Last blog before Vietnam!!! Seriously folks, the last few blogs have taken a full day to write and get uploaded on the slow slooooow internet connections here so you better be enjoying them!!!
OK, we got up for our bus to Phnom Penh, planning to have breakfast first. Once again didnt really pan out that way, so we bought coconut baguettes from a street seller and hopped on the bus, bags locked in travel carriers underneath. In the next twenty minutes we were changed busses three times before having our tickets checked on the last one, we sometimes miss western efficiency, it has to be said. Settled in for a long drive which was pretty uneventful for erin and louise, but full of hilarity for steph, who was sat beside a sleeping cambodian who often woke up with a start having whacked his face off the window. She's giggling about this even now as I read it back to her. We had a grand total of two 'cess pit' stops and honestly, no one should have to endure 'toilets' like these. We made the most of them though, buying calippo lollies and taking'pimp andy and his girls' photos by the bus (see above photo). Got into Phnom Penh at about 2pm, slung on our bags and went wandering round the city for hostels, once again being asked if we wanted a tuk tuk as if no others had the idea of asking us. Relying on the bible (lonely planet), we went it alone. With Andy as our navigator (a welcomed break for Steph) we made it to our first hostel of choice- Royal Guesthouse. Let's just say nothing royal about it. First we were taken to a 5 bed flat with "air-conditioning" -there was none after all so we asked for another one. They had a double room that we could add a bed to so we went with that. It was on the very top floor (4 long flights of stairs up). It seemed alright and the shower was actually over the bath instead of draining into a hole in the floor like most of the showers we'd had to date, so we agreed that if they put a mattress in to make the room a triple, we'd take it- any other guesthouses were miles away and we couldnt be bothered trekking in the heat. This is cutting a very long story short by the way, we could regale you with tales of up and down stairs, trying to get doors locked and scouting alternative hostels, but its late and we have an early start! We left the next morning in disgust as the air conditioning didnt seem to work, the street was noisy and the beds were full of.....bed bugs-yuck! A real shame, because we'd had a lovely evening out on the balcony watching the world go by with a cool breeze over the city. Next day, we managed to scout out another hostel and get back to check our bags out by 12pm. Settled in at the hostel we eventually found, we decided to take a tuktuk to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum at Prison S21, and then go to see the killing fields. We'd watched a movie in the hostel the night before (put on free for guests) to try and prepare ourselves, but it really didnt. We hired a guide to take us round the prison, and I dont think any of us had ever seen anything more shocking. Our guides family were killed by the Khmer Rouge, and she was ten when the violence erupted in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge in essence, turned on their own people, arresting them for no reason, taking them in huge numbers to prisons like Tuol Sleng where they were tortured and executed brutally. Of the 20,000 that passed through the gates of Tuol Sleng, only 7 survived. The prison was very secret and was in fact only found when people returned to Phnom Penh and were alerted to it's existence by the smell of rotting corpses. The Khmer Rouge forced the millions of inhabitants out into the countryside and turned young kids into gun toting informants and executioners. Again, no reason other than that it was a revolution, 'year zero', money was abolished and Pol Pot simply wanted 'new people'. Anyone who could speak a foreign language or wore glasses was labelled a parasite and murdered. There are thousands of photos of the victims in the museum (part of which still survives in its prison capacity) and victims blood still coats the floor. It is absolutely horrific. Shellshocked and upset, we then headed to the killing fields- the place where bodies were dumped and truckloads of prisoners were brought to be bludgeoned to death to save bullets. They have labelled the tree against which Khmer Rouge soldiers would swing babies to kill them. In case anyone survived the beating and to disguise the smell, the soldiers would empty DDT onto the mass graves. There are victims clothes lying in the ground around the excavated mass graves, and a monument to the victims houses thousands of the skulls found here. We took no photos of either of these places, I dont think we'll forget them anytime soon.
Leaving the killing fields, we felt a new appreciation for Phnom Penh, a place we had been unsure of in the beginning, thinking it a dirtier version of Bangkok. But armed with the knowledge of what happened here just thirty years ago, we began to understand the Cambodians love of just sitting on the street, chatting to each other and watching life happening all around them. In fact, for a city that was ransacked and destroyed for the sake of it just three decades ago, Phnom Penh is actually remarkably well developed!
Later on that night, we met Andy and Nic for a farewell dinner, :( their vietnamese visas begin a day earlier than ours, forcing us to stay in Phnom Penh another day. Sad goodbyes and photos over, we tuktuk-ed back to our hostel and tucked up in bed with a movie with, you guessed it, HBO.
Which brings us finally to today, a day spent lounging around, with an only 'must-do' plan of booking the bus to Saigon. We wrote blogs, went to the supermarket to shop locally for our own dinner (baguettes and philly cheese) and food for the bus, and stood out in the rain.
We're leaving Cambodia with lovely memories of people whose smiles and friendly 'hello' can melt your heart as quickly as their past chills it, people who forced us to take off our Bangkok blinkers and a city we feel a definite affection for, and people who built Angkor Wat, despite the disgusting smells wafting past us on every street corner.
Cambodia- your fierce national pride is not misplaced: okun map map! Thankyou so much!