I won't write a seperate blog about Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) as there isn't too much to write. The first day we arrived we did the guide book walking tour in the rain which wasn't very interesting. The second day we visited the Reunification Palace which had some nice architecture and interior decoration, in the afternoon we went to see a film at the cinema. Basically Saigon is a big, busy city and our gateway to Cambodia.

On our last day in Vietnam we crossed the border into Cambodia on a coach and made our way to Pnom Penh. The first thing I noticed was how much dirtier the city was compared to Vietnamese cities. There was rubbish everywhere and the suburbs appeared very poor. Sadly we were to leave the cheap luxury we had found in Vietnam behind at this stage as we realised when we reached our expensive hostel just outside the centre of town. The common area was nice with a bar and a very small pool but our room resembled a prison cell, the bathroom had no door ... and the shower was like trying to wash yourself in the same quantity of water you might find in a puddle :-). The positives was that it had air conditioning and was pretty quiet at night so we managed to get some decent sleep.

The first afternoon in the city we walked (in the stifling heat) to the Kings Palace in the centre of the city. This was spectacularly beautiful (especially compared to the grubby city just outside) and had been built using French architecture techniques but Cambodian design (which basically means it won't fall down) . There were stunning gold and cream designs on the many buildings housed within the palace walls. One of the buildings was the silver pagoda which was a huge building with floor tiles made from solid silver. You could only see a small section of the tiles as they were being protected with carpeting and the bits you could see weren't that impressive (mum you could easily make more beautiful floor tiles) but they were solid silver. This pagoda was used as a shrine to Buddha and was full of gold statues of Buddha. There was also a 90kg solid gold Buddha with 2086 diamonds set into it, sadly too heavy and well protected to steal. Personally I think the building looked nicer from the outside and there are only so many small gold Buddhas you can look at but the value contained within the room must be astronomical.

In the evening we tried some Cambodian cuisine close to our hostel. This included Amok which was pretty good. Again this was sadly not as cheap as it would have been in Vietnam. It seem the tourist infrastructure in Phnom Penh isn't that well developed and therefore there isn't the competition to drive down cost.

Day two we set off to see the Killing Fields and Prison Museum which had been the main purpose of our visit to Phnom Penh. Before we started out on our travels I am ashamed to admit I knew almost nothing about the history of Cambodia, if you'd asked me who Pol Pot was I would have had no idea. I have now read several books on the horrific genocide and political struggle the country went through only 40 years ago. The museums we visited in Phnom Penh bought tears to our eyes and we walked through many rooms containing the pictures of some of the 3 million people who were killed at the time and some showing before and after horrific torture pictures. The killing fields is where they found mass graves of thousands of men, women and children killed with farming equipment and hammers (bullets were expensive) over 3 years. They tell tales of babies being murdered by being thrown against trees whilst there mothers watched perched on the edge of the mass graves and other such harrowing tales I won't go into details about. At the end of the tour was a memorial to those killed at the site and contained in the memorial are hundreds of skulls found in the graves marked as men, women or children with ages and murder weapons used.

The prison museum is a school building that was turned into a prison and torture centre at the time, here we could see the beds where dead bodies were found tied up and on the wall were pictures of the badly tortured individuals found on the same beds. We were both extremely emotional throughout tours and the morning was very draining. I think it is crucial that anyone visiting Cambodia goes and visits these museums as it puts perspective on where the country is now and occasionally Cambodian people seem to refer to points in history as before or after Khmer Rouge.

For those of you who don't know about the Cambodian genocide I can recommend two books; 'Survival in the killing fields' and 'First they killed my father'. Both of these books are extremely harrowing accounts of peoples lives during the rule of the Khmer Rouge and some of the facts are almost unbelievable.

We didn't do much for the rest of the day and in the evening managed to find a place that sold cheap, delicious pizza. The next day it was time to head up to Saen Monorom for the elephant part of our adventure.

Alice
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