WE MADE IT. What a relief and huge blessing it was to arrive in Cambodia on time and with all our luggage. Srsly, #blessed. Our flight arrived around 11 pm in Cambodia, which is two hours difference from South Korea and 13 hours ahead of Kansas. We made it through customs and immigration with no problems and soon we were out the door, meeting our driver to take us to our hotel. And let me tell you, this was the kind of weather we prepared for. It was very humid and muggy. But we were all so thankful to be in Cambodia! We were dropped off at our hotel (which is amazing) and were soon sound asleep.
This morning we woke up, went and ate breakfast (which was amazing), and started on our days adventures. Today was jam packed with lots of things to do. The first thing on the agenda was to visit the Kings palace. This wasn't like the palace we visited in Korea, this was the real deal. This is where the king currently lives and it was much more extravagant than the other one. Oh man, it was absolutely gorgeous. I can't explain it so here are some pictures.
This is the temple on the king's grounds. 90% of the Khmer (Cambodian) people are Buddist, 5% Christian, 4% Muslim, and the other 1% is a mixture of everything else. The king was a monk for only a year and during this time people would bring him Buddha statues of all different kinds. The place was packed with them. People today still come to worship in this temple. When we were inside several people came and worshipped. It was very interesting to see and definitely nothing I had ever experienced before. There were also no cameras allowed inside so I sadly could not take any pictures.
This is called a Stuppa. There are many of them around Cambodia. They keep ashes of the dead in them. In this particular one, the king's father's ashes are held. There was such detail in every single thing. It was absolutely amazing.
After this we visited the killing grounds. This is where many people were killed during the genocide in Cambodia. (An event much like the Holocaust). They had tons of these killing grounds around the country. This genocide took place in the 1970s and 80s.The tour took us to many places around the grounds. One place was the mass graves where people were buried.
We heard a lot of heart breaking stories. They also had a massive Stuppa here which held bones they found when uncovering the graves. This is the view outside the Stuppa.
This is the view inside:
The keep all the uncovered bones in this building. Most of them are skulls but there are also jars of teeth and other bones (like legs and arms). It took us about an hour and a half to tour the whole place. It was very very interesting to hear about.
After this we went to lunch. It wasn't anything extremely extravagant. I had chicken cashew meal. It was very good though. We then left and toured another place where they imprisoned people during the genocide. There were only a couple survivors and we were able to meet them. Here's my grandma with them.
We were actually able to see where the first man was held captive during his time here. It was a very small cell. They would put their legs in shackles so they couldn't move anywhere.
You'd think we would be done after this but no, there's more! We had the amazing opportunity to take a sunset boat ride on the river. It was a beautiful night.
There were a lot of other boats on the river too. We saw a lot of ones that look like this:
Oops sorry about the plant in the way. These are boats that people live on. They catch fish for a living, sell them at the market, and live on their boat full time.
Today was crazy but we were able to see so many beautiful things and learn a lot. Tomorrow we head to another city in Cambodia: Seim Reap. We're taking a plane but it's only 45 minutes. We'll spend the next couple of days there, then come back to Phenom Pehn. Excited to see what the rest of the trip holds!
••Lauren••
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