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The capital of Cambodia is friendly, welcoming and manageable! The traffic is light and the people cool! There is an excellent national museum which explains so much about the Khmer society that thrived in cambodia between 800-1200AD. The complexity and extent of this society is unbelievable and rivals anything else in asia at the time (with perhaps the exception of the china and india). During this time they built huge temple complexes like Siam Reap.
Not such a pleasant historical reminder are the 2 museums devoted to the attrocities of the Khmer Rouge during the 70s and beyond. Destablised by the US bombing of Cambodia in 1974 and 1975 (the US was basically bombing anywhere that communists could be - retards), the already pretty pathetic government fell to the Khmer Rouge, who at the time were little more than uneducated teenagers from the rural areas in the east of cambodia given guns and a sense of importance. This teenage army entered the capital and catapolted Pol Pot, a paris educated idiot with some half baked communist ideas to power. He then spent the next 5 years running the country into the ground and in order to suppress descent he split up familys, outlored literally everything and then went about executing or intentionally starving 20% of the population. When it comes to bad people to run counrties, POl Pot truely rules. He even gives Ide Armine and Robert Magabe runs for their money! A city centre museum called S21 was once a tourture and execution centre. The killing fields are pretty much as the name suggests. While both were harrowing, the pictures of the faces of the victems of S21 were the most haunting. The victems often being very young.
More cheerful though was Khmer New year, which I spent in a rural village 1 hour outsde Phnom Pehn. I was staying with a friend that I met at the guest house I was staying in and he very kindly put me up for a night. There were celbrations and food (including ant soup) throughout the day and big celbration at the village temple at night. Many people came from the village to do traditional Khmer dancing, which is both boring and difficult, and western dancing which was better. Khmer dancing involves walking round in a circle very slowly while imagining you have 2 tiny symbols in your hands. It is also normally accompanied by people telling you that you're doing it wrong!The next day I was very glad to get back to running water and a KFC!
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