Buddha with lotus flowers

After a good rest and breakfast on the rooftop restaurant with its great views across the city and the nearby Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers we headed out for our first trip to the nearby Royal Palace.  It was already very hot (over 30C) and sunny and the splendour of the Khmer style buildings set against the bright blue sky stunning.  The King still resides within the grounds but there are a large number of Halls, Temples and Pavilions open to visit including the impressive Silver Pagoda.  No photography is allowed within this building but the images of a silver tiled floor exposed near the entrance and then an enormous golden Buddha studded with diamonds and surrounded by a large number of smaller Buddhas and a beautiful jade one with lotus flowers and incense and lots of very small ornate buddhas around the sides is not one I am likely to forget.  I rather liked this site of this Buddha with the lotus flowers from the tree above nestling in its lap.  Apparently these flowers only last one day the buds opening and flowering and falling within that time.

We them journeyed about 15km to the site of the 'Killings Fields' a much more sombre site where over a period of just under 4 years hundreds of Cambodian people, teachers, doctors, intellectuals, farmers and local people and their children were killed.  While these people had disappeared it was thought they had gone onto work in other areas of the country.  A chilling part of their history with even more insight from a visit to the museum S21 which was a prison in Phnom Penh,  a former secondary school.  Over a million people were killed during this time.

I'm glad we visited the Royal Palace first it would have been difficult to take after the later visits.