CAMBODIA - Phnom Penh

Since starting travelling we have heard from many people of what a wonderful country cambodia is particularly in regards to the people, so we were all looking forward to it very much.

We got to the bus station in the capital and were mobed by people wanting to taxi us somewhere or offer us a guest house. We got in moto (a moped and 4 seater rickshaw style trailor) and were whisked off to the Lakeside which is at first glance quite grim place, but has more character than many other places in the city. The place we stayed in was but on stilts over the lake and was called Smile Guesthouse. They were very friendly and it was an excellent place to sit back at the end of the day and watch the sun go down over the lake. Mornings were equally interesting when fishermen paddled past crouched on their canoes checking their nets.

Phnom Penh is an interesting city. The people there are very welcoming and happy despite the terrible events of recent history. For those less familiar with world history I am refering to the Khmer Rouge Regime under Pol Pot. Although we knew that it would not be a pleasent experience Karl and I felt that we should try and get a better understanding of what happened. We hired a moto for the day from the guesthouse and he took us firstly to S-21.

S-21 which means security prison 21 is a former high school converted to a detention and torture centre during the Khmer Rouge regime. It is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It comprises 5 school buildings which were used to hold people for interrogation. The museum does an incredible job at conveying the situation which i can descibe as nothing less than harrowing. Some rooms just had two items in them, a bed in the middle and a photo on the wall of how the rooms were used, normally with a tortured body on. It was obviously not difficult to imagine what a nasty place this was and how lucky we are not to have experienced anything like the cruelty of the Pol Pot regime. Which is why the site was particularly wierd, a place of such suffering and revulsion being a school, normally a place of such innocence. We watched a film about that period in Cambodian history in the museum which explained the background to the situation and we then left the museum to head for the killing fields. We left stunned, stunned that some of what we had seen there we would never be able to explain to anyone else. If we were able to talk about some of it we would not be able to get across the grusomeness repulsion of it.

The killing fields were a number of sites outside the city where truck loads of people were taken daily to be murdered. To save amunition the Khmer Rouge often beat people to death. The Killing Fields we visited have been opened to the public as a reminder of the past and the remember those who perished. A Stupa has been errected near the entrance of the site and it has been filled with skulls of the victims. In the time that the Khmer Rouge were in power they murdered between 1.4-2 million people, about a quarter of Cambodia's 7 million population. Walking round it was easy to feel insignificant amongst the mass graves of so many and i left with a certain anger and disbelief that anything like this could and has happened and in recent history!

I am sure by now that anyone who is reading this is feeling a little shocked and depressed but Cambodia does have a lot to show for itself other than its blood stained recent history. We paid a visit to the Royal Palace which is an incredible site. It is the home Cambodian Royalty and boasts an incredible architectural style. The style prioritises the roof and is ofter much larger in size than the rest of the building. I presume that, like China, the gold colour is used as a symbol of royalty and power. Highlights have to be the Silver Pagoda with it's solid silver floor and the Throne Hall. Further on through the complex is a scale model of Angkor Wat the old seat of the Khmer Empire before moving to Phnom Penh and the next destination on our trip.

After seeing the horrifying sights of the genocides in Cambodia and the war in Vietnam I was very much looking forward to the spectacle of Angkor, perhaps one of the places I have been looking forward to more than anywhere.