We're in Phnom Penh now.

Our last day in Luang Prabang we got up at 0530 to watch the monks collect their daily alms, and then jumped on the bus to Vientiane. When we arrived there at 1900, we decided to head straight on to Pakse in the south, and the only tickets left were on the backseat where we couldn't even but the seats back! Anyway, we finally made it to Pakse at about 0700 the next morning!

Anyway, Pakse was nothing much, and the people here looked kinda depressed, so we decided we'd fly - yeah, Emma got in a propeller plane to Siem Reap (the flight took 55 minutes as opposed to nearly 48 hrs by land. Well, they sold us tickets that didn't exist, so we had to wait an extra day, which was cool coz we rented a moped and drove through village after village where the local kids all ran out to say hi. At one point we thought we were going to run out of fuel, before we realized that everyone and their next door neighbour had a "filling station". Anyway, got to Siem Reap am, and managed to do the temples the same day, so that we could carry on south. The temples are fairly breathtaking, but I thought that the most interesting thing was comparing the restauration work to the original - here we are, over 1000 years later, and we aren't actually skilled enough to make as good a job of it as they did!

Anywhooz, then it was off next morning on yet another fancy vip bus (not!) to Phnom Penh. Luckily this time one of the only other foreigners onboard managed to talk the driver into letting us get off in town (normally they drive you to either a family restaurant or a guesthouse out of town somewhere where they can get some provision! Today we've been to Security office 21, where the Khmer Rouge detained and tortured everyone from Scholars to farmers, wether they were Cambodians, Vietnamese, Australian or British. Anyone who trod one foot wrong, or uttered a wrong word was sent here. This place is grousome. It was a school until The Khmer Rouge "liberated"the city in I think 1975. We paid for a guide to really understand what went on here. This place really is testament to how absolutely brutal and sick humans can be! Almost every single person was tortured for days and months before being executed, women had their nipples cut off, and then scorpions dangled over the open wound to sting straight into the blood. Acid was poured into mens noses with their heads upside down, and people were suffocated to unconciousness in buckets of their own urine and faeces. Everything was maticullously documented, with mugshots of every single person that came in and out of S-21. As Japanese forces moved in, Pol Pot's sick mind became even more suspicious, so he started ordering all his own ranks killed as he thought they were plotting against him. It's hard to comprehend that this happened less than 30 yrs ago, pretty much every single Cambodian over 30 remembers a family member that was killed (around 1,7 million people where murdered). Our tuk tuk driver explained to us through a guide how Combatants came to him working in the fields one day and told him that he was on their "list"and how scared he was. He never knew why! After there we went to the killing fields which is where the prisoners were sent to be executed. They were battered to death with bamboo sticks, as bullets were too expensive as the amount of executions rose. Babies and small children were thrown against concrete walls. We spoke to one guy who was 27, so he was born just after the reign of the Khmer Rouge. He told us that a lot of people his age don't really beleive that it ever happened! Anyway, a really really horrible experience but I'm glad we did it. I read or heard somewhere today somewhere along the lines of: This was just the product of a series of events that let some tiny dark place everyone has somewhere in them to manifest and take over their minds. I mean, there's probably no doubt that Pol Pot, and his brothers and closest in command where mentally ill, but thousands and thousands of people joined him to kill their fellow citizens, and some their own families, out of fear at first, but from reading some of the biographies many of them came to enjoy it in some sick way! Just shows how little we know about ourselves!

Off now - have uploaded loads of photos - in old albums too :-)