How to describe this mornings traffic? Imagine the M25 on a Friday afternoon add in the Paris Periphique and the Botley Road in Oxford at 7.30am and you are about half way there! In the middle of this chaos we were sat in a Tuk-Tuk on the way to the Killing Fields. You could almost eat the fumes and dust - it's probably the equivalent to 5years of 40 a day. The Killing Fields were incredibly simple, poignant and humbling. There is a memorial in the centre of the site containing the excavated skulls of those murdered there, rows and rows of them, with a pile of the clothing recovered from the graves. Apart from that, the site is left as it was after it was excavated with the pits in the ground still open, with grass and foilage now growing in them. It was reminiscent of the WWI trenches; such a quiet earth hiding such horror. 20,000 people were excuted and buried there; men women and children.
Unfortunately, you still have to run the gauntlet of maimed beggars even at this place. They, however sad their circumstances, become irritating after a while and you begin to ignore them as their own great and not so good do.
In the afternoon, we visited the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda containg an Emerald Buddha (really emeral this time, we think). Incredibly beautiful and opulent. We were amused by a statue of King Norodom seated on a horse, a gift from France in the 1880s. Apparently, they had a statue of Napoleon left over so they just replaced the original head with that of the kings! The body does look a bit Corsican to think of it. Just about sums up Phnom Penh - a mix of grandeur and wealth, neglected and faded colonial elegance (the French influence is everywhere) and third world poverty and filth. Why does Urban povery always appear more offensive than rural poverty? Dad; some of the workshops scattered around the city reminded me of one of Les Cramptons industrial estates! Tomorrow we go to the seaside!
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