Day 5: Phnom Penh City tour and its morbid recent history

Woke up pretty late today at 8AM, the same time that the girls and I agreed to leave and explore the city yesterday. The “Filipino time” (a stereotypical reference to being late) in me went down hoping that maybe they’re still asleep, and I can have my chill break and refreshing shower. But lo and behold, the Europeans are on time! So I just put on my contact lenses, brushed my teeth, and left with the same clothes that I have.

We first went to the nearest palace just a couple of blocks away just to check out what’s happening. Worshiping Buddhists, mini pagodas, after 10 minutes we’ve seen everything. From there we took a “tuktuk” (a popular local transport wherein a motorcycle pulls a set of modern carriage good for 4 passengers) as an arrangement for a whole day tour, meaning they’ll wait for us. Offers went as high as 45USD, but we were able to haggle with the kindest driver for a price of 15USD, or 5 dollars each.  First destination: the killing fields.

About 45 minutes away from the city, the Killing Fields, I must say is the SINGLE BEST TOURIST DESTINATION HIGHLIGHT OF MY WHOLE TRIP. Though I’ve done some reading prior to going here, I still find it hard to grasp how such humanity crimes could have happened only during the 1970’s. I believe people then should know better already.  So for my fellowmen who are saying that Marcos’ martial law during the same time was bad, well they haven’t heard about Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.

Day 4: Crossing the border to Phnom Penh

The tour organizers picked us up at around 6AM to bring us to the floating hotel to have breakfast.  It was chaos. In a small but open dining area along the river, it was jam packed with tourists and bags, they didn’t have enough tables to seat all of us nor enough people to timely serve us food.  But by the time I got my breakfast, I only had a minute to eat it since we were about to go.

Our first destination - the fishing farm. It consists of wooden planks above the river, with square whole in the middle used to feed the fish. One has to get used to the smell there, primarily due to the feeds use. But what’s interesting to see is how the fishes go wild when you drop feed pellets!

Active fishes

Lazy dog