More of Phnom Penh

The next day we continued our exhaustive explorations of Cambodia's lovely capital, complete with two more wats and a few more markets.  We started with Wat Ko, just a few blocks from our hotel.  A wat is a Buddhist monastery-temple in Cambodia, Laos, or Thailand (Thai: วัด wat, Lao: ວັດ vad, Khmer: វត្ត wōat, originally a Sanskrit word, वाट, vāṭa, meaning "enclosure").

Picture 1: Wat Ko. 
Picture 2: We must have come right around feeding time, because as soon as we approached the first cat, we heard meows from all over the compound and cats started running up to us.  It was a bit too much, so we left so we wouldn't get their hopes up.  Most of the wats we've seen have large cat colonies, I assume because the monks feed them.  The cats sleep on various sculptures and sun themselves on tombstones; what a wonderful life!
Picture 3: Painted walls inside the wat.
Picture 4: Traditional graves - these probably hold important community leaders and politicians.
Pictures 5-7: Central Market (no bugs on sale here).
Pictures 8 & 9: I purchased an English translation of a Cambodian newspaper and read about two recent market fires, one in downtown Phnom Penh and another in a nearby village.  Apparently, people believe these fires are started on purpose since developers want to push out the markets and build shopping malls or apartment buildings.  We visited the site of the burned down Old Market a few days after it happened - people were already rebuilding.  The city officially reported that the fire was due to bad electrical wiring, which also sounds very likely considering their complete lack of fire safely standards.  Either way, because it was deamed an accident, insurance will not pay for damages and many of the merchants lost their whole inventories.  In other market fires, the newspaper reported, people did not have enough money to rebuild the markets and buy new merchandise, so these other markets have been shut down.  This one, however, looks like it will flourish once more.
Picture 10: A tuk-tuk driver delivering goods outside the Old Market.
Picture 11: Wat Phnom, meaning "Hill Temple," a wat built in 1373 on the only hill in Phnom Penh.  It is now a central point in the city.
Pictures 12 & 13: Playful monkeys relaxing at Wat Phnom.
Picture 14: Buddha statue inside Wat Phnom.
Picture 15: Spirit house at Wat Phnom.
Picture 16: A tree filed with bats waiting for nightfall.
Picture 17: Outdoor food stall restaurants waiting for guests at the night market.