Greetings from Phnom Penh

What an amazing experience Orion and I are having! Phnom Penh is a very mellow tropical capital city. Lots of mopeds and motorcycles and tuk-tuks. And palm trees everywhere, but especially along the Tonle Sap–a river that joins the Mekong River near our hotel. There is a beautiful park along the river with international flags blowing in the gentle breeze.

The weather is WARM, lovely warmth after the recent cold in CA. It’s pretty humid, and we’re doing just fine with the temp. We had the air con on last night in our hotel.

The food is DELICIOUS! And very inexpensive. Tastes similar to Thai with lots of lemon grass.

We love our hotel. It’s alittle more pricey for Cambodia than we’d prefer to pay, and it has great atmosphere and is quiet and comfortable with beautiful colonial wood work in our room. There’s also an 11-foot or so python in the garden…in a cage.  🙂

Today we visited the National Museum which is an architecturally beautiful building and the Royal Palace which has lots of very ornate art and architecture to see. In the Silver Pagoda, we saw a life-size gold Buddha with 9500 diamonds in it, the largest of which is 25 carats! It was breath-takingly exquisite.

We also visited Tuol Sleng Museum, the site of much torture and imprisonment of the Cambodian people who were believed to oppose Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It was a Very powerful and at times horrifying experience for us to visit here.         

Tonight we’re seeing a couple of films in English at the Mekong Restaurant next door to the internet place–50 cents per movie. One of the films is about the history of the Khmer Rouge and the second is about the land mines in Cambodia. Not uplifting, fun topics, but important parts of the Cambodian experience and culture.

Tomorrow we leave for Siem Reap, the city near Angkor Wat. It’s a six hour bus ride for $10. We’re taking the luxury bus with hostess, water, bathroom on board, air con. We’re excited to be going.

I’m loving it and being with my son Orion wonderful.