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Phnom Pehn.
Not too impressive really. After getting ripped off at the border and spending a night in a rubbish boring border town, first impressions of Cambodia weren't great.
We got to Phnom Pehn on Monday afternoon and jumped in a tuctuc to try and find our guesthouse, only to find that we had chosen a driver who didn't seem to know the city. The 10 minute journey turned into 30 and we had to direct the driver in the right direction. We ended up checking into a fairly nice place- no ants in the corners and a flushing toilet- the only downfall is being on the fifth floor with no lift, meaning that we get a nice workout a few times a day. The first day we just had a walk around the town and ended up in an irish bar with happy hour all night. Despite only 5 other people being in the bar, it was a fairly good night chatting to a couple of drunk ex-pats and watching a huge thunderstorm - I'm sure this weather is following is around!
Day Two was spent exploring a bit more of the city and we visited the palace. This turned out just to be a group of pretty buildings with a few temples and Buddha museums thrown in. We've been using the Lonely Planet as a guide for what areas to go out to, unfortunately the area we chose this night had mostly been knocked down and was a building site rather than restaurants and bars!
On our last day in the capital we got chauffeur driven around in a bumble bee themed tuctuc for the day. Our morning started off pretty intense, visiting Cheung Ek- 'the killing fields' and S21- an old security prison. It was all a bit eerie, especially when you think about how recent it all happened. Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge killed over 2 million people, they excavated some of the mass graves and now there's a tower of skulls as a memorial to this. Our afternoon was much more light hearted, spending a couple of hours wandering around the Russian market, buying tshirts for $2 each :)
Once again, the lonely planet let us down last night so we didnt really do much. We're now about to board a bus to Siem Reap, where Angkor Wat is- the 8th wonder of the world and a lot of temples. I'm hoping that these are much more impressive than all the other dull temples!
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