A lot of travel, temple visits, massages and non-existent internet access has meant I'm now on day 5 in Cambodia so lots to write about..

On Saturday 5 of us started the Cambodia trip via a public bus from Saigon (they call them limousines!). The trip took about 7 hrs and we had a long stop at the Vietnam border and then the Cambodian border. The main thing I noticed along the way was how rural it is and the very simple bamboo houses on stilts. We arrived in Phnom Penh (pronounced p-nom peng) around 3pm and our hotel was less than a minute from the palace (good news - the prince is looking for a wife, bad news - too busy to visit him!). We had lunch at an NGO charity called Friends which runs a variety of projects for orphans, including the friends cafe. The staff are all trained as chefs or waiters and the food was fantastic - chickem amok is the local speciality and is like a really good thai curry.

Next we went on an orientation tour of the city - via the palace, museum and waterfront (with an elephant wandering along...) before going up to the rooftop of the foreign commonwealth club for a drink and enjoy the views. Dinner was at another charity venture and then a few of us went for a foot massage - very brave of me as I hate having my feet touched...but it was so relaxing.

Day 2 in Phnom Penh was extremely moving and showed man's inhumanity to man in brutal form. First stop was S-21, a former school used as an interrogation centre by Pol Pot's regime. We saw firsthand how classrooms had been used as cells and the torture used against anyone who was educated, wore glasses or didn't have calloused hands (Pol Pot was an extreme communist who wanted to return the country to a peasant state). Most rooms were sub-divided by brick walls so that each prisoner only had a few metres of space. In some rooms they had photos not only of the victims by also Pol Pot's henchmen - many as young as 12. The most moving aspect of the trip was meeting 1 of only 7 survivors from that camp - he was 48 when arrested and spent 4 months being interrogated and tortured before the camp was stormed by the vietnamese. He still bears the scars of his torture but is determined to tell people his story and ensure this never happens again.

I could write so much more about this but it is so traumatic and so visual that I hope my photos will help give a better image of the terror of the place.

We then drove to the killing fields and saw graphic evidence of what the trucks delivered to the camp under cover of darkness - thousands of prisoners brought to be killed and their bodies dumped in mass graves of 1000s. AS we walked through the fields we walked over bone fragments which rise to the surface after the rain, saw the clothing and then visited the stupa where thousands of skulls are stored as a memorial to the absolute inhumanity of man. Once the bodies were placed in the graves, chemicals were poured over so that no smell was noticed outside the compound.

Again, a very visual experience and almost impossible to put into words. I felt privileged to visit and just briefly understand what this amazing country has been through. This is evidenced by the fact that some of Pol Pot's regime now serve in the government and did not go to prison for their crimes...

After such a harrowing morning we went to the Russian market for lunch, had a wander around and did some haggling (birkenstocks for 3.40!!) before getting a tuc-tuc back to the hotel for a rest. Our evening entertainment was in the form of live kick-boxing followed by a meal and then a seeing hands massage (all the staff are blind and 'feel'their way round when massaging. I'm sure that in some countries my massage would be considered torture but it did the trick!!

Next installment follows...