Phnom Penh

This is the little boy who could count in English. He was using this piece of wood as a gun and was pretending to shoot me
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The Cambodian border crossing wasnt quite as painful as trying to get across from Thailand to Vietnam and this time the weather was absolutely beautiful. Its amazing how different each country is in terms of scenery even though theyre so close together. Cambodia is without a doubt the most stunning place ive been so far. It is very very green towards the end of the wet season and not so hilly as Vietnam. The people are so so friendly and I absolutely loved it there.

We arrived in Phnom Penh fairly early and went out to the Royal Palace. I think the thing that struck me most about Cambodia is the poverty and the way the people seem to have bounced back from the hoffic time that theyve had throughout history. The Royal Palace is stunningly beautiful but its disgusting to think that one gold candlestick in that place could feed an entire family for a month. The palace itself looks like one giant temple, its very white, the floors are made of silver tiles, theres more gold and sparkly stuff than you could shake a stick at and the gardens are full of flowers. Its right on the bank of the river not far from the hotel so the walk down there was nice in itself. We went to a great restaurant for a drink and saw our first elephant wandering along the street. Pretty random but then Asia never stops surprising me to be honest. Everything here is random.

Some of the babies at the orphanage being looked after by volunteers
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The next morning Luke, Tony and I organised to do some voluntary work at a local orphanage so we got up really early and went to the morning market to buy rice and school materials for the kids. We spent about 30 dollars and got a bag of rice so heavy it took 2 people to lift it and more felt tip pens and colouring paper than we could carry and headed to the outskirts of the city. The orphanage was very very poor but it seemed as though the kids were well looked after. They were certainly happy to see us and spent ages drawing us pictures and playing football with us and chatting. They have an advantage in that a lot of tourists come to help out so their english skills are good awhich should help them find work when they are too old to live there. There was about 40 children who have been sold or abandoned. A lot of families cant afford to keep their kids so they give them to orphanages as an alternative to selling them into the sex trade which is still very common. Its disgustingly easy to buy a child in Cambodia.There was a 2 year old boy at the orphanage who could talk and count up to 10 in English, he was the cutest kid ive ever seen and unbelievably intelligent for his age and it was great to do something useful with our time there as opposed to just shopping or sightseeing.

Aerial view from the plane to siem reap
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We decided to go to the orphange in the morning to cheer ourselves up because we were visiting S21 and the Killing Fields in the afternoon which i knew would be one of the most depressing places i would ever visit. We took a bus over to S21 with our local guide. If you speak to anyone in Cambodia its more than likely that a large proportion of their friends and relatives will have been murdered by the Khmer Rouge during the 1970's. Every single taxi driver or shop owner i spoke to told me the same stories about their parents, brothers and sisters sand friends who either died of starvation, disease or torture and execution. The Khmer rouge occupied the cities and moved the people into the countryside to work in the rice fields or build dams etc. Anyone who was considered to be intelligent or who may be a threat to the regime was taken to an execution centre to be tortured then clubbed to death in the killing fields where many people were buried alive. People who wore glasses or had soft hands therefore hadnt worked as farmers were killed, teachers, the military and doctors were murdered because modern medicine and education was banned. S21 is a former high school in Phnom penh that was turned into a prison camp. The camp is an odd place because it still looks like a 2 story school only its covered in barbed wire and chicken wire fencing to stop people from committing suicide by throwing themselves off the upper floors of the prison. The rooms are divided into tiny cells. The prisoners were killed for speaking to each other or rattling their shackles when they moved. Its hard to describe the place really because i think its something you'd have to see for yourself to understand.

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Similarly with the killing fields where prisoners were beaten to death with bamboo sticks then thrown into mass graves. The soldiers killed babies by battering them on the branches of trees. I think the most disturbing thing about the killing fields was not the huge memorial which holds the skulls and bones exhumed from the pits but that because of the rainy season the water has washed away a lot of the soil in the graves and the clothes the people were buried in have been exposed. Youre walking over t shirts and trousers of people who have been murdered. I think that after the wet season they remove the clothes that have appeared from the ground but maybe they didnt have chance to do it when we were there. The whole place was eerie even though it was brilliant sunshine and kids were playing and begging for money and cans of coke.  Cambodia is a very very sad place.

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Luke and I went out for dinner and suprise surprise it poured with rain. There was an enormous thunderstorm for the whole eveing so im not sure whether thats a bad omen or not!The dinner was nice though!