Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia and so it is very very busy. There are lots of things to see and do in Phnom Penh. We went to visit the Kings palace which was filled with beautiful gardens and amazing pagodas which are like temple spaces. Buddhism is a very popular religion in Cambodia.
Another popular thing to do in Phnom Penh is to visit museums to learn about a war that happened in the country in the 1970s. This sad time began just 40 year ago, so lots of your relatives and teachers at school were alive when Cambodia was having a terrible time. Unfortunately, the rest of the world did not know much about the war and some countries didn’t even believe it was happening. The war was between the Cambodian people, it was not involving other countries. I guess before the Internet it was more difficult to spread messages across the globe.
This sad war happened because a group of leaders called the Khmer Rouge wanted everybody to work on farms and it didn’t pay the people any money. Teachers, doctors, shop workers, adults and children all had to leave the big cities and towns, leaving their houses behind, to go out to the countryside to grow things to eat. These poor people were just given a little bit of rice or porridge everyday. Even if they were busy growing and looking after banana trees, they were not allowed to eat the bananas. There were no treats, no nice houses and the children had no chance of going to school. They all had to work on the farms for hours and hours everyday. Lots of people in Cambodia died during this war; roughly 2 million people. That was about a quarter of the population.
Miss Stafford's Adventure 