After lunch

Later that day, I would take a visit to the Royal Palace near the riverfront in central Phnom Penh. While I'm jumping directly to this, I'm skipping what happened in a trip to the market right after lunch. This portion of the day merits it's own entry, and I want to save that for now since it deals with a bigger issue that would constantly rear it's head that week. After the market, I took a rest at the guest house for a couple of hours and went to the royal palace by foot at 5:00 that evening. I've discovered that I appreciate fine architecture and enjoy looking at different buildings, and this series of buildings didn't let me down.

The thing that immediately hit me about the palace was the grandiosity in the middle of extreme poverty. While I had started my day seeing filthy, third-world living conditions and desperate people, this place was a sanctuary. Compared with the pictures from the last blog, the obvious disparity in cleanliness, order, and prosperity is striking. The plants and greenery are meticulously manicured, and the buildings are impeccably cared for. There were few people here, and it was quiet. It was nice to get away from the complete disorder I had seen all day.

To the left is a miniature model of the mother of all temples: Angkor Wat. Imagine this architecture on a vast grand scale, where one could easily spend a day without scratching the surface. This is just a teaser of what I would witness Sunday. I won't talk about it yet, but thought this model would give food for thought. The pagoda in the background is pretty impressive in it's own right. I've been to the biggest and best palaces in Korea and none of them come close to the one's I saw this week, nor do they come close to the one's in Bangkok, for that matter. Honestly, compared to Thailand and Cambodia, the temples and palaces in Korea are quite underwhelming.
There are pretty cool pagodas around Korea--I saw many in Gyeongju--but none of them carry the grace and artistry of the pagodas in this region. Having said that, that's about all I could possibly say about pagodas other than: "Look at the picture... pretty neat, huh!". I would go back to the guest house after that and have dinner. After an early start and plenty of activity in stifling heat, I turned in pretty early that evening. I had to get on a bus to Siem Reap at 7am the following morning, and had little desire to go out on the town given the heavy nature of my day in Phnom Penh. I spent the evening chatting with some local expats at the guest house bar, but declined to hit the town that evening. The next morning, I checked out early and embarked on a 5 and 1/2 hour bus ride to Siem Reap.