Our Last Day in Cambodia

For Barb and Holly's last day in Cambodia, we decided we should finally get around to finishing our visit to the Silver Pagoda and Royal Palace.  We were supposed to go there on our first day, but that plan didn't work out so well, if you remember.  This time around, we planned better and actually made into the complex during open hours.  Neil decided to skip because he wasn't feeling well, so it will just have to remain a mystery to him.

Arriving right after everything reopened in the afternoon, we were rewarded with almost no other tourists around and great architecture.  There were so many beautiful buildings, it was hard to process it all.  The problem with the experience was the lack of information.  For being the chief tourist destination in the city and a source of national pride, there was little effort put into informing visitors.

The exhibits were no where close to American museum standards.  When a placard was available, it would say something vague like "Buddha figures."  Pieces that were centuries old were numbered with sharpie directly on the item.  Sections of the silver tile flooring in the Silver Pagoda (the namesake of the pagoda) were held together with tape.  TAPE!

At the end of the day though, there were plenty of pretty things to look at even if I didn't know what they were.  Here's a nice sampling:

The Throne Hall

Kinnara figure

Stupa Kantha Bopha

That evening we sent Barb and Holly off to the airport with our trusted driver, Mr. Guerilla.  Neil and I hopped on a bus to Vietnam the next morning.  Needless to say, it was an amazing two weeks seeing a great variety of what Cambodia has to offer.  We couldn't have been happier to spend that time with Barb and Holly in a country none of us had been to before.  We'll have memories (and thousands of pictures) to last us a lifetime.