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After yet another bus journey filled with motion sickness, and minus an Aussie and a Sophie (the latter decided to get a boat to our next destination and the former went back home), we reached Phnom Penh!! Wow what a hell hole!!! The capital of Cambodia was poverty stricken and just felt.......well uncomfortable! Everywhere you turned there was a local trying to offer you anything from a tuk tuk to narcotics and there were beggers on every street corner, which was heartbreaking to see. After deliberating with our travelling companions, we decided to go to the National museum which was only across the street. There was room upon room of statues of the budda and other ancient artifacts which we could not work out due to everything being written in Khmer. After lounging in the museum garden we headed off to see the local market, which to be honest was just full of useless objects and ugly gold jewellery. Due to a fruitless day we all got ready for a night on the town!!! We ended up in a Thai restaurant (go figure) and then played pool, but after an hour of dancing to trashy 80's tunes, that we had put on due to taking over the music system, we realised that we were in a brothel!! I must say that this did not hinder our fun and we carried on dancing to Guns and Roses!!
The next day we all got a tuk tuk to the genocide museum. To give you a little back story the genocide museum actually used to be a school, but then during the Pol Pot reign it was turned in to a jail and torture chamber. The jail is locally known as S-21. The Khmer Rouge wiped out millions of Cambodians and used to interogate innocent people, torture them and then dump their bodies in pits. The people of Cambodia were unable to live their lives freely due to Pol Pots men breathing down their necks and watching their every move. It is hard to believe that this reign of terror only happened 30 years ago (ending just over a decade ago), but in some ways it makes you realise why Cambodia is the way it is today. I must say that I was moved to tears during my time in the museum, it was strange to stand in a cell the size of a toilet cubicle and imagine that 30 years ago an innocent Cambodian person probably died there. There was a room that had the faces of the people that were kept and tortured in the hellish prison we were in and as soon as you look at these photographs your stomach churns. After a very emotional few hours we headed off to the Killing Fields.
The Killing Field that we went to is the largest known site where Cambodian bodies were dumped after being murderd. It has the largest monument that incases the skulls and other bones of the bodies found in the Killing Field. When we walked around with our guide we saw the large pits that were once home to the dead bodies and just under the soil you could see the clothing once worn by them. It was a mind blowing experience to see plaques above the pits saying how many bodies had been found there. It really did send a shiver down my spine. What was very strange was that the place was so serene. There were beautiful trees and flowers around the pits and hundreds of butterflies peacefully flying around. I was yet again in disbelief about what had happend here not so long ago.
Once our emotional roller-coaster of a day was over we went to the lakeside bars of the city to meet a friend of Marcus's Adele who has been working as a teacher and living in Phnom Penh for the last year. She was a very lively and kind Scouser who took us to a really cool bar to unwind and ease the soul.
Cambodia was an intense place. The country and its people are still recovering from what has happened to them, but the people still live their lives by one rule: to be happy regardless of your situation. The country had an edge to it which I did not like and I felt very uneasy and unsafe there. Dispite all of this we met some of the most lovely people, who could not do enough for you, and the landscape of the country was absolutly beautiful and so untouched. I would love to go back to Cambodia, but I think I will have to reserve that journey for a time some way in to the future when it becomes more tourist friendly.
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