7 August
11am - We take a grab (which is also in Cambodia) with our luggage to the Giant Ibis main terminal (which is different from the Siem Reap bus station) to take our Giant Ibis bus to Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh.
11:15am - We get on our spacious and air-conditioned bus with our pre-booked tickets. Tickets are available for purchase upon departure but there aren’t that many seats in the bus and while ours wasn’t full, they can be.
11:30am - We set out and drive south, looking out over the Cambodian landscape.
2:45pm - We stop at a rest stop for a quick break. It’s only half an hour but it was just enough time to have some lunch
5:45pm - The country landscape starts to get more urban as the buildings get taller and more frequent.
6:15pm - We enter Phnom Penh. It’s very different from Siem Reap as it’s clearly not a city dominated by hotels/restaurants for tourists.
6:30pm - We get to the bus station and take a grab to the hostel.
8pm - hankering for some pasta, we find an Italian restaurant called La Dolce Vita near the Royal Palace. I get my favourite - garlic bread - and we enjoy some wine and delicious pasta after our long day of traveling.
10:30pm - Walking back from the restaurant, we walk on the Samdach Pan avenue with lots of outdoor restaurants and bars with music playing and lots of light. This seems like a great place to hang out.
11pm - We go to our 10-person mixed hostel room to get ready for bed. Together we’d been in mostly smaller, female-only hostel rooms but this is a new experience. The lights are off and we try to be quiet while getting ready for bed. There are two men who are significantly older which is unusual for a hostel; one is above me and the other in the bunk next to me. The one next to me yells at us and other people in the room for making noise. Luckily other people in the hostel step in and say that we’re being quiet and it’s what you should expect from a hostel. Things are fine otherwise but it is a bit uncomfortable and makes us very aware that we are young women travelling alone in a foreign country.
11:55pm - No sleep yet for me as I’m about to have my nth interview. Luckily it’s a phone call (through google hangout) and so I can be in my pyjamas in the dark at the closed bar.
8 August
12:30am - Done with my interview, I creep back to the room and go to sleep.
5:40am - My alarm goes off (under my pillow so the man next to me doesn’t yell at me) and I creep out to the empty bar and find a spot on a couch by the pool with my laptop
6am - I start my skype interview; luckily it’s early in the morning so there’s no background noise. With all these interviews, I’m very happy I’m a morning person as I can answer hypothetical situational questions this early in the morning.
6:45am - I finish up with the interview and luckily the hotel staff only now start setting up the bar. The person I was interviewing with didn’t even realize I was calling from a Cambodian hostel at 6 in the morning. I go back to the room to get a few more hours of sleep.
9:30am - We have breakfast at the hostel bar and get ready for the day. We’re going to sites of the Cambodian genocide so we prepare ourselves for an intense day.
10:15am - A lobby staff member calls a tuk tuk for us and we drive to the first site of the day
11am - We arrive at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center south of Phnom Penh. This is a museum at the site of the Killing Fields where many of the up to 3 million people (25-33% of the population) were murdered during the Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot. An audio guide is included with the entrance fee which walks you through the site explaining what happened here and showing the mass graves. The experience is very interesting and I feel that it’s very important that I’m here learning about this major event but it’s a very harrowing experience.
12:30pm - The audio-guided tour ends at a 17-story stupa (dome-shaped building used as a Buddhist shrine). This stupa contains 9000 skulls of people killed at the Killing Fields and placards show the sex and age of the people who the skulls belonged to in addition to noting the weapon that caused cracks to the skulls.
12:45pm - We walk to the nearby museum which contains different artifacts and shows pictures of the leaders of the regime and the people killed in the genocide, including 9 foreigners.
1:30pm - Our tuk tuk driver has driven us back to Phnom Penh and drops us off at the Tuol Sleng (Hill of the Poisonous Trees) Genocide Museum. This museum is located in a former secondary school which became Prison 21 during the Khmer Rouge regime and where an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned.
The multi-story buildings contain the cell blocks, torture chambers, paintings by former inmate Vann Nath depicting scenes of torture, pictures of the torture chambers, and accounts of particular prisoners, including two who survived.
3pm - We head back to our hostel after an emotionally exhausting day.
3:30pm - We consider venturing out into Phnom Penh or relaxing in our hostel pool when it starts to rain really hard. Though it’s the rainy season in Asia, this is surprising as not only is this torrential rain, but I’ve barely had rain in both Thailand and Cambodia. The rain seems fitting with us our being worn out and we decide to hang out in the hostel bar and talk over the day. I’m happy when my travel-mates suggest a snap as my lack of sleep with interviewing starts to wear on me.
4:30pm - we spot the angry man talking to a staff member and it seems like he’s being told there have been complaints about him. His bed is made and his bag is gone so we wonder if he’s gone to a different room.
7:30pm - we’re back at the Italian place from the night before having a relaxing meal on our last night in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, and travelling together.
10pm - we’re packing our bags when the angry man comes back into the room. He stands still in front of us for a minute and then walks between us to get ready for bed. We look at each other and silently decide to come back later.
11pm - after getting some dessert at the bar, we go back to the room and finally go to sleep.
9 August
8:15am - I’m up early as I have a solo flight to Hong Kong while my travel companions are heading to southern Cambodia.
8:45am - I grab a mango smoothie and some breakfast at the bar and my travel-mates come to wish me goodbye. I call a grab and head to the airport.
10:15am - I arrive at the pretty empty airport, check-in, go through my security showing my Cambodia visa, and board my plane.
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