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Over the last week we have gone from being Backpackers to Flashpackers! This time last week we were roughing it in a bamboo sweatbox in the Si Phan Don & now we find ourselves in a Panoramic suite of Pnom Penh's newest hotel! Cambodia is sooooo cheap, you really can live it up for less; for $120 a night (including breakfast) we are staying in a huge suite overlooking the Tonle Sap river, complete with 40 inch TV & an amazing bubble bath! Needless to say, we celebrated our new found luxury with Spa treatments & a much needed night-in with DVDs, red wine & take-away pizza! It's amazing how much you appreciate the TV when you havent had one for a while!
Cambodia is an amazing country, the people are so friendly & everyone wants to chat to you, it reminds me more of India than Thailand or Laos, so I really love it here! Everyone has a smile on their face too, which is amazing when you consider the horrific things that went on here, not so long ago. Yesterday we visited one of the Killing fields, the scene of over 10,000 genocide crimes. Today it is a peaceful orchard filled with with butterflies, the only reminder of what happened here is the memorial Pagoda filled with 5000 skulls & the various pits in the ground that were once mass graves. A very moving place. We also visited the Genocide museum, an old school that was converted into a Prison during the Pol Pot regime & over 10,000 prisoners (including children & babies) were tortured & interrogated here, before being sent to their deaths. Often their only crime was being educated, even wearing glasses was considered a crime as the Khmer Rouge considered this as a sign of intelligence. Absolutely horrific.
Even now 30 years later, the Khmer Rouge regime is still killing people, there are millions of landmines still littering the countryside, which injure/kill hundreds of people every year. We went to the landmine museum, & learned about an amazing man who has been clearing minefields with nothing but his bear hands for the last 20 years. Aki Ra was forced to join the Khmer Rouge as a child soldier, aged 5 & was laying mines at the age of 10. Now he has cleared over 50,000 mines & has opened a school for young landmine victims, who have lost limbs. An amazing man.
Of course Cambodia's history is not all doom & gloom, long before the genocide of the '70s, the magnificent Temples of Angkor where built. Having seen a LOT of Temples already, we decided to try & do Angkor in one day, not an easy feat considering there are over 150 temples! This was one long day, we were up at 4.30am for Sunrise over Angkor Wat, the largest & oldest religious building in the world. It was no Taj Mahal sunrise, I'm afraid, & I was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about (Angkor is meant to be the 8th wonder of the world). It was only when we took to the skies in a hot air balloon & got an aerial view, that we could see how impressive it was, with its huge square moat & the sheer scale of the ruins. The other Temples were also pretty amazing, with beautiful carvings, Elephant terraces & creeping trees growing out of the ancient remains. We only saw the main attractions, but real templeaholics could easily spend a week here & still not see it all! 12 hours was enough for us though, we crazily returned for sunset, after a 2hr powernap & that was definitely enough Temple action for one day!
So now we are leaving the Temples & swanky hotels behind & heading to the beach once again, I cant wait to see the sea!
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