If Siem Reap was beauty, then Phnom Penh was emotion. We took an overnight bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh and arrived in the early morning before anything was really open...except for what we wanted to see, which apparently opened at 5:30 AM. We rented a tuktuk for the day (from a guy not nearly as cool as Homeboy) and headed through Phnom Penh to our first destination.
Driving through the two cities offered a slightly different experience. Phnom Penh was obviously bigger, being the capital and largest city in Cambodia. The amount of tuktuks and scooters stayed constant, but things were more urban in general and there was wealth present in certain areas. We saw a Lamborghini and a Bentley driving nonchalantly down the street.
Our first stop was Tuol Sleng Prison, or S-21. For those who need the history lesson: On April 17th, 1975, after a seven year civil war, the ultra-Communist Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and solidified their control over Cambodia. They renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea and forced everyone to evacuate the cities for a new era of agrarianism. Year Zero. They abolished hospitals, schools, books, even currency, and forced everyone to work on collective farms as equals. Those who were thought to be intellectuals (identified by things as arbitrary as wearing glasses) were murdered. Members and supporters of the former government were murdered. Non-Cambodian ethnic groups were murdered. Those who for some reason or another had "pre-revolution nostalgia" were murdered. Anyone who could not produce adequate agricultural skills were murdered. They eventually turned on their own and murdered high ranking Khmer Rouge officials. Nobody was safe. Even if they couldn't find a reason to murder, they tortured until the person confessed a crime and named some friends or family members who would then be subsequently arrested.
One of the places in which they were tortured and murdered was Tuol Sleng. After Phnom Penh was evacuated and schools abolished, this high school was turned into a prison/torture center. 17,000 people passed through its gates. Only seven survived. When the Vietnamese invaded and overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, they found Tuol Sleng with 14 bodies quickly killed on the torture tables by the fleeing enemy. The next year, they opened up Tuol Sleng as a museum and kept it very similar to how it looked when they found it. There were even still blood stains on the floor.
To say it was powerful would be an understatement. Walking into a room with a bed frame and a picture above it depicting the dead person the Vietnamese found in that very same room, in that very same bed frame was definitely moving. 
It's hard to describe everything one sees there. The tiny cells. The torture devices. The chains. The bloodstains. The thousands of pictures of victims who passed through the prison's gates, never to be seen or heard from again. Some were children under five. Tortured and murdered all the same. There were rooms full of these photographs.
It took less than a year for the grounds surrounding Tuol Sleng to fill up with bodies, so the Khmer Rouge began shipping prisoners out to places like Choeung Ek (our next stop) to be disposed of. Once a Chinese cemetery, the Khmer Rouge turned Choeung Ek into a killing field and mass grave site. After prisoners signed a confession or named the required names of other traitors, they were put in a truck and hauled out to the fields with about 20 or 30 other people, where they were led to a pit and struck with a pick ax or a hoe or any other lethal farm equipment that could kill while saving bullets. 
Children who were small enough were taken by the legs and swung headfirst into a tree. The specific tree was labeled as we strolled around.
In the center is a memorial to the thousands of bodies they found at Choeung Ek housing the bones of exhumed victims. It's rather startling as the bones are exposed for viewers.
Also, while walking around, signs inform you that when it rains they still find things in the soil and don't be surprised if you do too. It's hard to ignore rags half buried in the dirt or more than one random tooth on the ground.
But, with that our depressing tour of Cambodian history was over. We were left with the rest of the day to enjoy more cheery sites like the Cambodian Royal Palace:
Modeled after the Thai Royal Palace.
Apparently bird paradise.
The Vietnam/Cambodia Friendship Monument:
The Independence Monument:
As featured on their currency!
The Central Market:
The North Korean Embassy:
No, we didn't get to go into the North Korean Embassy, but they did have some funny propaganda on the outside of it--in English.
The Riverfront:
(picture not included)
The Riverfront was charming enough, with that same French style architecture so prominent in Siem Reap. Although instead of $.50 beers like in Siem Reap, the cheapest we could find was $.60 beers (God! Everything is so marked up in the big city!).
Perhaps it was the dust entering through my eyes, nose, and mouth and subsequently clouding my brain, but Phnom Penh had a separate charm than Siem Reap. I didn't want to leave the prices, the currency, the tuktuks, the people, the haggling, the architecture, the atmosphere, the food...
Both Thailand and Cambodia are places I'd visit again, but I'd switch it around and spend more time in Cambodia than Thailand in the future. Cambodia has beach resorts, too...
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