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RTW Trip Day #34: Phnom Penh Markets Cambodia and the S21 Genocide Museum
- andrewsco3
- Nov 3
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 4
1 November 2025
Steps: 9,274
We started our day exploring Phnom Penh, with a great breakfast from a small place called Pu Rock Cafe, which was just a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Susie and Evelyn both had eggs, I had fried rice (seriously, why don't we do this in Canada?), and Jessica had pancakes with Nutella.
I swear, we can travel anywhere in the world and Jess will still manage to find pancakes and Nutella!
Central Market
As we were eating, it started to rain heavily, so we caught a taxi to Central Market. It's a really interesting building as in its centre it is a huge bright yellow dome that has four wings extending outwards, with each section selling different types of goods.
We found stalls selling some incredible jewellery, camera and phone equipment (we found a replacement iPhone charger finally), clothing, and a fresh produce section.
There was also a section of the market with lots of nail painting stations, where you could get manicures or pedicures. As the rain was still pouring outside, Evelyn got her finger nails painted, and Jess her toes, for just $2 each.
We saw some ice blocks being delivered and slid down a chute to be made into smaller blocks of ice. I'm hoping that the ice was used to keep fresh produce, meat and fish cold at the market, and not to be made into ice cubes as it was dragged along the floor!
Orussey Market
Evelyn had been begging us to take her to a market where they sell toys (she’s obsessed with little play things like Sylvanian Families) and we read that, while hectic, the Orussey market was a good bet.
We caught our first Tuk Tuk (called a remorque) that seats four people, and the girls thought it was amazing!
When we arrived at the market it was certainly hectic! There were three floors of back to back market stalls, some with barely any space to walk between them. It was quite overwhelming, and felt very much like a flea market and was quite difficult to navigate.
It took a bit of communication trial and error, but after bringing up some pictures of toys on my phone, and a lot of pointing, we finally found the toy section.
Evelyn bought a foreign money play set for her dolls, and it was actually a great find as it has money from all over the world in it. We’ve been using currency conversion as part of our math's homeschooling, so we can even use it to play math's games while we travel!
From there we decided to walk to the nearby Olympia mall, as there was a Starbucks, and Susie is required by law to try a chai latte in every country! There was quite a bit of flooding in some areas but me mostly managed to avoid getting too wet!
We then walked to the International Book Centre, which is basically a huge stationary store combined with a book store. They are all over Cambodia and if you like browsing a good stationary store then you’ll love it here!
We all went back to the hotel so the girls could have some down time, and at this point I decided to head out by myself to see the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, as I really wanted to learn more about the atrocities that happened in Cambodia back in the 70’s.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S21)
We had considered taking the girls to the Tuol Sleng S21 Genocide Museum, but after doing quite a bit of research, we decided that it probably wasn’t appropriate at their age, especially without knowing exactly what to expect.
It was pretty harrowing to see the small prison cells and the conditions the prisoners had to endure. I took the self guided audio tour and it was fantastic and absolutely worth the extra few dollars. It was so informative, added a lot of context to what I was seeing, and even had some stories from the few survivors that made it out of there.
On reflection, I think that we could have taken the girls to S21, although probably without the audio tour - we just might have had to manage their experience a bit (the same as we did at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City).
I think the girls would have been really interested to see the prison cells, and while there are lots of photos throughout the prison, the majority of them are mug shots and not shocking or gory. The audio tour is what makes it upsetting as it adds some pretty difficult to hear stories to many of those still images.
Dinner at Kabbas Restaurant
After I got back we had another quick dip in the hotel pool before heading out to dinner at Kabbas restaurant. It was a great menu for us as there were plenty of Khmer curries, Thai curries but also some western food for the girls.
I tried a Khmer curry for the first time which was delicious - quite similar to a Thai red curry but noticeably different. Jess tried it and really liked it so she wants to find one for her dinner tomorrow night.
Previous Day #33: Halloween in Phnom Penh
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