Happy New Year and start to 2023! We both woke up this morning feeling a little worse for wear after last night's celebrations, perhaps, but nothing too major. Onward and forwards, as they say.

After breakfast, we set out to visit one of the most difficult and yet important places here in Cambodia: The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, commemorating the mass murder of an estimated 2 million people during the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime, nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population.

Housed in the infamous former S21 prison, the Genocide Museum documents, with brutal and painful transparency, the systematic destruction of society and imprisonment and torture of anyone considered an "enemy" of the regime: Doctors, scientists, intellectuals, artists, engineers, city people, those suspected of working with the former regime, anyone who spoke another language, or even anyone who wore glasses. People were rounded up, imprisoned, and horrifically beaten to extract the most insane confessions, which people generally gave without understanding what they were saying. With the Khmer Rouge's obsession of wiping the slate "clean" and ensuring nobody would ever want to take revenge, their entire families were murdered as well.

Human beings have a seemingly limitless capacity to commit atrocities on a large scale towards one another. Those of us who grew up learning about the Holocaust and hearing "Never Again" missed the point: These things have been happening and keep on happening again and again, as we fail to learn from history. What's striking when you visit this place -- one of hundreds of similar prisons and torture centres from the time period -- is how the banal bureaucracy of death is so similar among the perpetrators of so many genocides. The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazis, dehumanized their victims, tortured them, and manically documented everything.

As a result, going through the museum and following the audio guide, room after room, cell after cell, there were panels of faces. Faces of the prisoners photographed when they arrived at S21 and were processed. Faces of those known to have died there. Faces of those whose names are unknown. It's a deliberately unsettling exhibit to force those of us there to remember the human beings behind the stories, that each of them had a face and a story.

Pol Pot's regime was propped up by the US due to its war against the Vietnamese regime. It's a chapter in Cambodian history that few people have ever answered for, and that the country is still mourning and grappling with today. Anyone older than 50 today lived through and probably has memories of this time period, making it still very fresh in the collective mindset. It's hard to reconcile that with the modern-day Phnom Penh just outside the barbed wire gates; exiting the museum onto a street filled with cafes, shops, hair salons, and motorbikes felt almost jarring.

Visiting S21 and the Genocide Museum isn't a fun experience by any means. But, as with touring the Nazi death camps in Europe, or the memorials of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey (still unacknowledged), the Rwandan Genocide, and so many others we've failed to prevent, it felt important to bear witness. We didn't feel right about coming to Cambodia and editing out this important chapter of its recent history.

After that, Ryan and I needed to clear our heads a bit. We walked over to a chocolate shop that sells locally produced bean-to-bar chocolate here in Cambodia, but we found the gate closed. Another confused tourist was also standing out front, since the website indicated they ought to be open. But a quick message to the company on Whatsapp confirmed they were closed today for New Year's. Oh well.

Just across the street, we found a lovely little outdoor garden restaurant with a farm-to-table concept. They had a tractor out front for kids to play on, and a couple of roosters walking around making noise. The latter seemed a bit garish, considering they serve chicken on the menu. But hey. Ryan ordered a positively enormous quesadilla and I got some coconut crusted chicken, and we ordered a pot of tea and just enjoyed hiding out from the heat.

After that, we went back to the hotel for a bit of a siesta and a nap, as we were both pretty tired from last night, and still feeling not 100%. Siesta schedule is a wonderful thing; I wish I could maintain it back home, but I doubt my boss would appreciate me taking a nap between 2 and 4 every day. Too bad.

Mid-afternoon, we hailed a tuk-tuk on Grab (great system!) to the Royal Palace. It being Sunday, the palace park was packed with people, including lots of locals and families, street vendors, flower vendors, kids blowing bubbles, you name it. I'm not sure if it was this packed because it was New Year's Day, or if there was some sort of festival going on at the waterfront, or if it's like this every weekend. But it was certainly hopping around the Palace area.

We found the entrance and paid for our tickets, and spent the next hour or so wandering around the palace grounds. The Cambodian Royal Palace is much less lavish than the one in Thailand, and is a far more modern construction. Large sections of the complex were closed off entirely to the public, and the parts that were open were generally only accessible from the outside. So it wasn't necessarily as impressive, but it was still uniquely Cambodian and pretty cool to see.

