Well I can't say leaving Vietnam was the most pleasent experience...being on a small river boat with the most awful fumes mixed with a hangover ain't the best...think we were all feeling pretty delicate from the outrageous events the night before in Chau Doc.....

Leaving Vietnam we pass the rustic riverside villages en route to Phnom Penh. Families washing in the banks of the river, farmers washing their cows & buffalo in the river, guessing this is where woman wash the dishes & most likely where they all pee too.....lovely thought.

3 hours later on the Mekong, we reach Immigration to get our passports stamped OUT of Vietnam. As we're all disembarking, Rachel quietly tells me that her & Ben's Vietnamese visa ran out 2 days ago...which means they were illegally in Vietnam for 2 days. I tell her in the nicest possible way she's in BIG trouble and to get her purse out cause some seriuos bargaining will have to take place. Plus i tell her to make sure she's not next me in the queue because i'm about to cause some hassle of my own. As always the process takes forever - because its so difficult to look at you then your passport and put a big EXIT stamp on it.... yes, as simple as it sounds, the lovely government officials at the borders seem to want to waste your time. For about the 15th time on my travels so far, i was taken aside, looked at thoroughly by 3 officials while they had a little discussion in their own lingo. It's now getting to the point of ridiculous...i don't look that different from my passport - just a difference of hair colour. I've even learned to tie my hair exactly as it is in my passport as not to confuse them anymore. But everytime, i resort to pulling out another passport pic (with dark hair) and covering the hair on both the pic and my passport to show that i am the same person...my goodness just look at the eyes...aaaagh! Hangover + ridiculous heat + border officials = the ultimate rage!!!

All stamped and ready to go we jump back on the boat when suddenly Ben & Rachel are taken off and asked to go back to immigration...they were so close to getting away with it! We're then told they will meet us at the border in 15 minutes where they will be taken by motorbikes. So off we go back on the river for a mere 5 minutes to the Cambodian border. Now time to be stamped in...aw, i could just tell i was going to cause yet another problem here!!!!

As we arrive there's no sign of Rachel & Ben yet but we're told to cross the border and wait on the other side. It was a bit of a strange place: 4 walls surrounding the area, security guard on each end (entrance & exit), what looks like little motel rooms on the right hand side - maybe 5 or 6 (guessing they're for officials/security to stay), a volleyball court????????, and a small wooden platform with a few tables and chairs for the officials. Above their heads the platform is sheltered by a strange looking straw roof thingy. Bearing in mind all this is in the perimieter of about 80 sq m in the middle of absolute no where...not very big at all, but very very strange to say the least....

2 hours had past and no sign of Rachel & Ben... the problem we now had was they were in one country and we were in another - even though only 10 minutes away. We couldn't leave this 'confinement' and they clearly couldn't leave Vietnam til the issue was resolved. As we had all been spending so much time together and had practically spent every day together since we all met, it never once crossed any of our minds to exchange phone numbers between the group.... how silly!!! We had no idea of what was actually going on at the Vietnam border, the Cambodian official kept telling us they were on there way and grumply "10mins, 10 mins", which was clearly a lie. We didn't know if they were on there way, still at the border or actually been deported! We weren't the only ones on the boat...there were about another 10 people so by this point they're all getting ancy as this clearly wasn't their problem which is fair enough. The problem we now had was what to do with the boat...we weren't leaving them till we knew what was happening, but this other group were adament it was time to go. The captain wasn't taking any part in it but if they took they boat we basically were stranded as this border til the next boat at 8 the next morning. But the way i look at it is, if that would've been me in Rachel & Ben's situation, i would have been absolutely petrified by not just the brutality of the officials but the fact i might be stranded somewhere like this all alone with absoluely no help or support. I would have been absolutely gutted if everyone left me...even though i'd understand... but all the same its not a very pleasent experience to be in.

As the boat was just a river boat for transferring people from Vietnam to Cambodia, it had no lights as it only ran during the day. It was going to take another 3 hours to reach phnom Penh so we decided to give them another hour max before the boat could head off. This should give us enough time to get there by dusk. It's fair to say we had made a lot of enemies by now!

It looked like the boat was going to have to leave in a few minutes...still no news... Just as everyone started loading their bags and stuff back on the boat, with minutes to spare, Ben & Rachel ran across the border!!! Thank goodness. Rachel wasn't looking to good though and Ben proabably would punch the smart assed Ozzie who had been so unreasonable in their absence.... just as they went to get there passports stamped IN they realised the guy on the motorbike had drove off with them....uh oh!!!........

