Oct 27- Phnom Penh - palaces, pagodos and Killing Fields

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, is a bewildering contradiction of impressions. I awoke this morning with the image of Munch's The Scream imprinted on my retina. The souls of millions of people murdered during the genocide of Khmer Rouge are screaming. It was not a comfortable awakening.

No-one else seemed bothered though and we viewed both the Royal Palace with the Silver Pagoda,

 [...we saw Buddhist monks on the phone, on motorcycles, and on vacation...]

 [Bibi, caught...]

 [Acres of  these wall paintings, mercifully unrestored, had beautiful colours and interspersed text]

and the National Museum in the morning. The Silver Pagoda, where the floor is made of silver, each of 5000 tiles weighing 1 kg, houses an incredible Buddha made of gold, 90 kg of it, studded with 9,584 diamonds in the chakra spots. No photos allowed unfortunately. I ignored the 100's of other antiques and artifacts on display....there is simply too much to take in. Much the same happened in the National Museum. Guides are anxious to display their knowledge of history and English, so I wander off to stare at one of the 1000's of sculptures.

This one, outside in the garden, symbolizes the city of Phnom Penh for me, the destruction and the hope.

Phnom Penh, a city struggling to catch up to the rest of the world, has a charming downtown diplomatic and residential section, vestiges of the French regime, and great shopping in several markets geared to the monied.   It also has young men on every street corner, indication of the  65% unemployment, and unfinished apartment buildings inhabited  by squatters.

Traffic is chaotic...not only does everyone- carefully- drive wherever they want, they also drive in the (even for here) wrong direction.

We spent the afternoon in a tuktuk, Bibi and I, opting to go shopping for silk at the Russian Market instead of seeing the Killing Fields.

Observing Cambodian life from the back of a tuktuk is possibly the most efficient way of seeing the city, if you can deal with the erratic traffic. In all of Asia we have not seen a single traffic accident.
Everything is very inexpensive here according to what we have seen elsewhere. Massages are advertised at $4. US haircuts at 75 cents. ATM's are everywhere and spew US cash which is accepted widely. On the other hand, there are not a lot of people here spending money.

Here is our bus, captured in a helmet...