Phnom Phen 2

Day 2 in Phnom Phen was abbreviated as a result of night 1 in Phnom Phen. At the advice of a friend who had been, I found my way to the FCC for a bite of dinner and a beer at the end of a day of exploring. The FCC, or the the Foreign Correspondent's Club, was in fact the locale newsmen covering the war in Cambodia hung out in their down time. It's also on the Quay with a river view.

The FCC in its present form is an open air French Colonial style restaurant and bar now. The walls are covered with vintage photos of the conflict in Cambodia that add an eerie mystique to the place. This night there was some kind of happening. The bar slowly filled up with lots of western faces and I ended up meeting a number of ex pats from different countries who apparently regularly meet up at the FCC for food and drink. People are so friendly to solo traveler's in this part of the world. I met so many gracious people who invited me to join their group or just other solo traveler's who I shared a meal with. There's an almost unspoken code that solo's just stick together. Great way to make new friends and I made plenty as I did this night.

Phnom Phen draws quite the oddball mix of ex pats. There were Aussies, Brits, Americans all of whom seemed to share a reckless sense of adventure that drew them to this particular rugged frontier town. There is little if any law enforcement in PP. So it really is a bit of the wild west. I never got too close to any of them because frankly the less I knew the better. But it was nice to have some company for a night. A late night tuk tuk ride back to the Intercon made for a later start the next day.

The actual sights are few in PP. The experience is more a sensory one. It's mostly not pleasant. The city is not crowded but it is bustling. It's a desperately poor city. Buses are flatbed trucks stuffed with people shoulder to shoulder standing up straight. Garbage is everywhere. But astonishingly there is little of the begging that beset Siem Reap. People plod on trying to make this wreck of a city work somehow.

Tuol Sleng, or s-21 was the camp the KR used to brutally torture it's prisoners before sending them on to their fate at the Killing Fields. The site is a converted high school turned into a prison. There are a few museum exhibits and an attempt at telling the story of the place through an audio video presentation that doesn't translate well. It's a brutal place. Unlike the concentration camps of Germany, Austria and Poland this place has not been sanitized. It's the real thing. The death is present and it's near. This was in our lifetimes. We watched this unfold....and our governments did nothing. And still, to the day, they do nothing for this place. It's a cursed country.

The one site with visual appeal is the country's Royal Palace and main Pagoda, the Silver Pagoda. It's a grandiose complex reminiscent of many of the Wat's and palace's I had seen already in Laos. So it was nothing new. It's the country's other jewel after Angkor Wat. After a quick walk through I wandered out to the river for my last sunset over the Mekong. Marketers pedeling all sorts of edible creepy crawlers that only the locals and very brave dared eat. Fried roaches, snakes, rats and the like all ripe for the picking. I settled for a burger back at the hotel where I packed for the last part of my journey in Taiwan.

Southeast Asia is magical. Once you get used to the shock of it, you can easily slip in and see why people can become an ex pat here. Here, things are simple. People live to survive. It's not complex. Nothing costs money by our standards and the people are as kind as you will ever find. Americans always ask the same question. So was it dangerous? You have to be careful what you eat and drink and use a bit of common sense. If so, it's safer than most places you will find in the U.S. I never felt at risk here. Only welcomed. Traveling in places like this help to put things in perspective. The rat race will always be here. But we have so much and they have so little. We complain about how hard it is here now. We don't know hard.