Goodbye, Cambodia!

Fun fact: the motorcycle-to-car ratio in
Cambodia is what keeps Yamaha in business

I arrived pretty early in the morning back in Phnom Penh. The bus ride really wasn't that bad. I got off and had a couple of hours to kill before I needed to head to the airport. And I really wanted to shower, but... where was I going to do that? There was only one place I could think of so, I figured I'd give it a shot. I walked about 20 minutes from where the bus dropped me off back over to the hostel I was staying it while I was here a few days ago.

When I arrived at the hostel, I got the warmest welcome ever! They remembered me! I very sheepishly asked if it would be possible for me to use the shower and they said... of course! Whoa, I wasn't expecting this one, but man, this is awesome. So I took a shower and I felt soooo much better. I stuck around for breakfast there with none other than my old friends IL and MK, who were still here! It was a nice surprise to see them again. After a pretty leisurely breakfast, I had the tuk tuk guy from the hostel take me over to the airport. Best hostel experience ever, and I didn't even spent the night there (this time).

And so I'm off! Goodbye, Cambodia! It's been real. Next stop: Phuket, Thailand!

CONTINUE ON to War Sucks: Cambodia in Review

Best shot I could get of the airport without getting arrested or run over

The Mystery Tour and the War Museum

Around 11am, my Mystery Tour guide arrived to pick me up at my hostel on his motorbike. BT is in his late 30s and is a super jovial guy with pretty strong English skills. He told me I could drive the motorbike if I wanted. Drive a motorbike through the pot-holey dirt roads of Cambodia with no hospital in sight? Thanks but no thanks. The agenda for the Mystery Tour is that there is no agenda. Which at first can seem like a total scam, but it actually works out really well. The day's activities basically follow whichever way the wind blows.

That's not how you're supposed to eat it

Please don't kick my fish,
please don't kick my fish

It might look like a McDonald's hashbrown,
but I can assure your it's not. Actually, this
is Cambodia so I guess anything is possible.

The first thing we did was drive out to a market for some breakfast. This wasn't the typical touristy market though; this was where the locals go to shop and eat. It was pretty much what you would expect from a 3rd-world market: lots of fresh(ish?) meats / fish, some goods, some food. BT took me to a place to eat this... I'm not sure what it is called, but it's sort of like a thin pancake, closer to a crepe but not quite a crepe, and on top it's got some... vegetable-type things and you dip it into a sauce. It was surprisingly good, and dirt cheap, as I assume everything in this market is. For "dessert" he got me this palm fruit / rice thing wrapped in a banana leaf that was mildly sweet and really, really good.

Me trying to harvest some rice... probably the most
entertaining thing these people saw all day

With a full stomachs, we headed toward the next stop. Along the way, we passed by some rice fields. Before I left San Francisco, one the doctors who loaded me up with some vaccines told me very explicitly "don't visit any rice paddies while you're in Asia" for fear of contracting a rare but really awful disease called Japanese Encephalitis. Well... here we were so we decided to stop and check things out (sorry, Mom!). We saw some people harvesting the rice, so we went over to go talk to them. An interesting facet of this culture is the level of familiarity people exhibit toward one another. When BT approached these farm workers, he talked to them like he would old friends. He joked around with them. He asked them if I could try cutting some of the rice. They handed over their extremely sharp cutting tool and BT showed me how to do it (apparently, the way I was doing it almost certainly would have resulted in me chopping off a body part). I was so struck by their conversation that I asked BT if he knew them and he said no, he had never met them before. The people in Cambodia, overall, have been much friendlier than I experienced in Bangladesh and India.

Moooooove out of my way

We kept on making our way down the road. Much like in India, large mammals roam the streets here too.

Omnomnom trans-fatsssss

Out next stop was a Buddhist monastery. Monasteries are incredibly interesting from a cultural perspective. One of the first things we did when we got there was go to this fish pond. Monks believe that feeding these fish is good for your karma. BT had a couple of bags of chips that we tossed out one-by-one into the pond. I guess no one ever told these people that this type of food probably actually serves to kill these fish rather than help them.

