1) Picking up custom-made shoes from Beautiful Shoes:
I ordered some custom-made shoes from a shoe place in Phnom Penh. They trace your foot and make some measurements and then make a leather shoe for you. All you have to do is bring them some pictures of the shoes you want and then they make pretty close to the same design.
2) Visiting the national museum:
Cambodia’s national museum in Phnom Penh focuses mainly on Angkorian and Pre-Angkorian art and artefacts housed in a well-designed and charming (yet small) museum near the Royal Palace. I went to the museum after having lunch with Ed and Nancy at Friends, an NGO-run restaurant that provides Cambodian street kids with training in the food service industry (partnered with Romdeng). The museum had a great little interior courtyard with fish ponds and a pavilion as well.
3) Visiting the national palace:
I enjoy visiting royal residences. When I went to the Cambodian Palace I was a little disappointed because you couldn't really go into parts of the royal residence, but could only see the royal pagodas and little temples on the grounds. There were also some exhibits of royal possessions such as the current king Sihamoni's collection of elephant bowls. There were also several monks on the palace grounds who seemed very eager to practice their english with passing tourists.
4) Going to Tol Sleng:
The Khmer Rouge torture camp in Phnom Penh was housed in a former secondary school. S-21, as it was referred to by the Khmer Rouge, is currently a genocide museum with frighteningly horrific photographs, paintings, testimonies, and an hour-long movie. I was especially shocked by the exhibition with photos from 1976 (I think) taken by a Swedish man traveling on a sort of cultural ambassadorship. He wrote that he was a Maoist at the time and believed that Democratic Kampuchea (what Cambodia was called during the Khmer Rouge) was an exemplary example of functioning Maoism. It was really creepy to walk in the torture chambers and holding cells that prisoners were kept in before being taken to Cheong Ek (?) or the Killing Fields.
5) See an Apsara Show:
Didn't actually work out because the Apsara (Khmer traditional dance) theater we were going to go to closed down the weekend we all went to Kep. They're supposedly opening again later this year.
6) Going to Louisiana Fried Chicken:
According to LP, before Cambodia joined the World Trade Organization it didn't have copyright laws and it apparently had a KFC, 7-11, and other popular establishments. Once it joined the WTO, these places changed and I think became Louisiana Fried Chicken (a.k.a. LFC) and 7-11 became "7 Elephants". I went to LFC with Nancy and Sokly before going to my last stop on my list, Wat Phnom.
7) Climb Wat Phnom to see the monkeys:
At lunch on my last day Sokly took Nancy and I on Chhoy's moto to Wat Phnom, one of the original Wats (or Buddhist Temples, NOT pagodas) in Phnom Penh. Phnom means "hill" in Khemai so the temple is set up on a little hill surrounded by a park. It's also home to several monkeys and we saw two of them. Nancy even got a great picture of a monkey mid-leap going from a lamp post to a tree.
So I finally finished writing this post after quite a long week of packing, trying to figure out my Rhino model, and working on the bucket list. It was a nice way to end my trip, but I really wasn't ready to leave yet.
On my last night, Darren was nice enough to drive Sokly, Nancy, and I to the airport. It was a dark and stormy night and the sky was crying because I was leaving. The streets of Phnom Penh flooded with water and traffic. Darren's Toyota Camry (pretty much the same model that I drove in high school, but nicer) was up to the doors at least in water while driving through the back streets of the city in an attempt to avoid the incredible traffic jam of cars, motos, and pedestrians in the now flooded city.
My friends at our last dinner together ;_;
After checking my luggage in at the airport and paying the $25 airport departure tax, I ate a quick dinner with Nancy, Chhoy, Sokly, and Darren. They all said goodbye and watched as I ascended the escalator up to the departure zone and onto the plane.
No comments:
Post a Comment