Phnom Penh

We left Saigon by bus and when we finally got through immigration and the guy cheating $5 dollars off us for our visas, we got through into Cambodia. Whilst driving, you can immediately see the difference and realise that Cambodia is much much poorer than anywhere we have been so far. The roads are bumpy and some main roads are just dirt tracks. At the border, the children were begging and jumping at the windows at us on the bus.

We arrived safely in Phnom Pehn, which to be fair is a lot better than we expected but still some very poor areas. In the afternoon, we sat and had a late lunch with our friends and then watched a film in the common room of the guesthouse as we were very tired.

The Killing fields and S-21

The next day, we got a Tuk-Tuk to take us and our friends to the Killing fields, just outside Phnom Pehn. There is a huge pagoda there filled with the skulls of the Cambodian people who were massacred by the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975-79. It was horrible seeing the mass graves too. The skulls in the pagoda had been excavated from there, but there were bones and clothing everywhere, embedded on the ground you were walking on.

In the afternoon, we went to S-21, the prison where they kept and tortured Cambodian people before killing them or sending them to places like the Killing fields. We saw the cells they use to keep people in, the methods of torture they used and there were hundreds of mugshot photos of those who had been detained there. The Khmer Rouge seemed to have no respect for anyone, and they even tortured and killed those working for them and their soldiers-generally children.

In the evening we went for a walk along the riverfront and headed back for dinner with our friends.