Phnom Penh

Friday we started the day at the Royal Palace.  The Royal Palace was closed as the King was in residence.  Fred thought with his status as Reeve he might be allowed to visit the King for  an early morning tea, however no such luck.  We always wonder at the influential people living in such grand residences when the majority of the people live in poverty in these countries.
We did get to walk around parts of the gardens seeing the Silver Pagoda which is very extravagant.  The floor is covered with 5 tons of silver, there is a Crystal Buddha sitting on a pedestal near the entrance, and a life-sized gold Buddha weighing 90 kg with about 2000 diamonds (the largest diamond weighing 25 carats).  Unbelievable beauty.  There was no photography allowed in there, so we have no pictures.
From here it was quite a ride out to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek but very much worth it.  We had headphones to tell us the story of the genicide.  We found it hard to believe that something like this only happened 35 years ago.
There were 129 mass graves found here and approx. 17000 men, women& children executed by the Khmer Rouge between mid 1975 and Dec. 1978.  The human bones and skulls were excavated in 1980 and housed in a huge white stupa at the entrance way.  The remaining bones and skulls will remain buried.  By the evidence on the skulls, the people were bludgeoned to death so as not to waste precious bullets.  The people killed were the educated people and their families.  The whole family was killed so that no one would miss them.  Can you imagine the set back for a country to loose all its intelligence?  This was only 1 of 300 Killing Fields in Cambodia.  Such a sad and eerie place.  Can't understand how someone could do this horrible act of torture to your own countrymen.

Next we were off to the airport to head back to Thailand.  We arrived in Phuket at our hotel at 11:30 pm and told we would be leaving for Krabi at 7:00am next morning.