Currently back home!
During the day I went for a wander to the Central Market. This yellow Art Deco building was built in the 1930s and has an interesting central dome with 4 halls branching out from it, with stalls selling all kinds of stuff.
In the evening we went to the night market which is near the Tonle Sap River in the city. Here we had some cheap food which the kids enjoyed.
Today we went to Wat Phnom. It is a temple on the top of the only hill in town. The hill is man made.
We saw Buddhas and we walked around the top, taking lots of photos.
Spooky happenings today!
I returned from my day with Speech Therapy Cambodia to be greeted by mysterious messages on the door and darkness, punctuated by strange shrieking sounds… On entering the flat I was accosted by these scary monsters!
Sam and Martha had also decorated the flat and written some very brilliant Halloween stories for their English work that day.
Today was the Cambodian King’s Coronation Day. This day commemorates the anniversary of the coronation of King Norodom Sihamoni in 2004.
We went to his Palace and it had lots of silver and gold. The palace was beautiful and there were lots of colourful buildings.
We also saw something that looked like the Bayeux Tapestry.
(One for the adults)
The Tuol Sleng Museum used to be a secondary school but in 1975 it was converted into a prison and interrogation centre by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. They renamed it “S.21” (Security office 21).
The classrooms on the ground and first floors were divided into individual cells. The rooms on the second floor were used for mass detention.
Thousands of victims (peasants, workers, technicians, engineers, doctors, teachers, students, buddhist monks, ministers, Pol Pot’s Cadres, soldiers of all ranks, foreigners and more) were imprisoned, tortured and killed, along with their wives and children.
I had the afternoon to walk around and listen to an audio guide of the various rooms and exhibits and stories. It was very heavy going but definitely a worthwhile experience.
Angela was able to go a few days later as we didn’t think it was appropriate for Sam and Martha to experience it at their age so we both went separately.
The story of the prison in a dark period in Cambodia’s history has to be told and one that we will never forget.
Today we left Chau Doc took a boat to Cambodia!
We were picked up from our hotel by cycle tuktuk to take us to the river where we caught our speed boat.
It was a fairly short journey to the border post where we first had to go through the Vietnamese border controls, then back on the boat for 5 minutes and then through the Cambodian border controls.
It sounds quick but all in all it took a couple of hours to get through.
Following this we spent another couple of hours on the boat until we reached Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.
I wasn’t well that day and it was a bit of an ordeal for me, though I think the others quite liked the experience.
It was noticeably hotter when we got onto dry land and we had to drag our luggage up a long pier following a taxi man who had our biggest case – “follow that man Sam” I said!
It was lovely to finally reach our first stop, the Blue Corner Hotel.
We left our lovely guest house in Cần Thơ on the 17th October and took a 3 hour bus journey to our next destination – Châu Đốc which is near the border with Cambodia.
We stayed in Châu Đốc for a week to recharge and catch up on some school work. We didn’t venture far during our time there – we just mooched around town visiting the local market, cafes and restaurants, and the riverside where there were exercise machines for the kids to play on.
We made friends with some ladies from a local tour agency who wanted to improve their English so we chatted with them and let them photocopy Martha’s English textbooks!
They organised our visit to Sam Mountain to visit the Hang Pagoda and the Tra Su Bird Sanctuary for a day which we all enjoyed.
Hang Pagoda (or Chùa Hang, or Cave Pagoda) on Sam Mountain is a Buddhist temple and is reached by climbing a few hundred steps up. There were some great views of the surrounding countryside of the Mekong Delta when we got to the top.
There were several levels to explore, as well as a network of tunnels deep within the mountain with various rooms and places to worship.
In the afternoon we went to Tra Su forest which contains cajaput trees and flooded mangroves and areas turned green by water ferns during the rainy season.
We took a boat trip through the flooded forest along narrow channels, which the kids enjoyed, and then climbed a watchtower to get a view above the forest canopy.
