For a country that is incredibly poor we have been a little surprised at how reasonably well the road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was, considering the tortous route we had when first entering the country. PP is reasonably well maintained compaired to the rest of Cambodia (it's all relative) but this has probably been as a result of the fact that this is the home of the Royal Family and the enormous amounts of money that have been brought into the country by foreigners, aid agencies and the sex trade (this is the home of Gary Glitter). Our first sight when entering PP was a group of wild monkeys wandering around one of the buildings and an elephant strolling along the main street! Whilst in most other big cities it is common to see cars creating traffic jams, here you risk getting run over by the hoards of tuk-tuks or worse a few nights in jail after having given one of the annoying drivers a punch. Each time we come out of a restaurant, shop or museum we are landed upon by 6 or 7 drivers all demanding to know where we are going and do we want a tuk-tuk to get there. We even had the same driver follow us around for 2 days - it was all Carol could do to stop Chris thumping him! The reason there are so few cars is that carjacking seem to be a major past-time here, so few are willing to take the risk of being relieved of their Toyota Camry (these comprise about 99% of the cars in Cambodia, most of which are stolen in Thailand and smuggled across the border). Tuks-Tuks rule the road as there is no public transportation at all in the city.The only other types of cars you tend to see are the shiny, new Toyota Landcruisers driven by the Aid Agencies, of which there are an incredible 1,500 different ones located here in PP. Most guidebooks about this country are rife with stories of the dangers befalling foreigners if they act unwisely i.e. never carry a bag of any kind and stay in places close to your hotel in lighted streets after dark - we are not throwing caution to the wind! This city is not really a big tourist destination as the sites are few and far between. However, whilst we wait for our passports to be returned by the Vietnam Embassy with our visa for the next stage of the trip, we are taking in some of the key areas of the city. Before the Khymer Roge came to power, Phnom Penh was a thriving capital city of 2m people. The Khymer Rouge forced the inhabitants out of the capital to work in the countryside to undertake hard labour and PP was reduced to a poulation of around 45,000. The leader Pol Pot - Brother Number One - as he was known, set the calender back to Year 0 in order to cleanse the country and start anew. Today we visited the museum of the genocide that occurred under the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. The museum is the actual site when prisoners were tortured and murdered and it has been deliberately left pretty much as it was found. This includes blood on the walls and ceiling and also graphic, grisly pictures of the bodies as they were found. The four buildings were originally a primary school but under Pol Pot's orders were converted into a prison called S21, used for the purposes of "interrogation" and if you were lucky, just plain old imprisonement. Only seven people survived their time here. Men, women and even children were brought to this prison to be interrogated in the name of the cleansing revolution with the aim of getting confessions from all for their anti-revolution activites - strangely they never failed to get a confession! Individuals were kept in cells crudely built in the old classromms, no more than 0.8m by 2m or there were mass detentions where up to 30 people would be chained to the walls of a room 8m by 6m. In many of the "cells" there were still splatterings of dark brown blood on the walls and ceilings. When the regime was overthrown in 1979 by invading Vietnamese forces and they entered the prison, they found 14 bodies that had just been left in the torture chambers where they died. People were not just executed here, they were mutilated until their bodies could take no more - some of the pictures in the cells were horrific and it left us feeling pretty sombre. Pol Pot eventually died at the age of 73 in 1998 and had never been prosecuted for his crimes. Only now are they starting to get the legal process in place to try some of those involved in the atrocities of the time. In fact although the Khymer Roge were overthrown in 1979, they kept up a vigorous guerilla campaign until 1998. From S21, the dead prisoners were taken to the infamous 'Killing Fields', located 10 miles outside PP. This was our next stop. Here, thousands of people were buried in anonomous mass graves. Many of the mass graves have been uncovered and have been found to contain thousands of people per grave. Some of the graves still contain the clothing of the dead. At the site, a giant 'stupa' (a traditional burial place similar to a tomb) has been built and the skulls of the dead are located here as a reminder of what happened. It is a surreal building, in the style of a traditional temple building but it is about 100ft high and is mostly made of glass. The skulls are stored on glass shelves all the way to the top. Again, a very sombre day. In order to get a change of pace, we decided to take up our Tuk-Tuk drivers' offer of going to have a blast on the shooting range in exchange for a few dollars. Little did we know that what he meant was that we would go around the back of an army location where they would be happy for us to pay to have a blast on what we suspect were their weapons!! First, we had to choose what weapons we wanted from the large array on offer. Carol decided not to partake and so let Chris loose in the big boys store. Chris decided on the Russian AK-47, favoured by nutters around the world and the American M-16 also looked like fun. In fact, the M-16 still had 'Property of the US Army' etched on it! On the shooting range, a target was loaded up about 150ft away and with a bit of instruction, Chris was away. They even gave him a camoflage outfit to make it even more gung-ho. Much fun was had blasting away, but the ante was upped when Chris flicked the switch from 'single shot' to 'automatic' and got to blast away Arnie style. Nonetheless, the target took a good pounding as you can see from the photo. For a final adreneline rush, they brought out the hand-grenades and asked if we 'wanted a go'. In the spirit of complete mania and gung-ho, Chris decided 'what the hell'. They made him practise by throwing a stone first to make sure of no errors once the pin was out! Then a rip of the pin, a good lob into the little pond and hey presto, we have a big explosion! Chris is now wondering if he can join the SAS and do it for free! The monarchy has only been restored in Cambodia in recent years and the Royal Palace is home for the King. The King is actually a gay ballet dancer, previously living in Paris and who was has come to the throne due to the previous King's abdication. We took a few hours to visit the palace which from afar looks impressive but up close it is suffering from neglect and needs some renovation. It is not a patch on the Royal Palace in Bangkok. Many of the rooms are not open to the public and all in all it was a bit disappointing. There are no photos as they wanted an additional $7 on top of the entry fee if you wanted to bring a camera and camcorder in. We thought this was a bit of a cheek so didn't bother. This is our final stop in our stop trip to Cambodia, so now we head south and into Vietnam.