Beaches, Ancient Temples and Genocide - CAMBODIA!!!!
After a non eventful 6 hour bus journey from Ho Chi Minh I arrived into Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city (although it was quite amusing watching the Spanish guy stress out about getting his change of $75 from his visa payment. It took the bus guy over half the trip to give it to him yet the locals got their change straight away). As always tuk tuk drivers were waiting for us eagerly to take us to hotels and to get our business for trips out to the killing fields.

I was not in the mood for bargaining over a dollar so hopped straight into a tuk tuk at the agreed price of $3 and went in search of a hotel. I was in for a rude surprise after Vietnam as here the quality was lower for the price you paid. I finally settled on a room in a hotel not to far a walk from the main sites and the waterfront.

It was now mid afternoon so not really any time to organise much but to just wonder around the streets and get a feel for the place. My first impressions of this city is that it was a bit of a dump - why??? - because everyone seemed to use the streets as a dump and it was smelly, busy and maybe I was just in a bad mood but I didn't take a liking to Cambodia on my first afternoon.

The following day I took a tuk tuk out to the Killing Fields (about 14km's from the city). The Killing Fields are now a memorial site to those that were slain here back in the 70's by the Khmer Rouge. From 1975 - 1979 around 2 million of the 7 million population died throughout Cambodia as a result of this war. A war of Cambodian's against Cambodian's and to think that this happened during my life time is such a disgrace. How can something like this go on in a country and the rest of the world be so ignorant. And to think that it took more than another 25 years for justice to be bought to the people responsible for this (in which time the main instigators had died). As a result today's population is very young having lost most of the older people during this time.

That afternoon I visited the Royal Palace. It was very beautiful and filled in an hour or so of my day. A quiet evening was then had watching TV. Satellite TV is great and there a several movie channels to choose from.

The following day I packed up and headed for the beach. Phnom Penh was not a city that had endless options of activities and the beach was beckoning me once again.

Only a 4-5 hour bus journey I was in Sihanoukville and being whisked away on a moto to a guesthouse close to the beach. By mid afternoon I was sitting back watching the water from one of the many beachfront restaurants and as soon as happy hour closed in it was time to watch the sunset whilst sipping on a Mojito. The next week was spent doing pretty much the same each day. Laying back on a sun lounge during the day reading and being hassled by the kids to buy bracelets (which I bought way too many of but at least I know that they are spending it on food or their education) and then cocktails at sunset, dinner and bed (what a hard life!!!). I sampled the local dishes, my favourite being Amok (like satay)and the baracuda fish was also excellent. There were Seafood BBQ's everywhere as well and one could feast on squid, fish and prawns for a mere $3. Whilst here I also spent a few days on Bamboo Island. An hours boat journey (that is an hour on a slow boat) and you were away from the touts of the mainland beaches. Pristine waters and rustic bungalows (I shared mine with a rat). Days were spent swimming and doing very little (nothing to do even if you wanted too). Island paradise with a backpackers budget. Once back on the mainland I couldn't resist but spend a couple more nights of sipping cosmo's and watching sunsets but then it was time to drag my lazy butt out of there.

Before heading north I had to go back to Phnom Penh (otherwise it was a 10 hour bus journey) and so I had an afternoon to fill. I had missed on my previous visit the S21 Museum (Tuol Sleng), an old high school that was used as a prison camp during the Khmer Rouge reign. It is thought that 17,000 people where killed here with only 12 known survivors. It was horrific and to see what sort of torture went on in this place was just heart breaking. I had not felt anything like this since my visit to Aushwitz on my journey through Europe over 12 years ago. I spent quite a few hours here reading facts and stories of what happened. I had also read whilst at the beach a couple of books about people's personal experience during this time, 'Stay Alive My Son' by Pin Yathay and 'First They Killed My Father' by Loung Ung, (both which were excellent reads and gave an first hand account of what life was like) which helped give a foundation of understanding of life for Cambodians during this time and made the visit to the museum even more emotional.

More information can be read about S21 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum

On my return from the museum I saw an elephant with its owner walking down the main waterfront street. Even the locals were amused by this (I then saw another one the following day on our way out of the city).

The next day I headed north to Battambang so that I could catch the boat the following day to Siem Reap. The journey through the Mekong Rivers and the lake past floating villages was supposed to be quite scenic and so I made this detour wrather than head straight to Siem Reap. I arrived into Battambang early afternoon. After an excellent lunch I headed out on an overpriced tour with a local uni student on the back of his moto to see the surrounding sights of the area. It was very pituresque but the ride was very bumpy, dusty and uncomfortable on the dirt roads. One of the sights that we visited was the Killing Cave, a large cave that was used during the Khmer Rouge reign to dispose of bodies (they first clubbed the victims on the back of the neck and then they fell deep into the cave several metres below to perish). On the same hill where the cave was located were several buddhists temples. Here my driver and I had a chat with one of the local monks. Whilst driving out from the hill we noticed many swallows exciting a cave in the side of the hill. First there were hundreds of them and then it became thousands and then it was hundreds of thousands. They just kept coming out and as we drive back to town we followed the line of them which was becoming several kilometres long with still more of them swarming out from the cave.

