Sua s'dei from Phnom Penh.

As I stated before, Phnom Penh was not my favourite place from my first impression, and it didn't do much to redeem itself - not helped by the tuk tuk driver who picked us up from the bus station not having a clue where our hostel was, despite telling us otherwise! Oh well, if we're not used to transport delays by now we never will be. Upon our return to the capital we promptly booked a tuk tuk to take us the the killing fields and S-21 prison the next morning.

Now the history of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's genocidal regime is a big hole in my history education - and I can't help but feel guilt at my lack of knowledge as a slight against the massive number or Cambodians murdered for want of a unified, Communist, agrarian society by an insane dictator with a screw loose.

The number of people reckoned to have been killed during the 4 years of the Khmer Rouge is guessed at between 900,000 and 3 million. Either way a high proportion of the population of 9 million was killed by their own people, the young men and women of the country who were brainwashed into the regime's beliefs. The killing fields themselves look unpreposessing from the entrance, the sprawl of tuk tuks outside the only thing belying that anything of interest may be inside the concrete walls. These particular killing fields were 14km out of the capital, and is one of many which were run across the country between 1975-1979. All of the original buildings were destroyed when it was discovered in 1979 by the opposition forces, but it still has a quiet, reverential feel you expect from a place where such horrors were committed. The anachronism between the excavated mass graves, glass cases of recovered clothes and teeth still visible in the ground, to the farmer planting his rice paddy through the back fence, is somewhat typical of a country still beset by landmines left from the Vietnamese war - when the US troops were trying to disrupt supply lines to the Vietcong. The haunting atmosphere of the 'killing tree', where babies were dragged from their mothers and dashed against the trunk, merely to save bullets, before their mothers were themselves killed, is something that I will never forget, and is a testament to the despicable acts the human race can commit.

They have built a stupa for the remains that have been exhumed, and it is filled with pile upon pile of skulls, many still with the trauma marks where they were beaten to death. I'm not usually one for emotion but the killing fields really affected me, and this was even before we got to S-21...

To continue our day of depressing history we went to S-21, the school turned prison where enemies of the new regime were sent - these purported enemies being perfectly innocent men, women and children. It's the kind of place that gives you goosebumps, that children used to play in the playgrounds where people were later hanged, and learnt their alphabet in classrooms which were turned into isolation cells and as torture chambers...it's difficult to describe your emotions. The most striking thing is the collection of photos of the 'prisoners', people whose only crime was to wear glasses, speak another language, having soft hands, living in the city, or basically just not being a peasant farmer for the new agrarian state.

I tend to be able to disassociate myself quite well from museums and the like, walking round S-21 at times felt like a dream, or a film set, but this place really got to me, the catalyst being the photo of a small boy, perhaps 5 years old, staring into the camera of the prison guard with tears in his eyes. There's no justice in the world that can bring that little boy back.

In the afternoon we went to the National Museum by mistake, it was OK, a lot of monuments and artifacts from Angkor Wat and the like so we were concerned that there would be nothing there when we finally got to Siem Reap! We made our way round the museum in swift course and finally made it to the Royal Palace, about a 2 minute walk away from where we were - D'oh! To be honest I was quite underwhelmed. Lots of it is closed off as it is still in use, the silver pagoda, whose floor is covered in solid silver tiles, was tarnished and needed a good polish, and was mostly covered in carpet, the jade Buddha was tiny and could hardly be seen from the distance we had to keep. However the Throne Room was quite impressive, lots of gold as usual and generally over-extravagant, but definitely fit for a King!

Comments on Cambodia

• Literally every scooter driver wears a face mask - no surprise though really as the roads are so dusty just outside the cities you can hardly see in front of you!
• Angry Birds t shirts are everywhere. I've never seen such a proliferation.
• Aerobics in the park is a big thing!
• The bin men at home have it easy - here the rubbish is piled in the gutter and they have to pick it up with squares of cardboard and throw it on the wagon. Bin bags DO NOT exist!!

Becca