Phnom Penh

Arrived Phnom Penh January 20th. A tuk tuk driver grabbed us off the bus and took us on the long drive to our hotel for only $5.00 ( we went for a walk last night and discovered that our hotel was only 5 blocks from the bus depot and the long ride was just to make the $5.00 charge look good). Our rooms were great, a balcony with peek-a-views over the river and just steps from the riverside promenade that links all of downtown Phnom Penh.

Spent our first evening checking out the downtown. At the night market we sat on a huge, mat covered area and ate street food with a couple hundred other diners sitting on the same mats. More than we could consume and really good - $4.50.

Yesterday we went to the Killing Fields. Not much to say but that it was very sobering. The Killing Field in Phnom Penh ( 10,000 souls dispatched there in about a year and a half ) is one of 129 throughout Cambodia. In total, over 3,000,000 killed, over one quarter of the population at the time.

We then went to the Central Market, dined again on really good, incredibly cheap street food. 

Phnom Penh is a smallish city and laid out in a grid pattern, so it is quite easy to get around. It is, to this observer, a grittier place than, say, Bangkok and much, much dirtier. While there is a clear motivation by some to make a quick buck at the expense of tourists (and unlike every other town or city we have visited this trip, I did not feel comfortable walking in the dark of the early mornings), on the whole the people are delightful. Children play in the streets with such aplomb, smiling, laughing and singing, calling out their Hellos to passing tourists, asking our names and laughing uproariously went we tell them. Almost everyone we spoke with were delighted that we engaged them in conversation and any approach generated warm smiles and inquisitiveness. I find this genuine warmth remarkable give the country's resent history.

Off early on the 22nd to the countryside and Kompong Cham.