The main crowds were around the Silver Pagoda to see the Emerald Buddha, yep, there's another emerald Buddha here (by my count we're up to 3 or 4 including the replica in Chiang Mai). There's also a small-scale model of Angkor Wat outside the complex. And a museum section that shows royal family photos, local ceremonial outfits, weaponry, even chairs. The Cambodian King seems fairly low-key; they have an elected monarchy here, and when he ascended to power in 2004 after his father abdicated, he insisted on making it a low-key affair, not wanting the poor country to spend too much money on royalty. Unlike in Thailand where the Royal Family maintains serious status and power, the Cambodian monarchy seems mostly symbolic, and the King has stated the desire to be a man of the people. Refreshing.

After leaving the palace, we walked slowly along the riverfront promenade, up as far as the Night Market area. The market itself seemed pretty low-key, with a number of clothing stalls set up selling mostly items appealing to locals, and a small food court area with mats out to sit on the floor and order from the surrounding stalls.

None of it seemed all that appealing to us, so we just gave it a glance and then started walking around to find a restaurant for dinner. At first, we saw a busy street and thought we'd found a restaurant and bar area, which we sorta did... only they weren't the type of places selling food, if you get my drift. Yep, we'd found Phnom Penh's red light district. Since neither of us was particularly in the market for a girly bar, we spent a few minutes being amused at the creative names of the establishments before moving on.

Back towards the riverfront, we found a nice little Thai and Cambodian food restaurant and decided to get a table out front. Ryan ordered a vegetable curry and I had the amok, the Cambodian national dish. Traditionally it's made with fish and coconut and wrapped in banana leaf. I ordered the chicken version, which seemed a bit differently made. Still good though. We washed it down with an Angkor Beer.

After that, we were both feeling pretty tired and still a bit under the weather. We have a very early start tomorrow, so we headed back to the hotel to make it an early night. But not without another detour by the Royal Palace to see it all lit up at night. Just beautiful.

So Phnom Penh has been a bit of a mixed bag. It's an interesting, busy, trendy city, very happening, with lots to see and do. The food is good and the people have been lovely. I didn't expect it to be quite so bustling.

On the other hand, it's a hazy smoggy city, packed with traffic, motorbikes driving every which way on the sidewalks, and nearly impossible to walk in due to lack of a pedestrian infrastructure. The extreme wealth gap between rich and poor is very evident here.

I've noticed that Phnom Penh seems to have the opposite problem as we do back home, with our pandemic-induced labour shortage across the service industry. Here, there's clearly a labour surplus, probably partially pandemic-induced (tourism we reportedly up over 900% in 2022 versus 2021, but is still far below pre-pandemic levels and it shows), and part of it is probably because of the big economic disparity between locals and tourists. Every place we go seems to have an excess of staff, with five or six people doing one job or just standing around, people escorting us to our rooms, to our tables at restaurants, and even to an ATM at the bank. Unlike Bangkok, which has a clear middle class and a lot of people just going about their day, Phnom Penh appears to attract a large number of people to service industry jobs, probably because of a lack of opportunity in other sectors.

Another thing you can't help but notice here, which is deeply uncomfortable: Lots of couples consisting of an older white man and a young local Cambodian woman. Most of them appear to be long-term partnerships (the shorter-term type exists too, obviously; see my above note on the red light district) and many are obviously married with families and living here long term. Far be it for me to judge anyone's relationships, of course, and you can't help who you love. But yeah, it bothers me that it's almost always one way (you rarely or never see the opposite configuration) and that it's just so frequent.. I suppose marriage has been an economic arrangement for most of human history, and none of this is exactly surprising. It's just awkward to see so much of it.

This does appear to be a city on the verge, though. As we kick off 2023, the young generation here is hip, trendy, innovative, and excited for the future. There's an energy here that you don't really feel in sleepy Laos or even in already-arrived Thailand. Cambodia suffered unspeakable nightmares just 45 years ago and it's critical to never forget the past. But today, this is a place that is clearly looking ahead to the future.

So that's a wrap for the first day of 2023. Tomorrow we leave Phnom Penh and head to Siem Reap, one of our most anticipated stops on the trip. Time to get a good night's sleep ahead of the long journey. More soon!