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Cambodia Well i'm not in Cambodia anymore but trying to play catch up as i'm so poor at adding new blogs.Ok Cambodia well i arrived with my friend who was still with me at the time via the border at Poipet with Thailand. The border crossing is an absolute joke and is very corrupt if you have enough money then you'll get your passport stamped first and without them even having to look at you which some what defies the object of having photographs attached to your visa to get into the country.you have to get off a bus at the thai border then walk across passport control and then to get your visa validated then to the next bus when in Cambodai which will take you on the rest of your trip. I foolishly agreed to get some money changed atthe border and got ripped of by about 5o quid which was veryharsh as moy budget is only 300 for the month but i wasn't the only one and we worked out that our bus alone had made that particular family about 850 pounds alone. anyway you have to put it down to experience and move on otherwise it eats you up and these things happen on a daily basis if you haven't got your head screwed on like me!I have been to Cambodia before so knew that the roads are really bad and what to expect but the rest of my bus were laughing saying how bad can it be...they soon found out.the road from the border to Siem Reap is only about 40 miles, is flat and in a very straight line but it took us 8 hours a new fan belt and a new wheel and a about 4 stops to hammer things that were clonking on the way, to be honest we were just lucky it was dry season because if not thats when it gets really bad.the government haven't invested any money in making the road better as Siem Reap has an airport which they want to encourage visitors to make much use of when they visit Cambodia unfortunatly this doesn't help the people who live there and have to use that road on a dialy basis often going to the border to sell goods at the market or the poor driver who has to take the tourists back and forth form the border each day and lets face it once his back is broken and the dust has wrecked his lungs there's no heath care in cambodia thats going to look after him.Once you hit the airport the road is tarmaced and the streets lined with five star hotels someone on the bus siad it was just like entering las vegas from the desert the contrast is quite amazing and quite sickening all at the same time.I've been to SR seven years ago and my friend kept asking me do you recognise anything but there was nothing that was familiar at all now there is loads of big fancy hotels and not so fancy ones too loads of bars and resturants they even have a 'bar street', when i was there there were 3 bars next to the river and a few hotels and that was really touristy then in comparison to the rest of cambodia it made me wonder what i was find on the rest of my trip...hopefully not a Mcdonalds and Starbucks in Phnom Penh (the capital). Its was nice to see the economy had risen and more money coming in for the Cambodia people but the longer i stayed there the more i realised that the people weren't really getting any of the money. Cambodia is still one of the poorest countries in the world asyou can see by how many children aren't at school, poor sanitation and healthcare and it doesn't seem to be improving, the rich are getting richer and the tourists can fly in see the temples and stay in nice big hotels and the poverty can be nicely swept under the carpet away from where they are eating, its verysad and hard to swallow but i still couln't help falling back in love with the country. Alot of the landscape was destroyed in the Pol Pot reign (good history lesson for those of you who don't know about Pol Pot and the killing fields and the war with vietnam) and alot of it is still heavily mined and will be for many years to come, but the people are the most friendly and dignified people i've ever met,they really want to know you and learn from you and share all the have however little that is and they really want you to come to their country and to understand the horrible history so that it doesn't get forgotten about,to them it needsto be remembered so that their suffering hasn't been in vain. Its difficult at first to decide what to see when you go to Cambodia in terms of visiting the killing fields, thinking do i really want to visit a place where mass genocide took place which is the grave site of so many people, do i need to go to the old school that was turned into a prison of torture and interrogation to understand this country's history. i guess everyone has to decide what kind of tourist they want to be in cambodia and for me it was important to understand and have good reasons for visting places. i was lucky enoguh to volunteer here years ago so had a fairly good understanding of the country and had worked with children whose parents had been killed and at the time i couldn't visit any of those palces it was too upsetting and it was very recent-Pol Pot had only been dead for 2 years. i guess i recognised the significance of what i had done the last time i was here and how volitile and unstable the country still was, i don't know if i'd have had that information i still would have made the decision to come here but i was young and up for anything and it was one of the best experiences of my life. anyway afer visiting Angkor Watt and some of the surrounding temples and saying a teary goodbye to my friend i set off to Battambang the place where i used to work.I decided this time to go by boat on the Tonle Sap so that i could pass the fishing villages and miss out the trecherous road trip. The only thing i didn't factor was that it was dry season so the water is really low so after about 3 hours on the boat we had to get off and take a truck for another 3 hours to get there.so here i was with 15 other people all squeezed onto the back of a pick up truck with bags and boxes squashed against my legs (the bruises have just about gone) and no sun screen because i though i was going on a covered boat, so by the time i got to BB i was burnt , dehydrated and my arse was very sore from the bumpy road. Another lesson learnt... always be prepared! It was lovelyto be back in BB it hadn't changed much at all and i decided to go for awander along the river and market place. Camboda like Vietnam and Laos was colonised by the French many years ago and BB has some of the most beautiful old french colonial buildings all old and crumbling with shuttered windows.Although its the second town outside of Phnom Penh the differnce in size and industry is poles apart. Not much goes on here and people don'tseemuch reason to visit so you'll only see a few other travellers passing through for a few days. I visited the place i used to live and some of the orphanages i used to work.At one there were some French and Japanese circus performers working with the children to put on the first circus festival in BB and I was lucky enough to go along to the opening night. The performers were great but it was the children's faces i was interested in they were so amazed at the fire tricks and acrobatics and the amazing things that people could do with balls, bits of sting and their own bodies. It was great to see the children have so much fun and to see there faces when they experienced everything for the veryfirst time. I was also adopted for the night by four local lads who wanted to practice their english and have a go at my camera, so they showed me around and made sure i was safe and promised to email when they had to get home at 9 o'clock.I was also stopped in the sreet earlier that day and asked to describe what a