Royal Palace

After the revelations of the morning at the Killing fields and S21 Genocide Museum, Erle said he was staying on the ship no Royal Palace visit for him, he said he would go for a walk around town on his own. But I was ready after lunch for another excursion with most of the others.
We went by rickshaw this time as the palace is not very far away, they must know that we need them as they are all waiting at the dock.
 When we got there first things we see are a number of crippled men in wheel chairs begging, some with out feet or legs I guess they are landmine victims. Our guide said please do not give them money or tomorrow another dozen or so will be here, so most of us refrained, but not all, some of the men were really pathetic.
There are also Monks in their bright orange robes, also begging kind of, we don't give to them either.
Even from the outside the Palace grounds are impressive, huge, there are about a million pigeons all over the place because it is against the law to kill them, messy things too.

Plenty of big impressive buildings inside the gates all with  tile roofs like we saw being made at the brick factory. There are many stupas of all different sizes and shapes, also very elaborately decorated inside  of them is a Kings body, these are their Royal tombs.





It is now extremely hot and muggy we are all quite uncomfortable but we keep on walking after the guide trying to listen, the Palace was built in 1866, most of the complex is open to the public except where the King actually lives. This is the man who was great mates with Pol Pot probably in league with him, after all masses of assets and money must have been left behind all the 2/ 3 million who were killed.




We go into a building to view his coronation garments, there were many more of them,  shouldn't have photographed this but I did, and the multi coloured dancing girls costumes, there were extravagant gifts and treasures covered in jewels and made of gold or silver.


 One building was even made of a great deal of silver including the floor, we were not allowed to tread on the silver floor we had to walk on soft mats but we saw it all.


There was monkeys running around not at all scared of people awaiting the opportunity to grab cameras phones or hand bags so we gave them a wide berth.

It seemed to get hotter and hotter mainly because there is a lot of concrete to reflect it back at us, and many of us were not feeling particularly well, there seems to be flu bugs going around - in hot temperatures like this, none of us expected it, there is also tummy bugs, but they are sort of expected.

 There were many more buildings of all kinds around.

We were all very keen to get back to our rickshaws, but first we went to look at the ancient Elephant house and grassy area exercise yard, no elephants left now days but there is a life size snow white elephant in the house, white of cause because the white elephants all belong to the King.





After a quick dash by rickshaw I couldn't wait to put on my bathing suit and jump into the ships swimming pool with Erle, it was lovely and refreshing.
Erle then suggested we go look at the markets he had stumbled upon during his walk, so out we went to wander around the market a little, didn't buy much, but we had a look. I then had a rest before dinner.
Our day was still not over, after a lovely dinner there were young children dancing and singing as entertainment, but I am afraid we were just too tired to be bothered, and went off to bed early.