Next we went to the cemetery on the grounds. It was incredibly ornate. And this wasn't even the most ornate monastic cemetery I'd seen.

Cemetery at the monastery

We continued to walk around the grounds of the monastery and BT told me a little bit about his history. It turns out that he himself has spent some time in a monastery growing up. He had some lofty dreams though. He left the monastery and went to go work somewhere. And then he started his own tour company. He also taught himself English and how to make a website and he used that to drive people to his business. His real goal is to make sure that all of the children from his village have the opportunity to be educated, in a way that he never really had for himself. Inspiring.

The buildings at the monastery are beautiful, both inside and out. I couldn't begin to tell you the significant of the designs or paintings, but I'm sure they all of their stories to tell.

There are huge murals on the inside of many of the buildings

...and the outsides of the buildings as well

Monks wear their traditional garb and sit on a elevated platform.
These kids obviously don't know what's up

Obligatory meditation pose photo

Watch out, pedestrians, cars, and small animals!

We probably spent around 30 minutes at the monastery. Over the course of the day I changed my mind about wanting to drive. I figured... I'm only here once, so make the most of it (sorry, Mom!). So I told BT that I wanted to try driving and he got really excited. I sat down in front, he hopped on behind, he showed me how to use the controls, and we were off! Driving the motorbike was AWESOME. The dirt roads definitely made for a pretty bumpy ride. Also... there were definitely times when I mixed up the gas and the brake (whoops!) and instead of slowing down into a pothole, I ended up speeding up into it. Yikes! But BT didn't care at all. In fact, he was totally excited about the whole thing. I'm pretty sure he didn't know the actual reason we were speeding up into potholes... I think he just thought I was being adventurous. I'll take it. We started off in an area with no cars, but quickly made our way back onto more populated roads. After about 10 minutes of driving, I was all set, so we switched back and BT drove us the rest of the way back to my hostel to drop me off.

Pina colada: it might not be authentic,
but it was still really good

Back at the hostel, I met up with IR and our other hostel friend JC and we headed out to lunch near Pub Street. We sat up on the second floor, overlooking the street below. It was a great view until it started pouring rain and the wind was blowing sideways so hard that our table was getting wet, so we had to move away from the open air area.

Afterward, we decided to grab a tuk tuk out to the War Museum. I had heard from some other people at the hostel that this place was a must-see, so I was glad to have a chance to see it. When we walked through the entrance to the open-air museum, we were greeted by a field of war tanks. Whoa.

Trees and cannons and tanks, oh my!

There is no fee for the tour guides at the War Museum, it's all tip-based. We got ourselves a tour guide and we were on our way. He seemed like a really interesting guy. There was something about him. He was soft-spoken, but there seemed to be this... pain inside of him. We soon found out why. It turns out that all of the tour guides here are war veterans.

The first place we went to was an enclosure that housed a shelf of huge, huge guns. I held an AK-47 for the first time. It was a lot heavier than I was expecting. But... I probably should have seen that coming. I also held a rocket launcher. Surprise: also heavy! Kind of crazy to be holding a real one. I'll refrain from putting a photo of me holding a large firearm on the web, thank you very much.

[Start aside] Before I go on with the rest of this description, I'd be remiss if I didn't share my thoughts on this place as a tourist attraction vs. the reality that lies underneath the attraction (a la my elephant ride in India). I certainly felt conflicted throughout this visit because, well, tanks and big guns are awesome! ...until you remember that these were all used to kill people. Lots and lots and lots and lots of people. Like... real people. Not in the movies. Real people with lives and jobs and families. The 10-year-old inside of me definitely wanted to be like "tanks go boom!" but the 20-something me definitely had to put a muzzle on that little guy for now. [End aside]

His helmet doesn't even fit him, I assume
because they don't make helmets in size
"too young to hold a gun"

Our tour guide told us bits of his story at each station. Even after so many years, the pain in his stories still felt fresh. I guess that kind of pain never really goes away. The same station had some war photos. One of the photos that struck me the most was one of a child soldier. I had heard about child soldiers before, but usually in the context of African wars and I never really internalized exactly what the concept of a "child soldier" really meant. But being here and being a little bit older gave these photos a sense of realness that I never saw before. I mean... children. Literally children. Carrying guns larger than they are. It's hard to imagine, even with the photo staring you in the face.

