The Cambodian Royal Palace


The Royal Palace in Cambodia is one of the most ancient of Royal Palaces in South East Asia, built in the 1487. It consists of a a series of smaller palaces (4) around a central palace and a specific place of residence where the current King lives when he is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The blue flag flies high when the King is in residence... and he was in residence during our visit!



The Palace gardens where just amazing, the decorations inside the palace were intricate and mostly gold (real gold) and some silver (real silver). One of the palaces was called the Silver Palace - this palace was named so due to the abolition of currency in around 1978; let me explain.... apparently, Pol Pot came to power around this time and decided to abolish any form of currency. As a result there was a whole country with literally silver coins as currency that was no longer valid. The King of the time decided to collect all the now useless sliver coins and re-fashioned them into a series of floor tiles that he literally had laid as the floor in one of the palaces - hence the name "Silver Palace". The whole Silver palace was a wonderful display of silver and gold artifacts, a testament to the original wealth of Cambodia. 

The central Palace was dedicated to Buddha with a large gold Buddha and other smaller Buddha's distributed around the large hall. The whole area was full of golden decorative figures and luscious yellow, red and gold embroided cloth. A large mirror was placed at the main side entrance to the central Palace building in an effort to 1) ward off evil spirits by reflecting the evil spirits away from the Buddha and also to ensure that anyone visiting Buddha could ensure they were looking their best before entering the shrine!

The current King of Cambodia, King Norodom Sihamoni is not married. He was educated in Czechoslovakia and best known for his work as a cultural ambassador in Europe and a classical dance instructor. He also speaks Czech, English, Russian and Khmer languages amongst others,  fluently.  

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