In jogja we celebrated the successful motorbike trip and gave rest to our sensitive, worn out butts. 2,5 days later, following a spontaneous decision I took a flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Cambodia is an extremely expensive county. A good meal on a the streets is 2,5 dollars,  in a restaurant prices start from 5.  A ten kilometers long grab (motorbike uber) ride is 5. Crazy.
Prices are higher than in Indonesia, living standards are lower. The motorbikes are older and cheaper, the middle class is weaker. The rich like to drive insanely huge brand new american pick-up trucks.
Almost everyone knows a bit of English. Quite many expats, digital nomads live in Phnom Penh; the visa is easy to get, is cheap including beer and weed is easily accessible.

A market outside Phnom Penh. All sort of creatures are grilled and sold.

Then happily consumed by noisy groups on bamboo constructions above the river

A tarantula

Phnom penh street
They build ugly concrete district in the center, Chinese influence and investments everywhere.

The main tourist attratcions in Phnom Penh are the royal palace and boulevard by the river Mekong. Them the two memorial sites in Phnom Penh about the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge. They are well made, depressive and informative.

From Wikipedia:

The Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured and eventually executed anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed "enemies",^[48] including the following:

• People with connections to former Cambodian governments, either those of the Khmer Republic or the Sangkum, to the Khmer Republic military, or to foreign governments.
• Professionals and intellectuals, including almost everyone with an education and people who understood a foreign language. Many artists, including musicians, writers, and filmmakers were executed including Ros Serey Sothea, Pan Ron and Sinn Sisamouth.
• Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai and other minorities in the Eastern Highlands, Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic and the Catholic Church in general), Muslims and senior Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden (ḥarām). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.
• "Economic saboteurs" as many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage due to their lack of agricultural ability.
• Party cadres who had fallen under political suspicion: the regime tortured and executed thousands of party members,^[94] including senior figures such as Hu Nim.

The Khmer Rouge established over 150 prisons for political opponents, of which Tuol Sleng, a prison holding purged Party cadres and their families,^[94] is the best known.^[95] According to Ben Kiernan, "all but seven of the twenty thousand Tuol Sleng prisoners" were executed.^[96]Examples of the Khmer Rouge torture methods can be seen at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum occupies the former grounds of a high school turned prison camp that was operated by Khang Khek Ieu, more commonly known as Comrade Duch, together with his subordinates Mam Nai and Tang Sin Hean. The buildings of Tuol Sleng have been preserved as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. Several of the rooms are now lined with thousands of black-and-white photographs of prisoners that were taken by the Khmer Rouge.^[97]

On 7 August 2014, when announcing convictions and handing down life sentences for two former Khmer Rouge leaders, Cambodian judge Nil Nonn said there were evidences of "a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Cambodia". He said the leaders, Nuon Chea, the regime's chief ideologue and former deputy to late leader Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, together in a "joint criminal enterprise" were involved in murder, extermination, political persecution and other inhumane acts related to the mass eviction of city-dwellers, and executions of enemy soldiers.^[98]

Number of deaths[edit]

Modern research has located 20,000 mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia. Various studies have estimated the death toll at between 740,000 and 3,000,000, most commonly between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest from starvation and disease.^[99]

The Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University estimates the number of deaths at approximately 1.7 million (21% of the population of the country).^[100] A United Nationsinvestigation reported 2–3 million dead while UNICEF estimates that 3 million had been killed.^[101] Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed^[102] while Marek Sliwinski estimates that 1.8 million is a conservative figure.^[103] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching grave sites, he concluded that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution".^[99]

An additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy.^[104]

Have a nice day!