The next station housed grenades and landmines. The extend of my experience with grenades is:
1. Playing with grenade-shaped water balloons as a child
2. Throwing grenades in various Play Station games
3. Occasionally thinking that the country Grenada sounds like "grenade"

Exploded grenade

It turns out that grenades are filled with tons of little ball bearings that get fired out in every direction when a grenade explodes, kind of like if you had a gun that shot bullets in every direction at the same time.

Our tour guide showing us the wide range of landmines
used in the way by both sides

My experience with landmines was pretty similar to that with grenades, minus there being a country that sounds like the word "landmine." Unfortunately, our tour guide actually had some pretty intimate experience with land mines. One of his jobs in the war was to defuse landmines. One day a landmine that has been mistakenly thought of as dead exploded in his hand. I hadn't noticed until that moment when he showed us, but he was missing a few fingers. It turns out he also had a bunch of shrapnel blown into his body that he's slowly been saving up money to have removed little by little. He showed us a bump on his skin underneath which is the last piece he has left to remove. He says he only feels it sometimes, but that it still hurts. The cost to remove it is paltry by western standards (either in the tens or low hundreds of dollars) but it can take years to save up that much here. Fun not-so-fun fact: Exact information is hard to come by, but as of 2008, Cambodia still had an estimated 4-10 million active landmines; estimates vary from 10-100 years for when they'll be all be completely defused. Here, he also pointed out a photo on the wall of a friend of his that he lost during the war. I can only imagine how hard it must be to point out that photo for every tour group every day. He also shared with us that another one of his friends during the war had lost several of his limbs and that now he takes care of him because there's no one else that will. These stories, these photos, these artifacts, in one sense they make everything feel so real. So much more real compared to watching something on tv or learning about it in school. But in another sense, they're so extreme, so ridiculous, so far beyond what we (I) think of as within the realm of possibility, so real that they ironically start to feel... like just another story. Like none of this actually happened because it's impossible to imagine something so horrible actually happening to real people. This is the stuff that only happens in movies and then after two hours you get up and realize you're in a theater and the floors are sticky and careful, don't kick that cup on the ground because there might still be soda in it and I really need to pee and did I grab my jacket from the seat? Just like that.

You definitely don't want to
mess with these things

Up next were the rockets and bombs. There were a lot of them. In various bomb shapes and bomb sizes. It's always been difficult for me to comprehend the destructive power of something that look so small. One time in college my class too a field trip to the naval base in San Diego. While we were there, we got a tour of a nuclear submarine and I got to touch an actual could-be-used-to-start-world-war-3 nuclear warhead! The thing was the length of a pretty big room and about as wide as a horse. But still... when you think about the fact that a nuclear warhead can literally level an entire city, it's hard to believe that all of that power comes from something so... [relatively] small.

After the small arms, we got to go check out the tanks. And when I say check out the tanks I mean literally do whatever we wanted with them. No fences. No class. No ropes. Nothing. Did I climb inside of a tank? Yes. Did I climb on top for the tank and ride the main gun? You bet I did.

This is how you use this thing, right?

Hanging out with our tour guide

At the end of our tour, we posed for one last photo with our tour guide. As we were standing there saying our goodbyes to our tour guide, he noticed the shirt I was wearing. So... here's the thing: a few days ago when I was at one of the night markets in Phnom Penh, I wanted to buy a shirt, half out of necessity and half out of the want for a souvenir from Cambodia. So I found this awesome shirt that I really liked with a big map of Cambodia on the back and a funny backpacker-y tagline on the front that reads "I survived Cambodia". Fast forward to this morning: I have basically one clean shirt and it's this one so I put it on, not knowing that today I would end up going to a place called the War Museum and not knowing I would have a tour guide who fought in a war... in Cambodia. Fast forward to right now with our tour guide and he notices the tagline on my shirt and he very genuinely remarks "I like your shirt". The other woman working at the museum standing next to him, however, gives me the worst look of disgust I've ever seen. Cue the wave of shame that washes over me. I very sheepishly say thank you and goodbye, and the three of us head out.

