Our border crossing into cambodia was very straight forward, no pushing, no shoving. Everything went smoothly and it was a nice journey to Phnom Pehn our first stop in Cambodia. We stayed in a guesthouse by the lake. Our first full day in Phnom Pehn we hired a tuk tuk driver to take us round some of the sites. We went out to the Killing Fields first at Choeung Ek where thousands of people were massacred between 1975 to 1979. In 1980 the bodies of 8985 people, victims of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge comrades were exhumed from 86 mass graves. As you can imagine it was a very grave experience. There was still a lot of cloth from the victimes clothes lying around and some bones too. A large memorial has been built to remember the victims which contains all the unearthed skulls demographically arranged on glass shelves. It's horrific to think things like that are able to happen. Anyway while looking round the fields we almost stepped on a snake! It was bright green and slithered out right in front of us. I saw it just as we were about to stand on it and held Lauren back. I got the fright of my life!

After the Killing Fields we went on to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, otherwise known as S21. It was a horrific experience. The museum itself was really well set up and gave a lot of information about it. Basically S21 was a secondary school which was transformed into a prison and interogation centre. From 1975 to 1979 an estimated 20,000 victims were imprisoned there. Mug shots of all the prisoners are on display for visitors to see. The classrooms were all transformed into cells and the prison is surrounded by barbed wire. There was still blood stains on the wall. It really wasn't nice.

That afternoon we planned to go to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda but it was shut so we went to the central Market instead. It was a really big market with lots of things to buy. Luckilly we ponly had an hour to spend there so couldn't get too carried away spending money!

The next day we left for Sihanoukville but a few days later we arrived back in Phnom Pehn for a day. This time we got to see the Silver Palace and Silver Pagoda. The buildings were really impressive and consisted of a number of different buildings. The architecture was beautiful and we spent the afternoon looking round them all and learning about Khmer culture.

I really enkoyed Phnom Pehn. It is a really nice city and I enjoyed driving around in our tuk tuk watching people go about their daily routines. We learnt a lot in Phnom Pehn and definitely had our fair dose of dark tourism. We both tried Amok which is traditional Cambodian food. It was very nice, quite like a curry. What I didn't like about Phnom Pehn was the rat in our room, yes rat! It came in and kept us awake all night, bit through my handbag covering it in holes and climbed up onto Lauren's bag and chewed through her toothpaste. It must have had some teeth on it. We had to sleep the rest of the night with the light on.