Phnom Penh & Koh Rong - Cambodia

We arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia and were excited to stay directly next door to the Royal Palace and many of the major sites. Unfortunately, I got pretty sick, and we didn't end up doing much other than laying by the pool. Most of the tourist websites we read said that you really only need 2 days in Phnom Penh anyway, and that the sites, while interesting, aren't unmissable, so that made me feel a little better. 

The main place to visit in Phnom Penh is the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields, which is actually a collection of sites where about 2 million out of the total population of about 8 million people were killed in the 1970s by the Khmer Rouge regime. In order to save ammunition, the Khmer Rouge executed this genocide by using all manner of horrific tools to try to kill as many people as quickly as possible. That included children, whose heads were bashed against the trunks of trees before they were tossed in mass graves next to their parents. 

The actual site visit felt similar to visiting the Nazi concentration camps in Germany--sobering and sad, but an excellent reminder of what human beings are capable of doing to one another if hate is allowed to flourish, unchecked. An especially depressing fact is that bones and clothing still come to the surface at these sites when there are heavy rains. Signs instructed us to leave any bones and fragments we saw on the grounds, and that workers come and collect them periodically. We did see a lot of fragments, and it was hard to think about the human lives who were so cruelly killed and badly disrespected. We also visited the nearby Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which was a prison and execution center for the Khmer Rouge.

After Phnom Penh, we went Southwest to the coast, having decided to rest and reboot at an island called Koh Rong. We were very happy to land on the pure white sand beach and check into our hut on a strip of land that backed right into the edge of the wild jungle. The resort we stayed at is even more removed from the main town on Koh Rong, and there was only a tiny village nearby (subsisting almost entirely on the resort, it seemed).

We spent several days stretched on lounge chairs, reading by the beach. We also spent a totally unforgettable night snorkeling in the dark, swimming through the glowing plankton. The sky was pitch black except for the stars, and we swam in the bathtub-temperature water for about an hour, looking down to see our arms and legs disturbing plankton until they lit up like underwater fireflies. As Cindy mentioned to us on the phone, "You really feel like Tinkerbell!" and it's 100% true. Every toe point or leg swirl in the water seems to send out sparks!

We took a very wild ferry ride back to the mainland after five days of relaxation to head to one of Cambodia's best-known attractions--Angkor Wat.