Phnom Penh: Recovery

After a grueling day 12 hour bus ride on a bus that didn't work,

I arrived at the Phnom Penh bus station to a convenience store containing kettle chips. I do love kettle chips. A few minutes later a friendly and welcoming Spanish documentary filmmaker came along on a motorbike and took me to join him with his friends at a Cambodian BBQ restaurant. This wasn't a chance meeting. He was the couchsurfer who graciously let me stay at his apartment during my time in the city. His apartment was a welcome change to the endless strings of guesthouse. I enjoyed a morning coffee on the terrace staring out into the city that was ravaged by the Khmer Rouge and in a state of recovery. My host was fairly busy with different projects but was so kind as to show me around in the limited time that he had.

In the afternoon, I made my way to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, also known as S-21. As you can tell from its name, it was a rather heavy afternoon. The former prison turned memorial gives you a glimpse into what occurred here. Blood still stains the floor. Rooms are lined with pictures of those who were killed both within the walls or executed in the killing fields. The pictures, headshots of the victims contained the span of human emotion, from beaten down and defeated to indignant and defiant.

In one of the buildings, the rooms are partitioned into cells. On the first floor, the partitions are cement. Visitors can walk down the aisle in the middle of the rooms and look into the different cells, entering them if you chose. On the second floor, the partitions are made of wooden walls. Visitors are given similar freedom as on the 1st floor but I couldn't bring myself to walk in. The wooden cells gave me a feeling of present evil. I stood frozen, looking at a cell and then turned and continued upstairs.

The museum had a guestbook and a small space under some stairs where people graffiti'd the walls with messages. Messages such as RIP, and "so sad" but it was the messages that said "Never again" that made me frustrated and angry. Has the writer watched the news lately? Sudan, Congo, Somalia its happening again. It's happening right now.


I left the compound and wandered the different stores. They were filled with goods and handicrafts attempting to give people a better livelihood. Cambodia, a land filled with friendly, smiling people has a long road of reconstruction ahead littered with traps of corruption and greed. I suppose that can be said for many countries. The city itself is filled with activity and it's hard to imagine it as the ghost town it became after it was evacuated by the Khmer Rouge. After returning to the apartment, my host and I shared a beer with a friend at a bar then retired to a nice, relaxing dinner and a movie. The movie: A Series of Unfortunate Events.

After another lazy morning, I headed off to Siem Reap.

Si Phan Don: Buck up, you're still on vacation.

They can't all be wonderful days, can they? From Pakse, I signed up for a tour to kayak in Si Phan Don which means Four Thousand Islands. It's a part of the Mekong river littered with little islands and broken up with waterfalls and one of the few habitats of the beluga-looking irrawaddy dolphins. The tour did not start off well, starting with a rude mini-van driver followed by a less than confident guide telling me it was his first time to do this. At some point, the scenery took care of my mood. We saw some lovely waterfalls.


My inexperienced guide had us join up with a group with a guide who actually knew where he was going. We paddled out to Cambodia, to a lookout of the irrawaddy dolphins' stomping ground. We hung out and looked and looked and nothing. Disappointed, we climbed back into our kayaks and rowed away. But in our rowing, we saw them. Small little rounded dolphin backs rolling up and out of the water. Dozens of them. We took turns pointing them out, then set off, paddling into the sunset. What started on low notes definitely ended in a high note.




Back on land, I found amazingly cheap accomodations. Amazingly cheap. So cheap, I didn't have much desire to spend much time in the room. So I didn't. I went of for dinner and some well-deserved beer after a rather emotional rollercoaster of a day. I met more lovely people to pass the night drinking and conversing with and one little kitten who routed into my nap. It's impossible to have a bad time with a kitten in your lap and a Beer Lao in your hand. Traveling is always good. Even when it's not.