Ready to go home...?

After a few more days in Phnom Penh where we met some nice expats from Germany, USA and England I flew back to Bangkok for some final shopping (I treated myself to a battered used Sony PSP and a Nintendo Gameboy Micro VERY cheaply already in Phnom Penh - it's really great that the US-Dollar is so weak and the Euro is so strong! ;-)
Last night I met Sue again, one of Sarah's friends i had first encountered in may. We had an awesome chat and I probably learned more things about the asian/thai mindset than in the 6 months before! Thank you, Sue! ;-)

I did send a 6kg-parcel containing mainly my Terry Pratchett trophy book-collection home just an hour ago, so I have enough space to fill up now with souvenirs! ;-) Khaosan and Panthip Plaza, here I come!
I'm not sure if I look forward to go back, I guess it will be quite hard to adapt to a normal life again after such a long time travelling... I certainly look forward to a few things, especially people, but the weather is supposed to be rather cold and bad, which will be quite a shock for me I guess...

Shianoukville & Kempot

We did go for a few days down to the coast to check out Shianoukville and Kempot on the way back to Phnom Penh. There's not much to do and see in Shianoukville during off-season, and it sure rains a lot there. But judging from the bars and hotels this place should be quite lively during the main season.
Kempot is even smaller, there's a total of two pool tables in town (one of which is used as an office desk while they do some work on the place). You can go up a mountain and see an old catholic church and a casino that the French built when they were there. Because of frequent rain we decided not to go there and went to some nearby caves instead.
It was a really interesting trip, we had a total of seven guides, none older than 12 years (for a total of $4). They really did a good job in showing us all the interesting rock formations and "encouraging" us to climb down the more scary slippery ledges in the cave by making chicken sounds! ;-)

There are some dripstones that look alot like elephants, and there is a small very old temple inside the cave that is overgrown by dripstone.


We especially liked the trip to the caves, which went right through rural Cambodia, so we took alot of pictures..

Killing Fields: Horrors of the Khmer Rouge

There are some tourist attractions in the world that are not really enjoyable to see, but people go there nonetheless. Maybe it is for the shock value, maybe it is just to get a better understanding of a country's history and a glimpse into what horrible deeds humans are actually capable of once they've been brainwashed enough. What the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodia certainly qualifies for one of the most horrific regimes ever on the planet, what they did to their own people was even worse than Hitler or Stalin...
First we went to the Killing Fields just outside Phnom Penh. They have built a big tower there with 9000 skulls of all the people that they have dug out so far from the mass graves (there's alot of unopened mass-graves left). There was even a mass grave for women and children, and there's a tree they smashed babies against to kill them... When you walk through the graves that have been opened you see pieces of clothing sticking out of the ground, it is quite creepy.

The ironic thing is that the whole place is really nice and idyllic with nice trees and a lake nearby. One could say that like this it is pretty much like a graveyard, but then again this isn't anything like a final resting place, because all these thousands of people weren't just buried, but also killed there.


Just thinking that the Khmer Rouge people who worked there probably had a normal life, going drinking with friends, going home to their wives after having killed 300 people every day is quite impossible to imagine...


Afterwards we went to the S-21 prison where people were "questionned" and detained before being brought to the Killing Fields for execution. They have thousands of pictures there that the Khmer Rouge took of the detainees, it is really eerie, just imagining that all the skulls we had seen before actually are all that remains of the people you see on these pictures. Some of them even smile, and there's very many children, too...


They have tiny 2 squaremeter cells where they kept the "better" detainees, the normal ones were just chained to a big bar in one of the bigger rooms. There's no beds in the whole place so everybody had to sleep on the floor and also piss and shit there.
The numbers vary a bit, but there was anything from 14.000 to 20.000 people in S-21, and only 6-14 of them made it out alive. And this is S-21, so there were at least 20 other facilities like this all throughout Cambodia...

Phun in Phnom Penh

While Shianoukville was a nice cozy town with a decent nightlife, Phnom Penh is on a whole other level. It's by far the biggest city in Cambodia, and it shows. There's alot of stuff to do and see during the day, and at night you have an abundant choice of places to go to. Even though it's not at all enjoyable, you should nonetheless still go to the Killing Fields and S-21 prison, it is something one has to visit to understand Cambodia and its history. You can visit several markets and museums (there's a national museum and a mine-museum) and the Royal Palace.

Beauty salons are spread thoughout Phnom Penh central market. Seems surreal to me: Go to the market to get a pedicure!

We stayed on the lakeside where most of the guesthouses are in a really nice place called Grand View, there's a place called Carambodja nearby run by a Swiss couple, and I've had the most amazing meal there in a long time: Beef filet steaks with whiskeysauce and Spätzle - yes, they DID find proper beef somehow!
David left us to go back to Austria, so Reto and me travelled on to Shianoukville.

Cambodian Specialities

On the way to Phnom Penh we were treated to a Cambodian speciality on some reststop. Deep fried tarantulas - I shit you not!


And for those that prefer it fresh, you could buy live ones to fry yourself at home:


No thanks, that's one local dish I don't feel like trying out...

As I've learned later (luckily), some of the Cambodians on our bus did actually buy live ones!... Creepy!

Later on I learned that there's another yucky Cambodian speciality: half-bred eggs with chicken embryoes - for that extra crunchiness! Argl, what is it with this asian fancy for bones?
I have to say I quite like the condiment made of Cambodian pepper (the best in the world I've been told!), salt and lime-juice they serve with pretty much everything.. Sometimes they also add some garlic, very yummy!
And this Cambodian dessert is also very interesting, it's all kinds of fruit with crushed ice on top, topped off with a raw egg and some Milo (cocoa)..

(funny coincidence: I've seen this very plate on Kho Pha Ngan before, and took pictures of it because of the hilarious Engrish on it. You can't see it in this picture, but it says: "Tomatoes - Refresh your feeling" - What??)