PHNOM PENH SHORT STAY

Welcome to Phnom Penh! Your tour begins when you are warmly welcomed by your — we’ll get you to your hotel, home for the next two nights. Tonight we’ll take dinner at a local restaurant. (D)

After breakfast at hotel, our tour guide will lead you to the deeply moving Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. In 1975 Tuol Svay Prey High School was taken over by Pol Pot’s security forces and turned into a prison known as Security Prison 21 (S-21). It soon became the largest such center of detention and torture in the country. More than 17,000 people held at S-21 were taken to the extermination camp at Choeung Ek to be executed; detainees who died during torture were buried in mass graves in the prison ground. The museum displays include room after room of these photographs of men, women and children covering the walls from floor to ceiling; virtually all the people pictured were later killed. From the museum, we’ll continue to Choeung Ek the site of a former orchard and mass grave of victims of the Khmer Rouge killed between 1975 and 1979. 17 km south of Phnom Penh, this is the best-known of the sites known as The Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge regime executed over one million people. Many of the dead were former political prisoners who were kept by the Khmer Rouge in their Tuol Sleng detention center. After a chance to rest and reflect, we’ll visit the Independence Monument and the National Museum, also called Musee des Beaux-Arts. Designed in Khmer style by French archaeologist and painter, Georges Groslier, the museum contains a collection of Khmer from throughout the ages. We’ll also visit the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda. Located within the grounds of the Royal Palace, it is so named because of its floor, which is made up of 5,000 silver tiles. The treasures found inside include a solid gold Buddha encrusted and weighing 90 kilograms and a 17th century Buddha of emerald and crystal. Your afternoon will draw to a close with a visit to the city’s namesake, Wat Phnom. Founded in 1373, this pagoda was built to house Buddhist relics washed ashore by the river. (B, L)

Your final day starts with breakfast at the hotel – we’ll get you to the airport for your departing flight…. (B)