On our way out, I realized that there was a helicopter and a fighter jet here too! Can we climb on those too?! Pshh, this is CAMBODIA, rules don't exist here. And sure enough, there was absolutely nothing and nobody to stop us from climbing all over them, safety risks aside (...sorry, Mom!).

I think she still flies. Wait, no there, just a giant hole where the cockpit should be.

This one however, definitely fl... wait, also a giant hole in place of the cockpit.

Of course I got the chocolatey-est thing on
the menu. Of course it was amazing.

Tonight was my last night in Siem Reap, so JC, IR, and I went out one more time. JC wanted something a little more Western, so we sat down at a pizza place. It was pretty good. Fairly standard pizza fare. But here's the crazy thing: there was ANOTHER Swensen's Ice Cream Shop next door! Apparently, Swensen's is actually pretty popular in the big cities here. So... obviously we had to have ice cream there. The funny thing is the menu is full of San Francisco references (e.g. one of the menu items is called the Coit Tower), but... clearly 0.1% of the population here actually understands what they mean.

Wanted: Fish masseuse.
Piranhas need not apply

After dinner we walked around for a while and decided to try out one of these "fish massages" that we've seen everywhere. You may have seen these occasionally in a mall in the U.S., but basically it's a tank of pretty small fish and you put your feet inside and the fish (warning: this sounds / is kind of gross) start nibbling at your feet. I've never done anything like this and I'm pretty ticklish but I figure I'm here so I might as well give it a shot. It's a pretty odd sensation. It doesn't hurt per say, it's just... weird. It turns out I'm definitely way too ticklish for it, so I didn't really get to enjoy it, but I stuck it out for the 20 or so minutes we were there.

Pub Street in all it's glory!

We had to make our way back to the hostel so I could catch my bus. The vast, vast majority of planes/trains/buses/taxis I've booked on this trip have been at most one or two days in advance. However, I knew what date I wanted to be in Thailand and I figured I'd only be in one city in Cambodia, so I booked my flight a week in advance. Turns out that was a mistake, because I only spent two days in Phnom Penh. So in coming to Siem Reap, I knew I'd have to make my way back down to Phnom Penh to catch my flight. So I'm taking a night bus to get down there. My taxi came and grabbed me from the hostel and took me down to the bus company.

A little while later, I boarded the bus. It's a sleeper bus so there aren't seats, just spaces where you lie down. It turns out... you don't have a private space to lie down. When I got to my compartment there was already a man lying down there. I'm literally spending the night on a bus sleeping about one inch away from a Cambodian stranger. Luckily, the man wasn't enormous, didn't smell, and seemed like a nice guy. We didn't really talk. I climbed into my side of the compartment, and almost immediately closed my eyes so I could get to sleep. It actually wasn't that bad, honestly. The bus was air conditioned. I had a window. And what do I care, it's only a few hours and then I'll be on my way. Goodnight and goodbye, Siem Reap!

CONTINUE ON to Siem Reap Part 4: Goodbye, Cambodia!

Siem Reap and Dinner With an Amazing Stranger

I bet EVERY American tourist who hops into this starts the conversation with:
"To the Batcave!"

Siem Reap is about 320km (200 mi) to north-northwest of Phnom Penh. The drive wasn't too terrible and I ended up sleeping most of the way anyway. Including a 30-minute stop, we got into Siem Reap in the early afternoon.

As soon as I hopped off the bus I was hounded by tuk tuk drivers wanting to take me to my hostel. I figured it was probably pretty close but I kind of didn't want to deal with the hassle of finding it. When I told one of the drivers where it was, he said he would take me there for $1. Deal. The ride took all of one minute, but that's fine.

