...we didn't know it when we arrived, but we arrived the day before the start of the khmer new year...it turns out that cambodia has the highest number of public holidays of any country, and it celebrates 3 different new years!!! the international new year, the lunar new year, and the khmer new year...both the lunar new year and the khmer new year are three day holidays, during which most shops close...fortunately, tourist sights don't close, and apparently neither does the post office...
i visited the royal palace, which was okay, but not outstanding...at least for me...the complex reminded me a bit of the complex of the royal palace in bangkok...in the royal palace complex of phnom penh is the silver pagoda...it had a sanskrit name until 1993, when they changed it to make it easier for tourists...the silver pagoda name comes from the floor tiles...i think there are supposed to be quite a few of them, all silver...as i walked in, i expected to be amazed...but i forgot that silver tarnishes, and as a result, the tiles that were showing, (most of the tiles had carpet laid over them, to protect them) weren't very shiny...they almost looked like tin...
phnom penh is probably better known as a city where pol pot (ruler of the khmer rouge) did some of his worst deeds...first he established a prison called S-21...it was a detention and interrogation center...some 20,000 prisoners spent time there...only 7 survived...the rest either died during "questioning" or were executed at the killing fields...as in some of the camps of the holocaust, records were kept in great detail at this prison...they took pictures of nearly all the detainees, and many of those photographs are displayed now...it's scary to look and see people who were at the same point in their lives as i am...there were pictures of kids, and old folks...seeing some of those pictures, you couldn't help but wonder "how on earth could they think that person could be a danger?"...you can wander in the rooms where torture ("interrogation") was conducted...they're fairly large rooms, with nothing but metal cots in them...you can wander through the cells where the prisoners lived...they're tiny...in addition to the "mug shots" they also have photo exhibitions of people who were involved at the time...its odd to realize that people who were involved, are still middle aged!!! they show a movie twice a day, the movie describes the story of a couple...it's really sad...all too often during the time, family members disappeared, (or entire families,) and were never heard from again...estimates vary, but the generally accepted number of deaths during the genocide is about 1.7 million...considering cambodia only has a population of 12 million, that's HUGE...relatively speaking, its the worst genocide the world has ever seen...the question a lot of people ask, is how did it happen...how did it happen after the world first said "never again" after WWII?
we also visited the killing fields, which are just outside the city...the area is quiet now, and nothing remains of the facilities that were once there to cause death so efficiently...there are big holes in the ground, where some of the mass graves have been discovered...they've found about 8000 sets of remains in the area, and it's expected that in the future they'll find many more...there is a sign telling about the killing tree...guards swung children against the tree...just reading that sign got to me...the only thing you see at the killing fields (other than the beggar children who run along the fence outside the area) is a tall building, filled with the skulls of the deceased...it's a moving area...and, we all hope, nothing like this will ever happen...
i investigated a couple wats in phnom penh as well...one supposedly holds buddha's eyebrow...another is on top of the only hill in the city...since it was a holiday while we were there, all wats were busy with locals dressed in their sunday best, bringing offerings...awesome people watching...