13 Feb - We woke up to a beautiful, clear blue Cambodian morning. After another cold shower, we got up and sat out on the hotel verrandah for breakfast. Phnom Penh is actually a beautiful city, and has a lovely feel to it. Although the south of Vietnam was interesting, we were quite happy to be out of the madness, and away from the package tours! After wolfing down some coffee and baguettes, we crossed the road to the Royal palace, and spent a few hours wandering around the buildings.

The Royal palace was started in the 19th century, and is an amazing collection of buildings built on about fifty acres of prime riverfront property on the west of the Mekong. Part of the area (the Khemarin Palace) is off limits to visitors, and the King lives & works here. While we were there, several diplomatic motorcades pulled in to drop off dignataries. This areas is surrounded by a short wall, but the rest of the gardens and buildings, including the official throne room, is accessible to the public.

We started off in the main throne room, which is built to a huge scale. Cambodian architecture is pretty interesting - with loads of attention given to symmetry and also embellishments of the roof & columns. We then walked around the gardens for a bit before heading into the enclosure of the Silver pagoda. The pagoda complex is encircled by a wall, covered in murals depicting Hindu scenes from the Reamker (the epic of Rama) - the frescoes are amazingly detailed and cover the full 500m interior perimeter of the surrounding wall. The pagoda itself is a specatacular bit of engineering, and the interior is incredibly ornate. The floor tiles are all engraved silver plate - there are around five thousand of them, adding up to over five tonnes of metal across the whole floor. The pagoda is still very much an active temple, and there's a whole range of gem encrusted altars and artifacts lining the wall. The only thing that slightly dampened the effect was that a load of old carpets had been rolled across the tiles in walking areas to prevent damage ... I think they're only removed for special ceremonies.

There was an exhibition we had to walk through on the way out, showing details of the new King Sihamoni's coronation. The royal family is held in pretty high regard here, and King Sihanouk (who abdicated in 2004) seems to have a particularly special place in the affections of the Cambodian people. Although he was deposed before the Khmer Rouge came to power by Non Lol, and lent some unintentional legitimacy to Pol Pot while trying to rule from exile, he returned after the overthrow of the KR, and seems to have carved out a modern monarchy for which works in the same way as it does in Thailand.

After the pagoda, we walked around the corner to the National Museum. The focus of displays, as you would expect, is mainly sculpture from the Angkorian empire, although there is some more recent stuff which was also interesting. The museum grounds are beautiful - it's a huge red building with a leafy courtyard and cool ponds. It seemed as though a lot of the visitors had just come to sit in the sun, read a book and relax. Unfortunately there are many of the exhibits that you're not allowed to photograph, but some of the carved stone statues are amazing, and there's meant to be a large underground bunker with something like a hundred times as much stonewark - large or special pieces removed from the more remote temples to prevent looting. We wandered around for an hour or so, then headed to the bank to get some cash and went to the FCC (Foreign Correspondent's Club) for lunch. This is an old colonial building on the river that's been converted into a bar & hotel (only four rooms, though!) and had amazing views. I had the Beef Loc Lac again, and here's a recipe, because it's definately worth trying! <http://www.chow.com/recipes/10093>

After lunch we had a quick shower - having probably walked about ten kilometers in the morning. Jet had been round to our hotel, and left us a note to meet up for dinner. We only had one more night in the captial, so we arranged a tuk-tuk driver for the afternoon, and set off for two places everyone has to see in Phnom Penh, but no-one really wants to - Tuol Sleng prison, and the killing fields of Choung Ek.