Phnom Penh

We took a 6 hour cab from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh and arrived at around 9pm. We had booked to stay in The Local 2 but when we arrived, there was a problem, our room had somehow been double booked.
We went in search of somewhere else to stay for two nights but nowhere had even one night. The only other alternative was to stay at The Local 1, which was situated in another part of town about 20 minutes away.
Being so late we had no alternative and got in a tuk tuk to our new accommodation. The owner offered for us to stay in the penthouse of the Local 2, by way of apology, when it became available in two nights.
We only stayed at the Local 1 for a night. The room and staff were great but at 6am the neighbours were blaring Cambodian music out of their window, through to ours. Then at 8.30 building work started. We left that morning and booked a room closer to our original, preferred location on the riverside. The German manager looked like he was going to cry when we left.
The new place is where, a few years previously, Elton John had stayed and it was easy to see why. All the place needed was Barbara Streisand's greatest hits to be blaring out of the speakers to make the staff seem more camp. This is where the lightheartedness stopped.
We dumped our bags and prepared ourselves for an emotional day.
First was a visit Tuol Sleng Prison, a place used by the Kymer Rouge in the mid seventies to imprison 17000+ people. There were only 7 known survivors. The prison was a High School but was converted in order to torture, beat and commit mass genocide.
The building is now a genocide museum with most of it untouched, acting as a reminder of the horrors that were committed there. It was pretty harrowing stuff. Good job our next place to visit wasn't as ba...oh, wait, it was.
Next stop The Killing Fields.
This is where bus loads of prisoners and other people were taken to be executed and buried in mass, shallow graves. It was intense. The lush green grass had fragments of bone and material working its way to the bumpy surface. Every day more and more evidence rises through the ground. Such was the brutality of the Kymer Rouge an innocent looking tree was in fact used to smash babies skulls.
1 in 4 people died in Cambodia as a result of this brutal regime. It only happened just over 35 years ago. Simply mindblowing.
After seeing this it made us look at the country in a completely different way. There aren't many old people in Cambodia for - what are now - obvious reasons. Men or women in their 50's could potentially have been soldiers for the Kymer Rouge and committed or witnessed countless acts of inhumanity. It certainly was an eye opener and gave us a better idea of how far the country has come and how it is growing.
Most of the staff in the hostels we have met have worked long, long hours of a night, sleeping on the floor in reception, waiting for people to come in late, or get up early. They then go off to study in the daytime and repeat this every day! They are so tired but will do anything to better themselves. If most of the young people in Cambodia have this attitude the country has a bright future.
Emotionally drained, we dragged ourselves around the Russian Market but were completely disinterested. Instead we headed back in the tuk-tuk, with a different perspective.