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Phnom Penh - Tuesday 27th November
Our 6 hour bus to Phnom Penh was made interesting by a mid-journey disembarkation so that we could walk across a broken bridge, while the bus squeezed over on the footpath and remaining bit of road, scraping a nice gash in its paintwork in the process, to avoid the big hole in the middle where the concrete had broken through. We were also pleased to share the ride with someone's pet monkey - noone batted an eyelid at either event.
We arrived in Phnom Penh with a plan to meet with our travelling companions from Laos, Caroline and Flemming - they're on their way into Cambodia after a tour of Vietnam and our paths crossed conveniently for a few days. After a minor logistical nightmare that involved borrowing our tuk-tuk driver's phone and several frenzied emails, we met up sucessfully and went for a few beers in a riverfront bar. After catching up on their tales of Vietnam, and ours of the rest of Laos and Cambodia so far, we retired to our hotel - quite a nice one, and our room was cheap as it was on the fifth floor with no lift (97 steps up!).
Phnom Penh after dark is rat infested, unlit, shadowy and sinister - neither of us enjoyed walking around at night, and we were advised not to carry a bag... definitely wise advice after we saw the remains of someone's bag that had possibly been forcibly removed from their person, on the floor.
We met up the next day and clambered onto our arranged tuk-tuk for a trip to some of the further away sights in the city. First stop was the S21 prison - one of many where the Khmer Rouge sent prisoners for torture and then death. It was an understandably eerie place, especially as it had originally been built as a school - it was similar to Auschwitz in that the gardens were manicured and from the outside the place was pleasant in appearance. It was even a lovely blue-skied sunny day... a far cry from the haunting portrait photos and post-torture biographies of the victims that were hung up inside, the blood stained mattresses, and small wood and brick cells that the classrooms had been converted into to hold the prisoners. Most of the prison guards and torturers had also met their end there, many being children themselves, in the Khmer Rouge's plot to reduce the population to their ideal number.
Still recovering, we headed to our next destination - one of the Killing Fields. The first sight when you arrive is a tall monument with a glass middle containing a stack of 9,000 or so skulls of the people they've exhumed from the mass graves at just this one field... of which there are many hundreds. Wandering around, we read more of the history and noticed torn pieces of clothes and bones still sticking out of the ground in some places...
We're all in shock from our heavy day, and this is added to when our tuk-tuk driver decided that at 1pm, we'd finished the one day tour we'd agreed, and need to pay him more for any further transport services... we think this is because none of us were keen on going to the shooting range (which they get a commission on). We decided not to play the game, and got him to take us back into town for us to do the rest of the city tour on foot ourselves.
The next day we headed out on the Lonely Planet walking tour of Phnom Penh - one of the highlights was watching the escalator trainers in the shopping centre - there's only one set of 'moving stairs' in the whole country and people come from far and wide to (hesitantly) have a go, with a helping hand from the trainers.
We watched the Killing Fields film on Flemming's laptop that evening - it spooked me out even more about the city, and I insisted that Dave get us a tuk-tuk for the two minute walk through the dark, ratty market which was the only way back to our hotel. It felt silly afterwards, but we've both still got this feeling about the place that's unsettling... whilst we have enjoyed learning more about Cambodia's history, seeing the city and meeting with Caroline and Flemming again, we're glad to be moving on to Vietnam tomorrow...
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