Cambodia: Phnom Penh
After Laos, the next country on our Southeast Asia backpacking trip with Contiki was Cambodia.
Transportation
We flew from Vientiane to Phnom Penh (thank god no more buses). This flight is included in your Contiki package. The flight took less than 1.5 hours and soon we landed in Phnom Penh’s modest airport strip.
Acommodations
Ohana Phnom Penh Palace Hotel
I think this hotel is actually a lot nicer than I remember, but since I didn’t spend very much time I can’t give an accurate review. It was clean and large enough for our suitcases.
They had a really beautiful rooftop breakfast buffet that I wish I had woken up earlier to stay longer in. Probably the best breakfast out of the whole Contiki trip.
Things to do
“Killing Fields” and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Similar to Vientiane, we had quite a heavy and cultural day for our first day in Cambodia. We were given a tour of the Killing Fields to learn about the horrific Khmer Rouge rule.
More than a million people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979 after the end of the Cambodian Civil War. I’m no expert on the history of this country, but this is basically what I learned phrased in my own words.
The communist party was obsessed with making people become farmers. They decided that everyone should be a farmer and grow crops and that’s how you contribute to society. It doesn’t matter if you’re 80 years old or if you are an engineer.
Now obviously this decision made for many poor farmers. It lead to starvation for the country and many people died from overworking on farms and hard labour.
To reduce chances of being overthrown, the party then started to target educated people – doctors, teachers, etc. These people and those who do not follow the regime were taken into concentration camps in schools where they were tortured and ultimately killed.
The Khmer Rouge was only in power for 4 years but in those 4 years, numbers of up to 2 million lives were taken. This is more than 20% of their population. This is known as the Cambodian genocide.
We visited one of these “concentration camps” and toured through the many different buildings. On the walls they had drawings and paintings of the way the party tortured prisoners. On other walls, there were many black and white photos of child prisoners.
It was heart-breaking to walk through the site. You could still see old blood stains on the walls of the cells. Even more terrible that the site used to be a school.
Even the outdoor areas of the concentration camp were difficult to stroll around. I was very sad looking at the “killing tree” covered with hundreds of bracelets for prayers. Blood stains can still be seen on the tree trunk where soldiers literally flung and smashed children’s bodies and heads until they died.
Tree Alliance Restaurant
After quite a heavy day, we ate dinner at the Tree Alliance restaurant as part of the Contiki package. It was family-style again and offered similar dishes such as chicken and vegetable stir-frys.
One very interesting delicacy they offered were $2 USD deep-fried tarantulas. Yep, spiders. And I ate one.
A lot of people in our Contiki tried the spiders, actually. But all of us were squirmy and screaming when we tried to eat it. This is probably because it really looks like a giant spider. I thought maybe you wouldn’t be able to tell if there’s a lot of batter, but nope it looks like just a cooked spider. It is deep-fried though, but you can even see the little hairs!!!
Julianna and I were sharing one so we had to cut it. I braced myself to cut it horizontally (head vs. butt). I was expecting black guts to ooze out, but when I cut it open I saw white. One guy yelled, “There’s white meat inside! Real meat!”
I suppose seeing the white meat filling did help me out. I closed my eyes and popped it into my mouth. It was kind of hard and not easy to each and I could feel the little hairs going down my throat, possibly getting stuck in my teeth. It tasted like a mix between a shrivel up dried shrimp or chicken. It didn’t taste bad though.
Anyways, I would recommend you to try it. Much safer in a Contiki-endorsed restaurant than those random people in the night market.
Le Moon Rooftop Lounge
Most of us went to Le Moon for drinks after our dinner. The rooftop lounge was very classy and had a wonderful view of Phnom Penh’s water and city streets. Drinks were cheap, ranging from $5-10 USD. It’s only a few minute walk back to our hotel.
Final thoughts
I was only in Phnom Penh for one full day and I am glad I spent it learning about Cambodia’s dark history. One thing I noticed about Cambodia that was different from Laos was that there weren’t a lot of older Cambodia folks. I don’t think I saw anyone who looked over the age of 40 and that is probably due to the genocide that only happened 30 years ago.
I didn’t take a lot of photos, mostly because the places we visited were quite sensitive and I didn’t feel like it was appropriate to do so. Generally, I wasn’t in Phnom Penh to party, which was kind of nice.
I was disappointed I didn’t have a chance or time to explore more on my own. In Vancouver, we have a really good restaurant called “Phnom Penh” and so I was hoping to be able to eat some really good Cambodian cuisine, but we only had time for one meal and that was at the Tree Alliance Restaurant. I found that the Contiki-prepared meal choices are almost usually lacking for my tastes.
I’m not sure how safe Phnom Penh is as a city. My Contiki tour guide told me that another Contiki tour guide was going for a morning jog one time by the harbour and he/she got stabbed.