After our Tour de Angkor we spent 2 nights in Phnom Penh. Overall, it was a depressing experience. We visited the Genocide Museum, or Killing fields, which is the site of many mass graves from the Khmer Rouge regime. From there, we went straight to the Tuon Sleng Prison, which is where the Khmer Rouge held and tortured people before transfering them to places where they would be executed. The prison was at one time a school, so all the classrooms are either transformed into cells or they now hold mugshot upon mugshot of the people who were detained there. We learned a lot about the takeover of Phnom Penh in 1975 and Pol Pot.
Other activities in Phnom Penh were the National Museum, which houses many artifacts that were removed from Angkor for preservation, the Royal Palace, and the Russian Market. To be honest, we got out of the Russian Market as quickly as we could. It was dark, claustrophobic, smelly, and dirty. We'll leave it at that. One highlight of our time in Phnom Penh was finding a restaurant called "Friends" which had the most delicious and fresh food. It is run by an NGO which trains former street children for jobs in the service industry. We ate there twice!
We probably wouldn't have minded our time in Phnom Penh too much if it weren't for the totally frustrating experience of having to fend off tuk-tuk drivers at every corner. These are little carriages pulled by motorbikes, and the drivers seem desperate for business. They tend not to listen when you tell them you don't need a ride anywhere. Being people that like to walk around and get the lay of the land on foot, we rarely needed tuk-tuks and the constant barrage of solicitations put both of us on edge.
