And so finally we reached Phnom Penh and Cambodia. This is the last new country on our list and we only have a week or so here before we head to Bangkok and then home. We're glad to be here, but a bit sad that the adventure is coming to an end!

Finding accomodation in Phnom Penh is the least physical effort we've had to make so far. You can try and resist them but eventually you will be adopted by a tuk tuk driver whether you want to or not and they will drive you from hotel to hotel for very little charge until you find the place you want to be. Actually we just went for a room because it was dark outside and we were both sick of looking, and then we moved out of it first thing next morning because the room wasn't great, but despite that, being adopted by a tuk tuk is a pretty good way to go!

On our first day we went to S21. This is an old school that was converted into a prison and interrogation facility by the extreme communist party, the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's. Much of it had been left exactly as it was found when the Vietnamese arrived in Phnom Penh in 1979 and it's incredibly grim. Displays have been installed which show the brutality of the Khmer Rouge soldiers (though to honest the building itself tells you that) and among other deeply moving things are the hundreds and hundreds of mug shots of the people who were bought into the prison and never returned. It's a really horrible place.

That evening we went to a community cinema where you pay entry per day (and there are often three films showing per day - winner!). We lay on the mattresses at the front and sipped beer as we watched Clear Skin (which is a pretty bad film as it turns out) and generally had a luxurious and relaxing evening.

The next day we went to the killing fields. This was an extermination camp where prisoners from S21 were bought to be killed as secretly and as efficiently as possible. At first it's intake was 60 to 70 people every week or two. But by the end of four years of increasingly paranoid Khmer Rouge rule, the number was around 300 per day. We listened to the excellent audio tour and left the place utterly speechless. There are so many things there that break your heart - the huge stupa filled with victims' skulls, the people's stories told through the audio guide, and the rags of clothes that are slowly working their way back up through the soil - you don't think anything of the odd bits of cloth stuck in the mud path until you realise what they are. And there are so many more horrific things that really have to been seen to be believed.

We had a bit of time in the afternoon so we went to see the Royal Palace. Unfortunately the King wasn't in, but we did get to look around some of the opulent buildings. We also had ice creams and listened to some traditional music before heading to a friendly rooftop bar to eat spring rolls and catch up on the Olympics.

There's probably a pink cupcake, bubbly side to Phnom Penh but for us being there was pretty hard work. Partly because of the fact that all the streets look the same and I spent most of my time not knowing where I was (which bothers me, apparently!) but mostly because of the awful recent history of Cambodia. A history you could so easily miss if you didn't already know that it was there.

I've generally been trying to keep my sentimentality floodgates closed on these blogs, but our visits to these awful places are probably over now and so I hope you'll forgive me if I just let a little bit of it out now. I want to finish this blog with a comment that I saw in the visitor's book at S21. This particular comment struck me, not because I'm especially religious, but because in a book full of comments expressing sympathy for the victims of the genocide and heartfelt wishes that this kind of thing never happens again, it said all that and also captured an important truth for me - that these horrible things aren't remote from us just because newsreaders can encapsulate the groups involved in a single word like "Cambodians", or "Nazis", or maybe "Afghans". These awful things are done by and happen to people. Loving, fallible and intelligent people just like you and me.

God help and guide humankind