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As soon as we crossed the border everything changed so radically. We walked from the communist concrete grey immigration building to the intricately built Wat style building on the Cambodian side. The people changed from light skinned girls to dark, interesting looking faces of the Khmer people. The city of Phnom Phehn was completely different to what we expected from reading a book called "Off The Rails In Phonm Pehn" when the writer describes the "guns, girls and ganja" lifestyle of ex-pats during the 1990s. They must have really cleaned the place up as the streets were gleaming, elegant monks walked the city, the royal palace with its silver pagoda looked stunning and a water fountain sound and light display played every night. A far cry from the books description of the city in the 90s where 12 year old prostitutes lined the streets waiting for business in the polluted dusty streets. We took a tuk-tuk tour who took us to S21 a Khmer Rouge prison camp used during the genocide in the 70s. It was really shocking seeing this high school tuned death camp where rebels tortured their own people for information and took men, woman and children from all over the country here to starve and torture them before sending them to the killing fields to be killed. An estimated 2 million people died under the Pol Pot regime and many were tortured at this prison. After the fall of the regime there were only 8 survivors left in S-21. We were pretty traumatised by that experience after 2 hours of walking through the eerie classrooms turned torture chambers seeing thousands of photos the Khmer Rouge took of the victims when they entered the prison and more rooms of photos of the dead prisons who were tortured to death. We visited the Killing Fields were they finished them off and buried them in mass graves. It was a very hectic day full with a lot of emotions and we were in a daze for the whole day thinking of all those people that died and who something like this could happen. We took a bus to Siam Reap to see the spectacular temples of Ankor Wat and god there were hundreds of them!We watched sunset on the first day and spent the next day touring about 6 or 7 temples. We climbed a massive one with hundreds of steps in a Mayan ruins style temples. And visited one where they filmed Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie who on the same trip filming also adopted Cambodian baby Maddox. We were in a dilemma now about whether to spend another day temple touring or go through to Thailand. After a few beers we decided it was time to relax and get to a beach. We booked up a bus to leave the next morning and were not looking forward to it after hearing horror stories about the state of the road to the border. A 6 hour journey apparently on a crap dirt track and wobbly old bus…great. We got up at 5am for sunrise over Ankor Wat and were absolutely stunned to hear out bus broke down so they'll reimburse us with a taxi to the airport. What incredible world class service. So we got to the border in 3 hours, cleared immigration and got on a 6 hour bus to Bangkok, spent a few hours wandering China Town to kill time and got shipped off Ko Phangan where we would spend a few days resting. After the 30 hour journey of taxi, tuktuk, bus and boats trips all beginning with Ankor Wat at sunrise, I think we needed it!
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