micro chip was, so as itriedto describe something i know not alot about i found out the guy taught english tothe yougn people in his village about 3 km outside of the town for free as they don't ahve any money and he relies on tourists to give donations and also help out, so before i knew it i was on the back of his bike off to give an english lesson to a group of teenagers.bit silly i know as noone knew where i was going or that i was even in BB and that this guy was genuine but he was and i had a great afternoon giving what was probably the worst lesson they ever had!After BB i Took the bus to PP and the road was much much better it even had tarmac! However i'm finding that all the drivers here are mad and although there's loose rules of the road they are very loose, the biggest vehicle has right of way, the loudest horn wins and pedestrians are stupid to walk and should be in or on a vechicle so best get out of the way, pavements are also for parking so if you want to go for a walk its on the road and then you're toying with your life! It was again new year in cambodia and lots of people were making there way to visit their families for the few days they had off work, so my bus was very busy and had a few livestock and lots of bags of rice on board (BB is famous for its rice). A guy in front of me brought along his pet bird who squaaked very hungrily for the second half of the journey irritating the death out of me whereas everyone else didn't bat an eyelid, that with the combination of the driver practically sitting on his horn really tried my patience so by the time i got there and fought my way through the tuc tuc drivers there to meet the bus i was ready for my bed. In PP i went to Toule Sleng (S21) the genocide museum and old school as mentioned before.I really deliberated what to do and spoke to some of the local people....ah yes forgot to say I learnt the Khmer language the last time i was here and remembered alot of it and the locals helped me to practice some more so i was getting very good at getting around using the Khmer language...well in a fashion!...anyway i spoke to a few the locals and they told me that they wanted people to see and understand their history and not to be fogotton. As part of the formation of the new government in Cambodia the UN agreed that the Khmer Rouge (Pol Pots army) never had to go to trial so people who carried out torture were never punished. the khmer people still feel very aggreived about this and it breeds alot of miss-trust in communities which i guess will take life times to repair, because of this they don't want their history and what they suffered to be forgotton or swept under the carpet so it is very important to them that people come and see for themselves. I decided to go along and was absolutley horrified. The school here are all pretty much the same designs; three story buildings with about 5/6 plain rooms on each floor, staircases at each end and walkways outside the front. At Toule Sleng/S21 there are 4 school buildings one was used for new prisoners who were to be tortured to find out what they knew and who their families are so they could be killed too (you really need to read up on the history as i can't write about it all here).Basically the whole idea behind Pol Pot's genocide was based on a communist ideal where everyone would be stripped of their wealth for the good of everyone and they would be made to work on the lands to produce rice,there's much more to it and more complicated than this but basically people were taken from their homes and made to give up everything and forced into the fields to work, anyone who opposed this would be taken into the forest and never be seen again (the killing fields) during Pol Pots regime 1/3 of cambodia's population died either murdered or starved to death or died as a result of poor health care, sanitation etc. People starved and many families were separated often the children taken off to be trained as soldiers in Pol Pots army, the Khmer Rouge,  the children were also trained to tell the guards if their parents were saying anything against the regime as a result many parents died. One of the things the Khmer Rouge did was murder all of the educated people, monks, teachers, government officials, people who spoke another language, wore glasses etc because it was felt that these people would oppose the community they were trying to create. S21 was used first to tourture and kill the old government people, then the itellects, then pol pot truned on his own army i think something like 17 thousnad people were killed over a 4 year period.in the museum the rooms still have the torturedevices and pictures on the victims mutilated bodies and i was horrified to also seein some rooms that there was still blood on the walls. the cells in one of the blocks were concrete rooms not big enought for a person to lie down with shackles where they were chained to the walls. there are pictures of many of the people who were taken there, head shots, and the horror in their eyes brought me to trears, some of them just children and some of them obviouisly didn't have a clue why they were there. then pictures of the guards the ones who carried out the torture just children themselves corrupted by evil. there was lots to see there,lots to take in and try to understand and testiments of people who lost members of their family there and who served there it was really moving but an experience i never want to repeat.After this i decided not to go to the killing fields i feel i would be visiting a grave and couldn't justify why i was going there.I did some of the other touristy sights while in PP the russian market which once sold guns and ammunition which now sells cheap clothes and dvds and the silver pagoda.After PP decided to go to Sihanoukville or Kompong Som as it used to be called. Again this place had really changed what was an quite undisturbed beach was now a big holiday resort and because of Khmer New year it was heaving. Unfortunately another thing i've learnt in SE Asia (well the parts i've been to) is that people don't throw their litter into bins they just throw it wherever they are standing on the ground, in the water,they have big rubbish dumps right outside of their house, it is awful and unfortunately by the time new year was over the water was littered with left over food and worse plastic bags.However its still a beautiful beach and i found out that the five star resort that was far down the beach from where i was staying had bought the whole beach and next year is making it into one huge resort so it may be the last time i could see it in some of its old natural beauty,maybe the same is true of the whole of cmbodia.i was really lucky to have come here all thoseyears ago.It was a ncie palce to chill out, get a tan and i met loads of children as there's lots of NGO projects set upon the beach for the street/beach children where you can go and see their art work which they want you to buy or their fruit or their jewelry in return the proejct sends them to school for half a day,i think beacuse i was there about 10 days and became i familiar face they would come and sit on my lounger and chat and listen to my ipod and asking me questions and they helped me with my khmer too. I had a really lovely time and was met somenew pals a couple of lovely english boys who had just fisished uni last summer and were having a big adventure before going home to get 'proper' jobs.After a nice chilled out rest I packed my bags ready for my next adventure, I went backto PP then took the bus to Vietnam...Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) here i come.....
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