February 16, Phnom Penh sight-seeing

Did the sight-seeing thing today.  We walked down to the Grand Palace & Silver Pagoda, but they were closed for siesta.  To kill time I wandered through a big park nearby while Christian found some shade and did some writing.  A nice guy also wandering around the park waiting for the site to open took this photo of me in front of an awesome communist statue.

There are a lot of idle people in town, un- or under-employed.  These guys found some poetic shade under the wings of a statue that I hope symbolizes something protective or lucky.

The Palace and Pagoda are beautiful and I have nearly no photos of either. Christian has the good ones.  Here's a Buddha statue from the Pagoda part of the grounds.

Royalty have their stuphas on the grounds of the Silver Pagoda. Normally the stupha is completely sealed up, but this one is of a girl who died. They left it open so that her child spirit can play and so children who visit can run around on it. The guide said that old people like it quiet so they get the closed ones, but kids like the activity.

After the visit we walked across town to a mall to find a USB-wall plug adapter ($10!).  On the way we saw this in an area lined with banks.  I swear, it's really a bank.  You can tell by the guard's shack.  It's seriously called Tomato Specialized Bank.

Grabbed some dinner at BBQ Chicken at the mall.  It's a Korean-owned restaurant. Quite delicious, actually, if you want mall food.  Their slogan: they returned for more when they found out the BBQ CHICKEN were actually good.