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We arrived in Phenom Penh around 5:30 after a six hour bus ride from Siem Reap, but the journey went quite quick as the bus was comfortable and i had my music and stuff. When we arrived the city was mad, not what i expected at all, it reminded me of Bangkok as it was bustling withso many shops and cars everywhere. It was such a fast pace city compared to all the rest of Cambodia where we went as it was very poor and very slow paced. We ended up staying out of the city and in the back pack area which was basically a narror street full of guest houses and bars which backed up against this massive lake, we saw about 4 or 5 places before deciding on one as they were quite expensive for what they were offering, eventually we decidied on a place called the lakeside it was ok, it wasnt the cleanest but it did the job and they were very friendly and the bar was pretty cool as it looked out on to the lake. On the first day we saw the royal palace where the king and queen of cambodia a residences to but that wasnt very impresive at all we did the whole thing in about 40 minutes and there wasnt one thing there that blew me away. Then we walked around the city go to a few markets nothing really there considering it was the capital.
The second day we hired a tuk-tuk guy to take us to the S-21 museam and killing fields. i was very aprehensive about this trip as i didnt really know what to expect and knew very little but i heard it was very emotional experience. The first part of the trip was the S-21 museum, i wont go in to detail but this was the torture are but used to be a school. We hired a tour guide and his english was very good. It was shocking what went on in there and it was only about 30 years ago, i was mostly just stunned in to silence really didnt say anything for the whole tour and just thought about what went on then, didnt want to take any pictures as it just didnt seem right. After the tour we then went on to the killing fields, it was about 15km from S-21 and this was obviously where they took everyone to be killed. When we got there it was just a wierd experience as i have never been to such a place before and didnt know how to act. I was again very silent as everyone else so it was earily quiet with in the grounds, we saw the bone monument where it was just a massive tower filled with skulls, it seemed a bit disrespectful in a way as some of the skulls just seemed as if they where thrown in and not neatly placed one by one as these were still peoples relatives. From there we read a lot of the information boards as we didnt have a tour guide, we didnt need one really as we knew what went on, then we would just walk around the mass graves, it sounds pretty sick to think that this is a tourist attraction but i spose it needs to be shown to show what teh people went through so it doesnt happen again. We didnt stay long but we were all effected by the tour and it really made us appreciate our lives and where we live, it was very emotional.
Then the last part of the tour was to a shooting range, it was in the middle of nowhere in some army base and you could basically fire anything from a hand gun, to a an ak-47, to a hand grenade or bazooka, it was crazy and very expensive it was about $30 for one magazine which was about $1 a bullet. Nick one of the boys that im travelling with used the Ak-47 and you dont realise how powerful and loud those guns really are its mad. Even with ear protectors my ears were in pain from the noise and if the gun wasnt held on the tripod i sware that thing would have sprayed everywhere. It was a good laugh seeing that and i held an M-16 so felf like arny hah!!!
Then that night I shaved my hair off as well, i thought sod it, it was getting on my nerves and wanted to see if it suited me, i was well scared about doing it when it came to really cutting it off but now that its off i quite like it as its taken some getting used to but i know when it grows a bit more it'll look like a tennis ball so that will be fun, look out for the photos on that.
In the remaining nights we would just go for food, play some pool or watch a movie so we more or less did nothing but chilled out there really but we got bored quickly and wanted to move further south to the beaches again, we stayed for about 2 or 3 nights and booked our ticket for Sihanoukville which was the beach resort in Cambodia and was looking forward to seeing a bit of see and sand again after being in the bustling dirty cities for so long.
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