Phnom Penh

6.00am start to make our way to Phnom Penh by bus. There seems to be a lot of 'old signs' in South East Asia as the bus prices on the main board say one price, but as soon as you ask why they are charging you different their response is 'old sign'! Lee and I asked our hotel manager on 2 different occassions for the price of the bus to Phnom Penh, I was told $1 more than Lee so we went with the price Lee was given and booekd th bus! $5 each so it didn't exaclty break the bank but again, the thought that they are constantly trying to rip you off can get a bit insulting but we're trying not to focus on this too much! The hotel manager told us that the price included a free moto ride to the bus station, but when I got off my moto the driver tried to charge me and started arguing with me! I told him that there was no way I was going to pay him and he drove off. Lee's driver didn't try to charge him! They are just constantly trying to trick you unfortunately, which is a huge shame.

Bus journey took about 6 hours but we were literally the only white people on the bus. People were bringing their children to us to look at us and stare, we had two children stand next to us pretty much the whole way just staring at us, espically when we ate which was a bit off putting! And they weren't like the children in the country that smiled etc, when we said Hello, smiled or waved they just carried on staring! It was very strange. There were a couple of toilet stops along the way and they would stare then as well. Even though there were cubicle toilets, the locals just ran to the field, woman, children, men and old ladies(!) and literally just pulled down their pants and went!

We got some barbequed bananas dipped in some sort of liquid and they were goregous. Once at Phnom Penh, the usual rabble of tuk-tuk drivers wouldn't let me and Lee get off the bus, especially this time as we were the only white people! ONe guy was trying to charge $2 to where we needed to go when our book said it should about 2000 riel. We got another tuk-tuk driver for 3000 riel but when we got to our hostel he tried to say that we had agreed 3 dollars not 3000 riel! He tried to get the locals that were around us to agree but by their body language they were siding with us as they knew he was charging far too much. WE gave him a dallar just to leave us alone.

Malis guesthouse for $6 a night, our cheapest yet! They were really friendly and honest about the scams going on around and to be careful. Our room didn't have hot water but it was really clean so we took it. They even sorted out our Vietnamese visa for $31, the visa only costs $30 in the first place so it more than saved us a tuk-tuk fare to the embassy to sort it our ourselves!

The strip we were on seemed really laid back but this could be due to all the weed! We got offered it everywhere we went which was slightly worrying and some of the sellers lookign like they'd smoked it all themselves!

Went for lunch in the Flying Elephant, a really great place to eat and the staff are really friendly. We met a local called Lena who worked there as she was studying in Phnom Penh, she has to be the most freidnly person we have met so far, full of smiles and stories to tell. We've sinced been emailing her and will definately keep in touch.

Wandered to Wat Phnom, a monument nearby with a stupa on the top but the main pull being that it is surrounded by monkeys playing - the babies were so funny. On the way back, we stopped at the Rock Cafe, really friendly staff again and greta music and fruit shakes. We ended up coming back here int he evening to eat after playing some pool in a bar called 'the Wanderer', where we ended up playing with some local children.

Went back to Malis and got stupidly excited about getting all our washin laundered for $4.50!! Unfortunately, the guesthouse was really noisey as all the rooms back onto a corridoor and all have grates leading to the corridoor meaning you can hear everything in every room, nevermind!

Sights at Phnom Penh

Another early start, 7.30am ready for our tuk-tuk tour of the local sights ($12 for the day). First stop the Royal Palace which was very similar to the Palace in Bangkok but not as grand or glittery, it was more legant and understated but you weren't allowed in most of the buildings which was a shame. In the same grounds was the famous Silver Pagoda. I ahd read so much about the spectacular floor that we both thought it would be obvious to us which building was the Silver Pagoda once we were in it...wrong! We walked in it, around it and back out before overhearing a tour guide that what we had just been in was the famous Silver Pagoda! Most of the famous floor is completely covered and the bits that aren't look dirty and cracked!

We were gald that we had seen it all but if you are going to go to Phnom Penh and have limited time, there are better things to see. Our tuk-tuk driver met us outside to take us to Cheung Ek where the Killing Fields are, the site where th Khmer Rouge sent truck loads of people everyday to be executed and then buried in mass graves. It is quite a distance from the city, purposely so, so that the khmer Rouge could try and hide what the site was for. The first thing you see as you drive up is a huge white stupa, loking from a distance like a normal monument. When you get closer, you see that the full height of the stupa is filled with skulls. Row upon row, all the way to the top, full with skulls. The worst thing is you actually go inside the monument and are centimetres away fromt he skulls. It's suffocating.