I arrived at my new hostel, checked in, put my stuff down, and immediately took a shower. Feeling a little bit more refreshed, I went out to explore the town. I headed back toward where the bus had dropped me off and walked around there for a while. Some people had told me that Pub Street is the big tourist hub of Siem Reap, so headed in that direction. At this time of day though, there wasn't much to see.

I wish I could think of a witty caption, but
it's hard to top how hilarious this is all on
it's own

Overall, things look pretty similar to Phnom Penh, but slightly nicer. I've noticed a theme in this region of the world is to name things after American/global (which it turns out are often synonymous in this context) cultural phenomena (see Pretty Woman Bar and Katy Peri's Pizzas, so it wasn't all that surprising to see a 6-Eleven convenience store as I walked through the streets. I also found a KFC (a real one) and got myself some ice cream. Yea, that happened. And it totally hit the spot.

There streets here are a mix of larger paved roads and many smaller dirt roads. Like in Phnom Penh, there are tuk tuks everywhere. Which is awesome, because it makes it pretty easy to go anywhere you want. There are a lot of ancient temples in Siem Reap; it's one of the main reasons a lot of tourists come here in the first place. I had asked at the hostel how much it would be to have their tuk tuk driver take me around the city for the day. The price they quoted sounded like your typical "everything is more expensive when you book through the hostel" price, so while on my walk I asked a few tuk tuk drivers how much they would charge. I ended up having a good conversation with one of the drivers I found who spoke decent English. I told him I wanted to start the day early tomorrow and see sunrise at the first temple. We shook on a price and I was all set for tomorrow. One less headache to worry about.

Not too shabby, Siem Reap

The day was starting to wane as I stumbled upon this city's Night Market. Same concept at the one in Phnom Penh, except this one turned out to be a lot nicer. The aisles were wider, the tarps overhead were higher and there were lights. These few small things made a huge difference in terms of the experience. The merchandise was pretty much the same as in Phnom Penh though, and I've been resisting buying stuff as much as I can because I don't want to carry it with me.

It was getting kind of dark, so I started heading back toward my hostel, hoping I'd find food along the way. Turns out I found a lot more than that. As I was walking down the street, I passed by a restaurant that I thought about eating at, but the guy out front was kind of aggressive in his sales pitch and I wasn't really in the mood for that so I said "no, thanks" in my very American accent. I noticed there was this blonde girl kind of staring at me as I said, "no," to this host. A few seconds later we walked past each other and about five seconds I turned around to see if she was still there. She wasn't. I assumed she had gone to sit down in the restaurant. I thought about it for a few more seconds and for pretty much the first time in my life in this kind of situation I asked myself, "what do I have to lose?" so I turned around, walked back to the restaurant and found her sitting alone at a table. Now, what happens next may not be a big deal for you, loyal reader, but for me, this was literally, literally the first time I've done anything remotely close to this in my entire life. I walked up to her table and said, "Excuse me, are you eating by yourself?" She smiled and said "yes" so I asked her if I could join her and she said, "Sure!" gesturing toward the seat across the table from her. Wait... what just happened?

It turned out to be a really great dinner. FL was an Argentinian girl about my age and is in the middle of several months of travel. At one point in our conversation, she admitted that she had noticed me earlier because I looked/sounded out of place when I was saying no to that host. Yep, that sounds about right. We had a great conversation for a couple of hours and then I walked her back to her hostel a few blocks away. I was doing my temple tour all day tomorrow and she was leaving after that, so we couldn't make any plans to hang out again. Being the gentleman than I am, I stuck my hand out for a handshake before I walked away and she was like "no, let me show you how we do it in Argentina" and did this cheek kiss thing that I'm not totally familiar with but totally support. [Update: I'm in Argentina now and I totally get it.]

I made my way through a couple dimly-lit streets and found my way back to the hostel. When I got back, I met some other people staying in the hostel, exchange students who were currently studying abroad in Singapore. They invited me to go check out Pub Street with them and the night was still relatively young, so I tagged along.