The next morning was the boat trip. There were many foreigners on the boat but also the same amount of locals as it was the local boat (not a boat trip just for tourists although the tourists paid A LOT MORE than the locals). The journey was just as I was told 'SCENIC'. It was great and took about 6 hours. We stopped half way for a loo stop and lunch break at one of the floating villages. I decide that I would use the toilet here as the one of the boat was not that desirable. Thank god I only had to do a pee as the toilet was just a square cut in the wooden floor straight down to the river. The same river that they bathed in and washed everything in. I didn't partake in eating lunch at this place.

Once off the boat we had a 15 minute tuk tuk drive to the town. A tuk tuk driver was waiting for me as it was included in my ticket price. I had met a couple of guys at the hotel in Battambang that were also on the boat and we decided to stay at the same place so that we could share travel costs around the temples and also Tim (UK) had decided that he would join me in the border crossing from Cambodia into Thailand into Laos.

The guesthouse we stayed at was quite reasonable for $5us per night inclusive of bathroom and TV and was also close to the nightmarket and plenty of eating places.

The following day we would be heading to the temples of Angkor Wat on a day pass. The day pass however can be purchased the day before at 4:45pm and you can enter on it to view the sunset which is exactly what we did. We could only see the temple from a distance from the hill that we were perched on (with several hundred other tourists) but even so it was a breathtaking sight. The sunset however was a bit of a dissappointment.

The next day was an early start as we wanted to be at the temples for sunrise which was 5am. I was up and about and ready by 4:45am. There was no sign of the boys and so by 5 minutes to 5 I was knocking on their door. Matt (Aus) had decided to cycle out so had left an hour earlier, Tim (UK) however had decided to fall back asleep after his wakeup call. Boys being boys though he was ready in no time and we were in our tuk tuk and heading out in the pitch black towards the temples. We decided that we would view the sunset from within the main temple of Angkor Wat. It was no dissappointment and once it was full light we started our 12 hour day of discovering the many temples that this area has to offer. I couldn't even tell you how many I saw but we walked up and through and around many of them. One of them we even had to travel about 15 extra km's out to see and each time we decided that we wanted to see more and go further afield our tuk-tuk got more expensive.

At one of our temple stops I witnessed 12 people (adults and children) get out of a Camry (Toyota Camry's are the car of choice here). I could not believe it and kept counting over and over to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing. The family saw what I was doing and laughed and confirmed to me that yes there were 12 of them.

By 5pm we had had enough and were no longer keen to wait around for the sunset (and our tuk-tuk drivers were ever so pleased that we decided on this) so we headed back to our guesthouse for a bit of r'n'r. That night we ate $1us meals at the local street vendors and I finally got around to trying some fruits that I had seen but they were too big to buy and consume myself. One was jackfruit which I wasn't too keen on and the other a durian which I liked. It tasted a lot like spring onions. A bit weird for a fruit to taste like a vegetable but it was a bit of alright and I could see it making a really nice dip if it was mixed with some cream cheese.

The next day the boys were thinking about visiting a temple a 100km's out. I was thinking about joining them also but then decided that I would have a day of errands (internet, writing postcards etc). In the end though the boys decided not to go as it was going to be an expensive excercise and could take a bit of time to get out there and back. Because of this Tim decided that he wanted to head off for the Thailand border today and get a headstart on the journey into Laos as he only had a week to spend there. It was aound 11am and so we would have to check out by midday should we be going so I said "fine let's do it" and rushed back to the guesthouse to pack and pay my bill. As the buses only leave in the mornings we would have to find a shared taxi. Our tuk-tuk driver from the guesthouse was quick to get a final trip out of us. Off we went with a detour to the ATM, get some money exchanged and the post office to send some postcards (which our driver didn't even know where it was or what it was and so there was a lot of raised voices going on - how can one survive in the biggest tourist town in the country and not know the post office).

The Tuk-Tuk driver (he also had a mate that spoke a little bit of English, he spoke none) took us to the shared taxi area but it was the wrong one and so someone got on their mobile and the shared taxi for our town came and picked us up. How the shared taxi works is that you have to wait for the taxi to fill up with people all wanting to go to the same place. They put 2 on the front passenger seat and 4 in the back. Thank god they have skinny butts because it was pretty squeezy in the back. We waited around at a local market for about 45 minutes for our taxi to fill up. Luckly it was only a 2 hour trip (and a very expensive one at that - again we got charged the tourist price) to Anlong Veng. It was another 15km to the border from this town and we managed to convince our shared taxi driver to take us there (for a price of course). There are 6 borders that you can cross from Cambodia into Thailand. It is noted that there a 3 out of the 6 borders that you should give a miss and ours was one of them. There is no traffic running between the borders. You simply get out at one side and then walk to the other side. Immigration on both sides are in small buildings and the immigration officers are surprised when they see a foreigner crossing. It was also noted that transport on theThai side was infrequent and when we passed through into Thailand nearing 4pm we thought we might be sleeping the night in the jungle as there was nothing. A few vehicles were parked but there was no shops, no information, no nothing. We spoke to a couple of people that were suggesting a taxi but that would cost a fortune but then came along some Thai people that were touring around for the day. Fortunately a couple fo them spoke quite good English and we were offered a lift in the back of their pickup to a town that would get us on a bus to Ubon, our destination for the day. We were saved!!!!