Six hours on another bus brought us to the capital city of Cambodia; Phnom Penh. Thanks to our lovely friends Chris and Christy we had set ourselves up with reliable accommodation for the evening. We had booked into the Mad Monkey hostel owned and operated by a nice young British chap. Our Tuk Tuk driver that brought us to our hostel was a nice, very well spoken Cambodian named Lan. He offered to drive us to be our tour guide the following day, as we were planning to visit the infamous killing fields in the morning.
We got to Phnom Pehn late and therefore only had time for dinner at a nearby Greek restaurant, oh how I've missed Mediterranean food, and then headed back to our hostel for much needed sleep.

In the morning, we had high hopes for a nice long gym workout. We investigated a gym about a 15 minute walk from our hostel. Easy enough, except for the fact that the Phnom Penh address system is so messed up that Google couldn't even crack it's mysterious code. Addresses make no sense and apparently are completely irrelevant. Where a gym was supposed to be located stood a dilapidated apartment block. So instead of a workout, we settled for a nice long walk.

We got back to the hostel, cleaned up, made our way out to get some lunch - there was actually a salad place right down the street from our place - I was over the moon! And finally met up with Lan at 12 noon.

Before heading out to the Choeung Ek killing fields Lan explained his own experience with the Khmer Rouge rule. He lost his father and several uncles to the evil dictatorship. This really set the mood for what we were about to see. The killing fields tour was well put together. It was very informative and respectful for the thousands of innocent civilians that were brutally murdered there. It's hard to explain just how powerful an experience it was to visit the killing fields. It was an event and time period that not enough people know about, and I urge everyone visiting Cambodia to take a tour.
After about 2 hours we had finished up the tour and the short film and were ready to head out.

As our moods were stark and our interest peaked we figured we might as well continue our tour on the same theme, and therefore had Lan leave us at the old S21 Prison, now Tuol Sleng Museum to see where the victims lived before being sent to the fields. As you can imagine, it was gruesome and difficult to look at, but very important, as well as shocking. It's amazing the brutality and torture that was being conducted on innocent people quite literally in the middle of the city. After another couple of hours we were ready to call it a day. My head was spinning from all the sad and horrifying information I had ingested and also pounding from having read about a million tiny black words on countless signs.

We walked back to our hostel and plopped down on a comfy couch on the roof of the hostel as the sun was beginning to set. We relaxed and watched yet another stunning sunset and planned out our evening. It turned out the Cambodian International Film Festival was going on. We figured dinner and a movie could be a welcomed change.

We dined just down the street from our hostel on soup, salad, and wine for me and a burger and beer for Adrian and after headed out to the Film Festival venue. As we were running a bit late and were still struggling to make sense of addresses, we grabbd a TukTuk for the rest of the way. After several wrong turns we finally made it there.

The film ended up being an American made film about an American G.I that went missing around the Cambodian border during the Vietnam and had been missing ever since. It was an very interesting film called xxxxx worth a view and very topical having spent a day at the killing fields and about to head over to Vietnam. After the movie we checked out the Phnom Penn night markets, enjoyed some yummy ice cream and went back to the hostel for the night.

After a big day yesterday, and getting ripped off on our workout, we decided to indulge ourselves with a day at a very shi-shi gym. We ended up spending 3-4 hours there. Cardio, weight training, swimming, and lounging in the sun poolside. It was lovely!!

After a late lunch we headed back to the hostel to check out. Unfortunately they were fully booked out and we had only booked in two nights. So we grabbed a TukTuk and made our way across town to our accomodation for the night.

The hotel itself wasn't terrible, but the area was very local (read busy, full of traffic, streets lined with interesting food stalls, ect.) We stayed in and watched a movie in the lovely A/C until our hunger got the best of us. We journeyed out of the hotel and down the street, unfortunately the only thing we were able to find was a strange food court at a very strange mall.
After a walk through this strange establishment and dining on surprisingly ok pizza we went back to the hotel and settled in for the night.

In the morning, we packed up and checked out of our hotel. We grabbed a TukTuk and made our way over to the bus station. After an hour wait we were on the bus and on our way to the beach; Sihanoukville.