First, let me say that our hotel view was lovely. We again found ourselves directly across the street from the Mekong River. We had great views of the boats on the river and the very busy street just below. We were in a very busy area of town. We travelled everywhere via TukTuk.
This is a closeup of one of the riverboats you can travel on to go up and down the Mekong. I think that might be the way to go.
Our first task was to visit the Cambodia Genocide Museum. This is one of the Khmer Rouge tourture sites that existed during the 1970's. Again, while I went in, knowing some history, I became ashamed by how much I didn't know about this aspect. Absolutely no pictures are allowed, so I have none to share. It was a very moving and emotional experience. Here is the website information.
S21 Victims - The Killing Fields Museum of Cambodia
www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/s21-victims.html.
While the grandsons were with us, on this somber visit, we spilt them up and managed to shield them from anything but just basic info about the structure. And then as a reward for being patient and quiet there, we found two different kid friendly activities in Phenom Pehn to do.
One was call The Kid Zone. It is a place full of different physical activities. You pay for which ones you want to do and for how long. It was great. Very well supervised by young attendents. The boys chose race cars and rock wall climbing.
The second kid activity was fun for us all. We went to the 4D presentation of The Finest Hours.
It was quite the full experience. The movie was in English with Cambodian sub titles. This was a movie about ships, New England storms, boat sinkings and rescue during a storm. A 4-D presentation means your seat rumbles, rocks, rolls and generally pitches you around. You get wind and mist blown in your face. The whole idea is to experience the movie as if you were on the ship or in the big storm. Very effective! Everyone had fun and no one got seasick.
We had some good dining experiences in this town. However, you know that annoying habit of waiters that we have all experienced where in their effort to impress us, they take our order by memory ... And then get it wrong, instead of just writing it down. Welł, add another complication to that trick - when the wait staff doesn't understand much English. We did have several wrong orders or actual "no shows" on orders.
Once again we met ex-pat Americans who had great restaurants.
We also actually found a Mexican food place. Food was ok. They were out of Margaritas. Obviously this one wasn't run by a Texas ex-pat! They did have decent taco ships, however. But nothing like Alamo Cafe or Mama Margies back home. Can you tell what I will be eating upon my return home?
Have I mentioned how many times we ate pizza on this trip? It is what you do when you travel with young kids.
So.... This was it. Time to say goodbye to Jenny and the family. No matter how much time you have been together and how much fun you have had, this is always hard. When you give birth and raise those kids, it never occurs to you that someday they may be so far away.
We all piled in a big Taxi and made our way to the airport and here we spilt. lots of hugging and a few tears and the noisy crew headed off back to Laos. We went to our Bangkok Airlines and headed back to Bangkok.
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