Update Phnom Penh: Adventures, Volunteering, and Broken Bicycle

Current whereabouts: We are still in Phnom Penh waiting for Zach's new bottom-bracket to be shipped from Singapore. As it looks like it will take another few days to arrive we are going to head south via bus/motorbike to the town of Sihanoukville and Kep, leaving the bikes in Phnom Penh. Zach has a cold right now and has been resting up. Below is a account of our adventures and experiences around the city.

The city is bigger than it first appeared and we've taken enough tuk tuks around her streets to be able to attest to the sprawl. It's not busy like Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh but there are a number of swanky cars on the road here, far outnumbering the same class of cars in either of the aforementioned cities. We've found it easy to navigate with the simple street numbering, even numbers running east west and odd numbers running north south in chronological order. The French influence is quite obvious in the architecture, language, and especially the number of French tourists. Cambodia seems to cater quite nicely to the Frogs, but we don't find ourselves getting along too badly as English speakers. The first guesthouse we landed at was French owned and pretty, quiet, and we were keen on enjoying the free breakfasts in their lush, leafy garden cafe. After a few days we decided to make a guesthouse change and packed off towards the Boeng Kak lake guesthouses, a busier backpackers alley with lots of bars, restaurants, guesthouses, internet cafes, and touts. We checked out 6 or 8 places ranging from $3 a night to $20+ and settled on a small windowless room above a happening restaurant. The A/C unit was making a strange smell and our neighbor next door was thumping out some serious bass through the thin walls so in the morning we checked out of there and into our third hotel. Finally we got a great room, complete with two huge windows, A/C, and an ornate and lofty ceiling, at a good price! The owner of Simons Guest House II has also kindly agreed to receive a package for us as we're having to order bike parts from Singapore to fix Z.'s bottom bracket.

Staying in the Boeng Kak district is an experience Phnom Penh will soon be unable to offer backpackers as the lake area has been leased to a huge corporation and is currently on it's way to being completely filled in. Most of the hotels proprietors don't seem immediately worried about how this will affect business as the dock lounges of the raised deck hotels that used to be right on the lake now sit 4 feet above a sad, cracked, brown former lakebed. It's unclear what the development plans are for the former lake, or for the businesses that set themselves up beside it's shores, but it's clear that the development is on the rise as Phnom Penh becomes less a shadow of it's former self, transforming itself into a destination for travel, business, and a little ex-pat haven. We spent an evening at one of the lakefront guesthouse lounges watching the sun set over what's left of the lake while a storm rolled in behind us.



We've skipped a lot of the touristy stuff the guidebook suggests opting instead to explore the city via our many bike related errands instead. We have however made it to see both S21, the high school cum torture facility inside Phnom Penh, and the Killing Fields about 15km's South of the City.

S21 was a sobering experience as we walked through the hallways of the former school finding it in much the same condition as it was on it's discovery by the Vietnamese troops when they captured Phnom Penh in 1985. Inside we were allowed to freely explore the floors of classrooms that had hundreds of tiny rudimentary cells constructed of either brick or wood planks within their walls. Prisoners were held in these cells between torture sessions as the Khmer Rouge attempted to extract confessions of disloyalty to their party from women and men, children, adults, and elders alike. Other floors used for interrogation still contained the leg shackles and bare iron bed frames used as tools to deliver electric shocks to the prisoners. A new addition to the already somber scene were pictures of the final 8 victims found in those very rooms, as they were, on the prisons discovery. One large room was devoted to displaying the mug-shot style pictures of the suspected defectors which the Khmer Rouge were meticulous about taking both on their arrival, and again at the time of their death. Hundreds of faces stare out from the black and white photos, and knowing each one met a horrible end at the hands of the regime, it still seems unfathomable at some level. It's hard to imagine how something like this can happen, and especially how the sweet Cambodian people, normally warm, funny, and gracious could be caught up in the rhetoric and turned into killing machines?



