Day 5: April 15 -- Phnom Penh

The second day of New Year marks a sudden increase in traffic and crowds.  Yesterday was traditiionally family day when one stayed at home and celebrated with relatives.  Today, traffic increases exponentially as people head out to visit friends or to enjoy the holiday in other ways.  So we had a rather slow trip to the airport, but all was smooth going after that.  Cambodia Air deleivered us to Phnom Penh via a 50 minute flight in an ATR52 turboprop.

Phnom Penh is certainly a sprawling city with much development still occurring.  Into our hotel took 45 minutes.  We are just around the corner from the river in a very nice hotel: The Ohana.  Our new tour guide is a very pleasant local man.

After lunch we drove to the National Museum.  (Our schedule had to be changed because the King was using his royal palace to party, and we weren't invited.)  The museum is a collection of 5000 statues and artifacts relating to the nations Hindu and Buddhist past.  2000 are in exhibit at any one time.  The guide completely confused us with intricate details of the various Hindu deities with their 4 or 6 or 8 hands, and half human, half animal bodies -- all tied into reincarnation theory.  Interesting but overwhelming.

We then headed for the Genocide Museum, but on the way half our party were suddenly struck down by diorrhea and we had to make an emergency stop and arrange for them to get back to the hotel.  (I had already been discomforted at the museum and found a toilet there.)  I suspect the  fish soup was to blame!

Anyway, we made it to the Genocide Museum.  This was a 4 building, 3 storied high school, taken over by Pol Pot and used as S-21 (Secret Police) prison.  This maniac Pol Pot made the entire population of Phnom Penh literally walk away from the city under pretence that the US was about to bomb it.  His Khmer Rouge forces then took it over.  Previous government supporters and professional of every sort were brought here for torture and evetual execution in the nearby killing fields.  Pol Pot executed some 4 million people in his 3 1/2 year rule.

The museum ranks with Aushwitz and the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem for grim testimony to human evil.  Today we saw tiny cells where 20 or more people we shacked to the floor, and brutally tortured before execution.  Women and children no exception.  One room has a collection of human bones and skulls of victims who died in S-21 from torture or starvation before making it to the killing fields.  Dreadfully depressing stuff.  Our guide lost family in the genocide, and he was outspoken in his criticism of the presnt government and its refusal to bring still living regime members to trial.  Also very outspoken about the USA and its role in installing Pol Pot and dropping 5 times as many bombs on Cambodia as it did on Japan in WW2.  Certainly the political situation here is dire, although apparently change is on the way.

At 5pm Brother Terry Heinrich, a Marist, met me at the hotel and took me out into the country some 7km where he and others have developed a residential and educational centre for kids with physical handicaps.  Over 100 boys and girls are there now.  Well, not today, as it is holiday time!  It is a very impressive facility and project, called Lavalla.  I met a former student therew who is back working as a volunteer, and at the moment more or less as caretaker.   Terry and I then stopped on the way back into the city to share a pizza.  The party atmosphere in the cafe was wonderful to see.  Terry told me that they would all have been from well-off families, as pizza is out of the price range for ordinary working folk.  ($US18 for medium pizza and 2 cokes).

I was fascinated as we continued back to the hotel to see the antics of the drivers here.  Double lines are "purely advisory" Terry told me.  Motor scooters serve as family vehicles: Mum, Dad and up to 3 kids all astride a little honda.  And they ride in all directions without any hesitation.  I could never drive here.  Traffic in this area is at a crawl as so many people are crowding to the riverside park lands to enjoy a holiday night out.

Not many pics to day (no photography allowed in National Museum), but what I have to offer is here.