New friends, if only for a day

The six-ish of us made out way out to Pub Street a little while later. THIS was the Pub Street I had heard about. Flooded with tourists. Far too many massage parlors. The constant sales pitch for "boom boom" from... basically everyone. It's so prevalent, you can't even get mad about it, you just have to ignore it. We sat down to eat some food. I skipped out because I had just eaten. I didn't however, skip out of getting some dessert afterward. Of course. We walked around a little more and made our way to one of the bars. There, they ordered a platter of exotic meats. I don't remember exactly what we tried, but it kind of all tasted like chicken anyway.

One of the guys, JS, mentioned that tomorrow in late afternoon he was going with another girl from the hostel on a boat ride to a place called the Floating Village, if I wanted to tag along. We exchanged contact info and I left around midnight. I was getting exhausted and I had to be up super early for my temple tour tomorrow! I walked back again through some sketchily-lit street but made it back to my hostel in one piece.

Today was for sure a win.

CONTINUE ON to Siem Reap Part 2: [R]: Tomb Raider and the Legend of Angkor Waaaaat?!

Goodbye, Phnom Penh!

I had originally planned on being in Phnom Penh for all five days of my time in Cambodia. But after a couple days here, I kind of feel like I've seen most of what there is to see, so I've decided to go to the other major city in Cambodia, Siem Reap.

I left the hostel pretty early this morning. I got back too late last night to pack my things up. So in the morning I one-by-one brought all of my belongings from the room into the lounge so that I wouldn't wake anyone up with all of the inevitable crunching and zipping. I had gotten like... two hours of sleep, so of course I was running late and not at all prepared to leave, so I just had to shove things into my bag.

I realized too late that I wasn't going to get to say goodbye to SR, which is really sad because she's awesome and we've had a lot of adventures together over the last couple of days! Such is the life of the hostel trekker. Perhaps I'll run into her again some day.

The tuk tuk arrived right on time to take me to the bus company's office, which was conveniently close by. I waited about 20 minutes inside of the office before the bus arrived. My bag is all loaded up and I'm off to Siem Reap! Peace out, Phnom Penh. It's been real.

Genocide, What?

Best tuk tuk driver ever.

In Cambodia, the equivalent to the Indian "auto" is the onomatopoetic "tuk tuk." And they're everywhere. Which is awesome. Our hostel has a dedicated tuk tuk driver, so SR and I booked him for the afternoon today to take us around. He was awesome. On the way to our first stop, he stopped off and picked up two face masks for SR and me to wear. SR was like "I make fun of people who wear these" and I was like "... I do to. But when in Rome..." and donned the mask, because... why not? SR followed suit. We probably both saved about a year of our lives from all the air pollution we didn't breathe in.

Our first stop was a place called S-21.S-21 is a school. Well, it used to be a school before it was turned into museum. Oh also, in between it was turned into a prison where enemies of the state were tortured and killed. Remember how I didn't do any research about Cambodia before coming here? Yea... turns out there was a lot that I missed.

In today's edition of Know Your Planet, we cover Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, the [R]'s Notes version (note: some facts may be "facts"):

My first and last names are both nouns!

The Khmer Rouge is synonymous for the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). "Kampuchea" is how folks in the East pronounce Cambodia because... you know, it's their country and they probably know how to say it the right way. The CPK was formed in 1968 and officially took power in Cambodia in 1975. They were led by a guy named Pol Pot, a gentle soul that loved everyone. Wait, no, how do you say the opposite of "gentle soul that loved everyone"? Oh right, dictator. He was a viscous, brutal dictator.

On a dreary Wednesday afternoon, 8-yr. old Pol Pot, having been forced for the third straight night to finish his bok choy before he could have dessert, vowed that one day he would rise to power and force everyone to eat their vegetables all the time so they could feel his childhood pain. Fast-forward 42 years and after taking power, he began to implement his vision for an agrarian society, which he also believed was the key to Cambodia's self-sufficiency. A funny thing happens when you force non-farmers to be responsible for producing your nation's food supply: your population starts to die from starvation. Oh also, Pol Pot hates labels, could be labeled as something, then you were executed: Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, Laotians, and he threw in intellectuals and disabled people for good measure. And their families. We wouldn't want some orphaned child growing up and exacting revenge now, would we? 