Photo of citizens fleeing Phnom Penh:

We were surprised and pleased to see that the majority of the westerners visiting the site appeared to be twenty-something's, not just in Cambodia for the cheap hash and beer. Everyone at the compound seemed to respect the requested silence and each seemed to be reflecting, reading the historical accounts, and taking their time.



We visited the Killing Fields in Choeung Ek a few days later and opted to ride our bikes out there to remind our legs and butts what it's like. The trip was pretty straightforward and we had only to follow the Barangs in their tuk tuks (although considerably less than at Angkor Wat) to make our way. We pulled up into a gravel lot in front of a fairly unassuming place, except for the tuk tuks and a few transport vans we probably wouldn't have picked it out as "the" place. A small souvenir shop hung close to the lot and was almost totally devoid of anything related to the site, save for some books on the Khmer Rouge. We paid our $2 US each, walked four feet from the lone ticket seller to the lone ticket checker who verified the tickets he'd just watched us purchase were valid. Inside the low, ornate, concrete walls stood a large stupa and at first glance, a network of paths leading around the grassy grounds. Approaching the stupa you were able to see the glass walls towering up at least three stories revealed a dizzying number of skulls stretching toward the sky, just a fraction of those discovered at this mass burial site. Visitors weren't policed here, like most historically significant places we've visited in Cambodia, instead they're only asked to pause and meditate for a moment in front of the stupa before moving on about the grounds. As we walked the paths we realized the large depressions to each side of the path that appeared every few feet were in fact exhumed burial sites. We noticed bits of clothing in the compressed soil of the path and at one point came on a bend in the path that clearly had bleached bone jutting up from the ground in amongst the grass. The gentle breeze, green grassy knolls, flitting butterflies, and chitter of neighboring children belies this places bloody past, making it hard to fathom the reality of what you're strolling around. There's little information around the site and the whole thing feels a bit haphazardly put together, outside of the incredible stupa of course. In an hour we'd been able to take our time and see and read everything there was to see and read and it was time to head back to the city.



On our way back the heavens opened up and bucketed down on us. Huge waves of torrential blowing rain buffeted our t-shirt clad selves as the once cement-like dirt path lining the shoulder of the road quickly churned into soupy mud that caked our bikes, legs, backs, etc. On our way back to the hotel we swung by a bike shop and inquired about some fenders. After some seriously inventive improvisation (E. likened it to a surgical operation completed with a hatchet) on the part of the team of "mechanics" set to the task of fitting Cambodian fenders to our patchwork rigs, we each had one full rear fender. E. got an unmatched but functional front fender too but Z.'s bike wouldn't accommodate any of the front fenders they stocked. By the time the guys were done with our bikes we were on our way to being dry and the rain had passed over completely… guess we'll have to wait for another rainy day to test the newly outfitted bikes.

Another experience we shared in was a day volunteering with the City Municipal Dump Project here in Phnom Penh. Over 500 families make a living at the local dump sifting through huge piles of trash dumped by trucks every few minutes. The project started 6 years ago with a local ex-pat saving around $100 dollars, buying as much food as possible, then driving his own vehicle to the dump and feeding as many of the hundreds and hundreds of children who call the dump home. Now through some informal advertising he travels there three days a week with volunteers. The process is simple, show up at 10am, make donation (we donated $20 USD), travel to wholesale market, buy enough bread/fruit to feed 400-500 children, and travel to the dump. There is no set schedule, they just go at random 3 times a week. When I asked David who started the project why they didn't have a set schedule he said it was because they would have the whole city Phnom Penh there and coming at random allows them to feed on average 500 children each time. Upon arrival hundreds of children flood the truck carrying the food and with some much needed forced organization from the volunteers, the children lined up to receive the food. The project also runs a mobile-clinic and attends to illnesses and wounds while food is being dispersed. The kids were animated and excited, often wanting to practice English, and generally wonderful.