Bound for Phnom Penh...all of us.... we set off for 3 hours of pleasure with our new companions for the day!! It was pitch black when we arrived, the captain was even standing up outside with his arm bent in the window steering the boat - thats how dark it was...pretty goddamn horrifying! Absolutely torrential as we docked but we decided we had to make a sharp exit before we were linched.... Dinner and early night for everyone after our rather exciting day!.......................

Phnom Penh is at the crossroads of Asia's past, present & future, where wealth & poverty cross that fine line, and the extremes of hope & desperation are never far apart. So far from my travels i have been captivated by many cities, but Phnom Penh is truly unique in how it can both charm you and chill you to the core in one breath. Much of the city's charm, while tarnished has managed to survive the violence of its so recent past and the city seems well and truly to be on the mend and moving on. After sunrise sitting by the riverfront, beneath the billowing flags and swaying palms, watching the silent barefoot monks stroll by is so pleasent and peaceful. Unfortunately that was as tranquil as my time in Phnom Penh would get as it was time to visit Tuol Sleng Genocidel Prison & the Killing Fields for a disturbing and uncensored look into the darkest side of mankind.

I must admit, I am totally fascinated by the Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot regime and for this reason, I knew what was ahead, though devastating, would be fascinating for me.

As we approached Tuol Sleng, the entrance was covered with beggers. But not homeless beggers... men with limbs missing, blind, deaf, scarred from head to toe, burns so brutal it was horrifying to see. These men were clearly victims of war & victims of landmines.

Tuol Sleng was a former school, still with the monkey bars in the courtyard and structures students would use for daily exercise in gym class. While walking through the courtyard and gardens it's not hard to imagine this site as the Tuol Svay Prey High School with the cream exterior walls and repetative identical doors and windows which would have looked into hundreds of classrooms. However, delving into these such rooms shatters any illusion of normalcy. In 1975 when the Khmer came into power, Pol Pot's security forces turned the school into Security Prison 21 (S-21), the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. A single rusty bed and a disturbingly gruesome black-and-white photo are all that adorn some rooms, but stand as testement to the unthinkable horrors that happened here. Each room got worse, the photos of actual prisoners were getting to the point of sickening. Men lying on the floor still chained to the iron bed with their stomachs cut out, throats slit, tongue cut out. All taking place while they were still alive. Dried blood stains are still visable on the walls & ceiling of each room where these unthinkable massacres took place. It's horrifying to think this all happened only 30 years ago! Almost everyone held here was was executed at the Killing Fields of CHoeung Ek. Detainees who died during torture were buried in mass graves inside the prison grounds. The last 10 prisioners who were held at S-21 are buried in tombs in the courtyard.

Tuol Sleng is one place where silence doesn't have to be requested - the power of speech is simply lost here....

Still chilled to the bone it was time to head for the Killing Fields. Wandering towards the entrance you can hear the joyful children at a nearby school which completely contrasts with what I was about to envisage of Cambodia's tragic past. Walking through the fields, having to step on human bone, teeth and clothing poking from the churned ground startingly brings home the dark abyss of a terrifying & brutal recent past yet again. 129 mass graves where 17,000 men, woman & children were executed lay ahead. Looking at 10 was enough for me. The graves are still as they were in those 3 years of horror.... muck ridden pits in the ground. Its easy to visualise the masses of bodies thrown in, piled on top.

From another direction monks were chanting, and as i walked towards the exit (as couldn't bear to see anymore) I was blinded by this white stupa infront of me. I thought, perhaps where the monks had been praying as the smell of insence was so envigorating - i was way off.... the stupa serves as a memorial of all the victims executed here between 1975 - 1978. Behind the stupa's glass panels and doors, rising upward shelf by shelf, are over 8000 skulls found during excavations in the fields in 1980. Some of these skulls still bare witness to the fact that they were bludgeoned to death for the sake of saving precious bullets!!! On the bottom shelve are thousands of items of clothing and clothing particles taken from the victims again during the excavation.

Silent, still, haunting, horrifying are just a few words to describe the atmosphere and presence at the fields. To think such brutality could take place and in such a recent past is more than inhumane. It does bring it to the forefront of your mind that we do live in such an awful world... some of us just happen to be luckier than others!! It just doesn't seem right.

It's fair to say, leaving the fields we were all pretty overwhelmed with sadness & despair...

Cxx