In the four years that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were in power, about 2 million people (estimates vary) died, shrinking Cambodia's population from 8 million down to 6 million. 25% of the people! That's insane!

Lots of global geopolitical stuff was going down in the world at the time, and the Khmer Rouge fell out of power in 1979, forcing its leaders into hiding in the jungles of southwestern Cambodia, near the Thai border. The crazy part about all of this (ok, there are a LOT of crazy parts about all of this) is that despite knowing about all abhorrent genocidal tendencies of the regime, the UN still recognized the Khmer Rouge as the only legitimate party representing Cambodia until 1990. 1990! While hiding out, Pol Pot developed a profound love of pizza and seeking to implant a subliminal love for the CPK in the western world founded California Pizza Kitchen in 1985, which today has locations in a dozen countries across the planet.

Pol Pot died, get this, in 1998 while under house arrest. House arrest! Let that be a lesson to you, other dictators of the world: you are going to be so grounded when your regime is finally toppled.

SR and I arrived at S-21 (also known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum), paid a small entrance fee, and stepped inside. S-21 was like when you first walk onto a beach and it's beautiful but then after a few minutes you notice the sand is full of trash, the water is full of algae, and the only people wearing bathing suits are the people you never, ever want to see wearing bathing suits. Except the trash/algae/"2-sizes-too-small" of S-21 took the form of barbed wire, concrete cells, and a giant sign listing out "the rules" of S-21.

Beautiful, right? Just ignore the gallows and
graves. Ooo, a palm tree!

Maybe it's just S-21, maybe it's all of the museums in Cambodia, but it's definitely not the same as a museum in the U.S. There are a lot of things that are shown but not really labeled. There are a lot of things that are labeled, but not explained. So you end up seeing a lot of stuff were you're like "...I bet this was used for something awful" without really knowing what exactly. The grounds are also really well taken care of in some respects, but in dire need of a cleaning in other respects. Like the grass is beautifully manicured, but we also found a stairwell that just had trash in it.

Prison cells. Believe it or not, these
are the nicer ones.

Inside one of the cells

SR and I walked around the whole complex. We saw the cells where they kept prisoners. They're so small, you could barely lie down in them. Everything was covered in barbed wire to prevent people from... escaping? Committing suicide? Feeling any small sense of hope? Probably all of the above.

You know it's bad when
you'd rather stay filthy

There were also a lot of pictures and paintings on the walls depicting life at S-21. This one shows how they kept the prisoners clean. And by clean I mean "clean." Once a week or so they would get them all in a room and spray them down with a hose.

After an incredibly eye-opening and disturbing hour and a half or so, SR and I decided to go on to the next activity for the day. If you thought this day couldn't get more depressing, you'd be totally wrong. We hopped back into our tuk tuk and drove for about 20 minutes to our next destination, the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, more commonly known as the Killing Fields.

Front entrance to the Killing Fields

SR and I hopped out of the tuk tuk and went inside. After paying a small fee, we were given some headsets loaded with an audio tour.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have

smiled for this photo.

This is called the Killing Tree. So named
because guards would take babies and slam
them into the tree to kill them. Those bracelets
are mementos left by visitors to honor those
who died here. In another tree close by, they
embedded speakers to play nationalistic music
with the intention of drowning out the sound
of the screams of those being killed.

I'll include some details about the Killing Fields in the captions of the photos so if you'd prefer not to know what happened here, you can just skip past them. But what you should know is that this was an awful, terrible, miserable place where people were taken to be killed and buried in mass graves.

The skulls they've found here have been categorized and put
on display in a central tower. It's so far from what you expect
of reality that it's hard to remember each one of these skulls
belonged to a real, living, breathing human being.

Ever seen a tower of skulls? You have now.

These fields look beautiful but every
sink-hole-looking depression in the ground
is actually the site of a mass grave. As the
weather changes the ground, new bones are
constantly being naturally unearthed.

