Amazing day today! I started out early by heading off to the old Royal Palace. It was very cool and just as shiny and grand as I remember. Inside the compound there are several buildings and a few temples that were used by the royal family and in the affairs of court. There is also a wraparound mural that is several hundred feet long and, despite its state of decomposition, is actually really cool to walk along and look at. The Royal Palace seems to be a big hit on the tourist circuit. I looked back at my old photographs and memories from my visit about ten years ago and there was absolutely no other tourists around except for a few monks. This time there were hordes…wait is that offensive… of Chinese tour groups. It was almost as impressive a transformation as the palace itself.

Next stop was the National Museum which has a number of great holdings from around Cambodia. It also does a great job displaying the contemporary nationalist narrative of the Cambodian nation through semi-outrageous maps and historical claims. I also found out that the museum building itself is a UN World Heritage Site. Pretty fancy, eh?

After my morning out, I met up with my friend Jessica from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. She is here studying Khmer and doing research for her M.A. thesis on Cambodian film in the 1950s and 1960s. She has been living here for several weeks, so I totally leaned on her local, and linguistic, knowledge. We walked around the city for several hours eating local street foods, finding a currency exchange, and generally having an awesome time.

One particular highlight was our visit to Olympic Stadium, a large public space created for sports and recreation in the 1950s (or 1960s maybe?). As we climbed to the top of the stadium, a massive rain and thunderstorm broke out and we had to run around to a covered food area with all the other locals. We spent about forty-five minutes under a concrete roof looking out at the city as rain poured around us. It was great fun and we used the time to eat ice cream, drink orange drink, and sample pressed sugarcane juice. After the rain stopped there was a great rainbow that stretched in a high arch above the stadium. It was pretty fantastic.

I finished the night off with some delicious and cheap southern Indian food. I find that tall food is often more delicious, and this dosa lived up to that claim! Yummm!