Phnom Penh visit

PHNOM PENH

Phnom Penh: the name can not help but conjure up an image of the exotic. This is the Asia that many dreamt of when first planning their adventures overseas. Phnom Penh is a crossroads of Asia’, past and present, a city of extremes of poverty and excess, of charm and chaos, but one that never fails to captivate.

Once the ‘pearl of Asia’, Phnom Penh’s shine was tarnished by the impact of war and revolution. But that’s history and Phnom Penh has risen from the ashes to take its place among the ‘in’ capitals of Asia.

Delve into the ancient past at the National Museum or struggle to make sense of the recent trauma at Tuol Sleng Museum. Browse the city’s markets for a bargain or linger in the beautiful boutiques that are putting Phnom Penh on the style map. Street-surf through the local stalls for a snack or enjoy the refined surrounds of a designer restaurant. Whatever your flavor, no matter your taste, it’s all here in Phnom Penh

The riverfront Sisowath Quay, lined with myriad restaurants and a brand-new promenade, is where most visitors gravitate. The city sprawls west from there. The main thoroughfares, Sihanouk Blvd and Norodom Blvd, intersect a few blocks east of the river at lotus-flower-like Independence Monument, a useful landmark and the point from which distances to the provinces are measured.

PHNOM PENH Sights

Royal Palace & Silver Pagoda

The Royal Palace dominates the diminutive skyline of the riverfront where the Tonlé Sap and Mekong meet, with its classic Khmer roofs and ornate gilding. It a striking structure, bearing a remarkable likeness to its counterpart in Bangkok. Hidden away behind protective walls and beneath shadows of striking ceremonial building, it’s an oasis of calm with lush gardens and leafy havens.

The Silver Pagoda is so named because it is constructed with 5000 silver tiles weighing 1kg each. It is also known as Wat Preah Keo (Pagoda of the Emerald Buddha) thanks to a 17^th-century Buddha statue made of Baccarat crystal. Check out the life-sized gold Buddha, weighing in at 90kg, and decorated with 9584 diamonds.

Upper arms must be covered and shorts must reach the knee while visiting the palace.

National Museum

The national Museum of Cambodia is home to the world’s finest collection of Khmer sculpture, a millennia’s worth and more of masterful Khmer design.

Housed in a graceful terracotta structure of traditional design (built 1917-20), it provides the perfect backdrop to an outstanding array of delicate objects.

The Angkor collection includes a giant pair of wrestling monkeys, an exquisite frieze from Banteay Srei, and the sublime statue of Jayavarman VII (r 1181-1219) meditating.

No photography is allowed except in the beautiful central courtyard.

Tuol Sleng Museum

Once a centre of learning, Tuol Svay Prey High School was taken over by Pol Pot’s security forces and transformed into Security Prison 21 (S-21). The classrooms were turned into torture chambers and equipped with various instruments to inflict pain, suffering and death. Now Tuol Sleng Museum, it was the largest incarceration centre in the country. The long corridors are hallways of ghosts containing haunting photographs of the victims, their faces staring back eerily from the past.

Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge leaders were meticulous in keeping records of their barbarism and each prisoner who passed through S-21 was photographed. When the Vietnamese army liberated Phnom Penh in early 1979, there were only seven prisoners alive at S-21, all of whom had used their skill such as painting or photography to stay alive.

Killing Fields of Choeung Ek

Most of the 1700 detainees held at the S-21 prison were executed at the Killing fields of Choeung Ek.

Prisoners were often bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting precious bullets. It is hard to imagine the brutality that unfolded here when wandering through this peaceful, shady former orchard, but the memorial soon brings it home, displaying more than 8000 skulls of victims and their ragged clothes.

Choeung Ek is 14km southwest of Phnom Penh. A trip out here will cost US$5 round trip on a moto or about US$20 by taxi.

Wat Phnom

Wat Phnom, Meaning Hill Temple, is appropriately set on the only hill (more like a mound at 27m) in Phnom Penh. The Wat is highly revered among locals, who flock here to pray for good luck. Legend has it that in the year 1373, the first temple was built by a lady named Penh to house four Buddha statues that she found floating in the Mekong. Penh’s statue is in a shrine dedicated to her behind the vihara (temple sanctuary).

Wat Ounalom

Wat Ounalom is the headauarters of Cambodian Buddhism. It is unexceptional, but might be worth visiting just for one eyebrow hair of Buddha himself, preciously held in a stupa located behind the main building.

Independence Monument

This monument is modeled on the central tower of Angkor Wat and was built in 1958 to commorate independence from France in 1953.