After the Killing Fields, SR and I went to our next stop, the Russian Market. It was a pretty quiet ride over. I think SR and I were both processing a lot of "genocide sucks" thoughts. We got to the Russian Market about 20 minutes later. I'm not sure why it's called that. It doesn't look particularly... Russian. I'm sure the internet knows but... do you really care? I don't.

The Russian Market is this HUGE indoor market. There is a lot of food and a lot of trinkets and a lot of clothes and... power tools? And a lot of other random things. I mean... it's a HUGE market. Inevitably, SR and I got separated. It was bound to happen. The market closes at 5pm, so a little before then I started trying to find her. I must have searched every possible corner of that place, but no luck. People were starting to close up shop and lights were starting to turn off and things were starting to look a little sketchy. So I figured, if I were her, I'd probably head back to the tuk tuk and wait there. So that's what I did. The problem is I didn't remember exactly where the tuk tuk dropped us off. Or where I entered the market from. So I went outside and tried to get my bearings. After about 5 minutes I found the tuk tuk with SR safely inside. I imagine she had probably been waiting there a while, because she was definitely a little annoyed that it had taken me so long to get there. She hid it just fine though. And you can't really blame her, I probably would be too. I was pretty tired after the day so I was really glad to be heading back to the hostel.

Later that night, SR and I went to go check out this huge Night Market we'd been hearing about. It was raining hard. Luckily there were a lot of tarps setup to protect people from the rain, but unfortunately they were really, really low, so you had to duck down to walk through the aisles. It felt pretty cramped. There were also a lot of food stalls as well, though most of them looked like they sold the same food.

This guy cooked my food. It was good.

There was a cool eating area in the middle of all the food stalls so after we grabbed food, SR and I sat down for a nice meal. I also had cane juice for the first time in a long time. Actually, I take that back, I had some in Bangladesh, but before that I hadn't had cane juice in a long, long time. It was so good, I went back for Round 2.

Yummmmm

No shoes allowed!

This would be funny if it weren't so sad

After dinner, SR and I walked back to the hostel. On the way back we found a small child playing with fire in the street. Yup, that happened.

Remember the German guys from the hostel last night? They're off living it up at a fancy place tonight, but we did decide to all hang out again tonight. The original plan was to head to their place but apparently everything there was really expensive, so they decided to come back to our hostel. So around 10pm or so, they came back to meet up with the Finns and me. The five of us hung out in the lounge for a bit, then went on an adventure. One of the group had heard about this cool club in a touristy part of town. So we grabbed a tuk tuk and headed over there. But once we got there, we decided to go head somewhere else. That somewhere else that the tuk tuk driver took us to was not what we had told him. We went in anyway. It was totally dead.

Katy Peri's Pizzas

So we walked out and went to find another place. On the way, we found the pizza joint that Katy Perry owns. Apparently she's forgotten how to spell her own name.

Finally, we found a decent place, the Rooftop Reggae Bar! On a rooftop! With real people there!

...fight the power?

Unfortunately, my phone camera was not as awesome as
the view itself

It was an interesting scene inside. Mostly expats. There was the standard couple making out in the corner. There was one woman there who forgot how old she was (and I'd generally say "good for her" if not for the fact that she reeked of desperation with each one of her overly aggressive dance moves). Her friend had the opposite "woe is me, I'm just going to sit in the corner by myself looking sad" problem. Like most things in life, the best outcome would have just been to average them out. Like stock market analyst predictions.

There was also a really awesome view of Phnom Penh. And the bathroom had hilarious signage as well. It started sprinkling a little while we were there, which was actually kind of refreshing. We stayed out until around 3am or so before heading back to the hostel.

Get it, grrrl

This was my last night in Phnom Penh and I'm really glad I got to spend it with this crew. They were a ton of fun and I'm going to miss these guys.

CONTINUE ON to Phnom Penh Part 4: Goodbye, Phnom Penh!

In case you've forgotten how to pee, this sign's got you
covered. Unlike what you should do to the seat and/or floor.