This morning, we visited the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda. The ticket seller wouldn't admit me because I am sleeveless. Stretching my bandana around my shoulders didn't suffice, so I had to buy the 3 dollar t-shirt they were selling, in order to get in. One of the main attractions is the silver pagoda, where the floor is made of silver - 5329 tiles of silver flooring. The whole palace complex of about 18 structures is contained within a tall yellow wall and all of the buildings are tones of yellow, orange and cream. Surprisingly, the palace was relatively recently constructed - in 1917.
The downtown area focuses on the riverfront - a big open plaza in front of the palace. There are market stalls and a festive feel. The riverfront is at the confluence of the Mekong and two other rivers (anyone who lived through the Vietnam War era has Mekong Delta pounded into their brain from news reports).
There are a number of classic French buildings and avenues which recall the French colonial period. There are also endless streets of cramped jumbled housing. Along the sides of the city streets, people sit, eat, sell firewood and all kinds of food. The traffic is chaotic. Mopeds dart out of every alley where ever you look or don't look. There are phalaxes of mopeds racing forward at every change of the traffic light.
We visited S-21 Tuol Sleng Prison. This is now a museum, but before 1975 it was a high school. When the Khmer Rouge came to power and began a systematic prosecution of the democratic leaders, they used this former school buiding to detain, interrogate and torture prisoners. At least 5,000 people were tortured and killed after they signed confession documents. Artifacts of the gruesome methods and procedures remain. It's particularly eerie to wander the halls and rooms because the buiding is very much set up as a school. You can imagine students strolling the grounds. The museum brochure is a single sheet of paper and awkwardly translated, but the message is particularly powerful in their own words: "...it is a compulsoriness to preserve this place as an Achieves, Evidences. In order to keep in mind about all the oppression and exploitation of 'Khmer Rouge' regime. If we do not emerge the anger, do not remind this cruelty and inhumanity regime, this state will be fade away in our exhilaration". So true -- and eerily like the Jews say, "Remember the 6 Million".