Holiday in Cambodia

A 9 hour, dusty, sweaty, bus crashing journey ended in our arrival in Phnom Phen, capital city of Cambodia. To fill you in quickly, we left Saigon in Southern Vietnam at 8.30 in the morning, spending a rather tedious 2 hours at the border getting our visa for Cambodia. We continued on our journey and after a while arrived at a river where our bus had to drive onto a ferry to cross. However as we were driving onto the ferry we were about to come to a stop behind a big lorry when our bus decided to lose all power to its brakes and rolled forward alarmingly into the back of the lorry, smashing the bus window and traping the driver behind his wheel. Luckily the driver and everyone else was unhurt and after crossing the river we swapped our bus for a mini bus and with a fresh maniac driver sped our way over an incredibly bumpy road to where we are now, the Okay guest house and yes it is OK, cause its got AC, cable TV and hot water all for $10 (about 7 pounds).
Cambodia is a small country, roughly the same size as the UK minus Scotland ( no bad thing some might say ) and has a population of about 14 million, 1 million of which reside in its capital, Phnom Phen. On our very short time here so far, its abundantly clear that its a much poorer country than Vietnam. Miles poorer in fact. Its had a very wartorn recent past and so is only now starting to get itself back on its feet, not helped by its apparently still very corrupt goverment. Just driving here and driving around the city, some of the beggars you see with missing limbs, the shacks some people live in and the general filth and squalor is pretty hard to see. Its obviously not all like that, theres some nice bits too, but Vietnam seems as modern and developed as Japan now.
Today we having been seeing why this country is still in a bit of a state and that is largely thanks to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot got into power following civil war in 1976 and until his regime was kicked out by the Vietnamese in 1979, proceeded to bring Cambodia to its knees. 2-3 million people died during that time, most in the fields where they were forced to work, having been relocated there from the citys. We went to see S 21, Tuol Sleng prison today where 17,000 people were interigated and tortured and of those only 7 are known to have survived. The really sick thing about this prison is that it was a childrens school before the Khmer Rouge got their hands on it and divided all the classrooms into cells and torture chambers. They had photos of all the victims, because like the Nazis the Khmer kept vey accurate records of their victims and what they did to them. It was nasty veiwing and so naturally we wanted to do something a bit more light-hearted afterwards....so we went to see the Killing fields. About 15k away on another really bumpy, dusty 'road' are the Killing fields. It would be a fairly ordinary field, except this is where most of those 17,000 from the prison were brought to be executed. In 1980 they excavated half the field and you can see the where all the mass graves are. Its very, very odd walking around the place. You can actually see bits of clothing stuck in the ground, the owners now long dead. There is a memorial tower that you can see pictured and its full of skulls to the ceiling. We saw some idiot (politest word I could use) tourist actually pick up one of the skulls for a photo, we were gobsmaked at his lack of respect, but one very evil look from Sam, as well as banging on the window next to him and also mouthing 'what the f*** do you think you're doing, you bleep bleep' and he quickly put it back. Some people...
After the horrors of the morning, we have been to see a temple and a palace this afternoon. The temple was average in the temple stakes and not helped by people selling very small birds. The catch? There were about 50 birds in a small cage and you paid your money to release a bird... nice. The palace was closed, but in the grounds was the 'silver pagoda'. Silver not on the outside, but on the inside where there were 5000 silver tiles that lined its floor. It was all very nice and lots of buddha statues everywhere as usual in these places.
Well that's our first eventful 24 hours here in Cambodia, its a sweltering 35 degrees here and so we are off to the coast in the next day or two to relax by the sea.

Please feel free to cast a glance at our last Vietnam Slideshow.