All around the grounds are placards describing what used to be on that part of the grounds. For example, the site housing the killing tools (they wouldn't use bulets as these were too precioius so used spades etc instead), the detention centre that had to be built to house people as more and more trucks turned up with people to be killed and the executioners couldn't kill them all on the day they arrived. The centre allowed for space to house the overflow, ready to be killed the next day - it is so awful. We just can't explain, as you walk round you just can't believe that somehting so awful, on such a huge scale, could happen for no reason for 4 years.

We walked round the site, half of which is still to be excavated (and yet nearly 9000 bodies have already been exhumed), and you are literally walking through the graves, the floor is completely pitted with the sites that they have dug up, and clothes are still embedded in the ground, poking out.

Walking out, our tuk-tuk driver asked us if we wanted to go to the shooting range...NO!

SO he took us to our next stop, S-21, a former high school that the Khmer Rouge took over to make into a prison to torture victims before sending them to Cheung Ek to be killed. You start by walkign through the torture rooms, wehre there are picture son the wall of how some of the visitms were found, and then you look round the room and realise that the things in the photos are still in the room that you're standing in. Everywhere there are stains of blood that they haven't been able to remove. We later met a guy in Saigon who asked us did we see the blood on the ceiling in one of these cells, luckily we hadn't.

The next block gets even worse. The Khmer Rouge used to picture everyone that went through S-21, almost like prison mug shots you see today, but also in various states of tortue and pictures of those that died there before getting sent to the killing fields. The next builing is plastered with all the mug shots of the people that were held and tortured at S-21. There was a wall full of tiny children, all the girls had their hair cut. SOme had clearly been beaten up but the most striking think was that hardly any of them looked scared. The men looked defiant. There was a picture of one man however who looked completely fear ridden and was crying, as soon as I saw his picture and the wall of children I burst into tears. Some of the pictures are so horrendous I don't even want to write them down but however awful they were, I felt compelled to look at every single one, like I had to remember them all and make sure that they knew someone was bothered with who they were. Every single picture you look at, you know that they were the killed. It has to be the saddest place I have ever been and the worst thing I have ever seen in my whole life. We purposely chose not to take pictures whislt at S-21 becuase we couldn't bring ourselves too and didn't really want to record the memories of this place.

The next building block was where the tiny classrooms had been divided up into even smaller cells, Lee wouldn't be able to lie down in them they were so small, pribably 15 per classroom. This is where everyone was held before being tortured, chained to the floor. Everywhere is covered in barbed wire to stop them escaping.

The last building showed extracts from victims families and perptrators. It was quite confusing to follow who was on whos side as many within the Khmer Rouge were killed as well, the killing was completely indiscriminate.

We are glad we came here as it is Cambodian history that shouldn't be hidden away like it was for 4 years, but it takes a strong stomach to visit this place.

Luckily, we still had one more stop to help us finish Valentines day on a better note, altough we will never forget what we saw at S-21 we didn't want this to be all that dominated our memories of Cambodia as it is a gorgeous place. So we went next to the National Museum. There wasn't alot here but the building itself and the gardens were brilliant where we watched young monks playing and taking pictures of each other and saw some of the statues that came from the Angkor temples in Siem Reap!

Back to our hotel, to pick up our visa and lovely clean washing, horaay!

Went to Lukcy Mart where we had bought a guide on Vietnam but the maps were unreadable so we asked for an exchange. The woman was so rude and horrible to me, I had a little tear afterwards, half becuase it had been an emotinal day and half becuase it was just another example of people constantly trying to rip you off that I was getting tired of! Quickly got over it though as I don't want the locals that do this to ruin my experiences of those that are lovely.

Played pool again in the Wanderer and then went for a drink at Floating Island, one of the guesthouses on stilts over the lake. It was a lovely bar but I wouldn't want to stay there! To get to the bar you ahve to walk through the main coridoor where people stay! WE had free drinks as they were having a Valentines party(!) then went to the Flying Elephant for Valentines dinner where I had spicy chicken that turned my lips purple! In South East Asia, when they say spicy, they mean spicy!

Ono the LAzy Gecko for drinks and then back to Malis for another early start the next day.