The Second Weekend Away. Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia and the city we all landed in before being taken to the orphanage in Takeo. Most of us go away for the weekend to explore it while doing our volunteer work. This weekend it's me, Ali, Laura, Will, Liza, and Johnny. Six of us. I'm a little apprehensive about having so many since I'm only used to being alone or with one other person. We board the bus and it's a long two hour ride. We bounce over the poorly paved rural roads as if we're on hydraulics, while Khmer pop music plays loudly over the speakers and the music video plays in a loop. At times the road is so bumpy you would swear the transmition is going to fall out. When we make it to Phnom Penh we are bombarded by a dozen tuk-tuk drivers yelling, "Tuk-tuk! Tuk-tuk!" Ali (on the far right in the photo) has been told that if we pay any more than two dollars to get to Mali's Guesthouse that we are being ripped off. She starts in on one driver who agrees to take us for two dollars. When we all pile in the drivers get angry because they apparently meant that we could split up into two tuk-tuks and then pay two dollars per tuk-tuk. He says if we are all gong in one, he is going to raise the price. When I hear this, I get pissed and start to aggressively reason with the guy about how it doesn't matter how many people are in one if it's all going to the same place it shouldn't cost any more. He gives me some bull excuse and we start in on a little yelling match. I tell him if he doesn't take us right this second that we'll all get out and find someone who will take us for two dollars. He continues to argue with me so I make the move to climb out of the tuk-tuk. "Okay! Okay! Two dollars!" He says. We weren't bluffing. Being a tourist can be exhausting since people look at you and decide you need to pay more because you're white. It's affectionately referred to as skin tax.
The following day we do the main tourist attractions in Phnom Penh. We go to the prison (S-21) where the Khmer Rouge held and tortured hundreds of civilians. As we arrive and pile out of the tuk-tuk I am standing face to face with an acid burned beggar. He's well known in front of S-21 because of his horrendous scars and his glazed eye. We are later told that acid attacks, where people surprise their victims and douse their faces with acid on the streets, are somewhat common in Cambodia. We are taken around the prison by a tour guide. The prison was once a school but the Khmer Rouge turned the classrooms into tiny holding cells and torture chambers where people were shackled to the floors and bed frames and starved almost to death. Our tour guide explains that only the final fourteen prisoners were killed on this very site because most were slaughtered at the killing fields. At the end she walks us over to a map of Cambodia and points out where her family members were each killed. Her daughter starved to death and her husband was shot in the killing fields. Photos of the starved deceased stretch across the rooms. A heap of clothing sits at one end of the room as an eerie reminder of many who were lost. It's an extremely grim scene, and one that none of us will forget.
We leave the prison only to see the the acid burned beggar once more. I've gotta hand it to him, the guy's got strategy.
Our tuk-tuk driver takes us to the killing fields next where we go into the small museum of children's clothing and some torture devices as well as a bit more information about the leader of the Khmer Rouge. The killing fields have holes in the grounds that were mass graves. The most bodies found in one grave was about four-hundred. Wooden signs next to a couple of trees reveal that they were used for Khmer Roughe soldiers to hold babies by the feet and smash their heads against the trunk to ensure death. The Magic Tree had speakers hanging from it to play music that masked the groans of the victims. By the end of this day we are sufficiently depressed. We head to lunch at a pizza place and later go out for dessert and drinks near our guesthouse. Will plays pool with a young child name Ravi who beats him and then insists will buy a book from him.
The following morning we pay six dollars to get into a museum that we are less than impressed with. Six dollars is a lot of money in Cambodia. We head to Central Market where we all split off from one another and make our various purchases.
On our last morning we go to a restaurant called Friends. It's a nice little restaurant where they take teenagers off the streets and teach them proper food service. We all love the food as well as the service. It's a bit more expensive than the food we usually eat here in Cambodia, but it's a small price to pay for the benefit of the kids it supports. We rush off to the bus to get back to the orphanage. Everyone is worried that we won't make it, but I assure them that everything always works out and that there is no need to worry. Plus, we all know now that Cambodians run about ten minutes behind on everything and we westerners are operating on normal clocks. We make it, just as I had promised. We take the bumpy ride back home and along the way our tire explodes with a loud bang. It takes about twenty-five minutes and three different stops at multiple rural shacks, for them to fix it. They don't have the proper equipment to fix a tire, so they attempt to fashion a huge piece of iron to loosen the bolts. Finally they replace the blown tire and we move on to Takeo. When we get back it's just as we had left it. Everyone stares at us for being white? CHECK! It's hotter than anywhere in Cambodia? CHECK! People yell "Hello!" constantly? Check! The homeless guy with shredded pants is still crouching on the sidewalk displaying his manhood? CHECK! Yep, this is Takeo.