Phnom Penh - Cambodia

After a slightly longer border control to Cambodia (unfortunately we didn't have any Vietnamese Dong left to bribe like the others, so we had to wait until everyone in front of us was done 🙃), we finally arrived at our hostel. Jule (Emilie's former roommate) was already waiting for us, who will join us for the next four weeks. We were very happy to see her! After check-in, we went straight into the city as we were very hungry. On the roadside, we bought rice noodles with a yellow, very delicious sauce from a nice lady. We explored the city a bit and bought a mix of unknown vegetables & fruits along the way, which you dip into a spicy powder. It tasted better or worse, we probably won't try it again. In the evening, we strolled through a market and ate shrimp and vegetarian rice with vegetables specially prepared for Anna in a local restaurant (the nice waitress was really very attentive and kind!).

We spent the evening comfortably, as we were all very exhausted from the journey. Even though the pub crawl of the party hostel sounded very tempting.

The next morning, we took a day tour to the former prison camp in Phnom Penh and the so-called "killing fields". Accordingly, the mood was rather sad after this very intense and vivid confrontation with Cambodian history. How cruel can people be and why do such terrible acts repeat themselves over and over again?!

During the genocide that the "Khmer Rouge" carried out against the population of Cambodia, 2 million out of 8 million inhabitants died. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge aimed to create a communist Cambodia and tried to enforce this through complete expropriation and utopian agriculture. But unfortunately, it was not possible to cultivate the amount of rice that the Pol Pot regime wanted. In the S21 prison, an estimated 18,000 people were tortured, imprisoned and killed in the worst possible way. These were potential opponents of the regime and their families (including children!!), and they pursued the motto "better one innocent too many than one enemy too few"... Many of the prisoners were then driven to the killing fields and killed there. This is really a very intense story and we simply didn't know about it...

After a short break at the hostel, we set off again to explore the city, visited a huge market, and had dinner at the night market.

We went back to the hostel because we were expecting Jule's friend Pauli, who is currently on a world trip and happens to be in Cambodia at the same time as us. The four of us will spend the next few days together. That evening, we went to a drag queen show and then to a club. We had a lot of fun and it was a funny evening that lasted longer than planned.