Hi guys! Seems like only yesterday I was checking out all the fab archictecture at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and now I'm in the crazy hustling bustling city of Ho Chi Minh aka Saigon, where its an extreme sport just to cross the road! Trick is, to pray very hard and just keep looking at the otherside of the road whilst the motorbikes swerve around you! Kinda scary, but the drivers seem to know what they're doing!!! Well so far so good anyway. The last few days in Cambodia were really tough. On the hottest day of my travels so far we traveled by boat across a huge lake from Siem Reap to the capital Phnom Penh. And naturally, the boats engine had to break down mid crossing the lake, so we were marooned in the baking hot sun until another boat could come and rescue us. I started a trend by diving off the boat into the lake to cool down! Luckily the boat that came to get us was fairly plush and just lay out on the front of the boat having a "glamourous" moment with the sunnies on and the wind in my hair etc etc. Nice way to get totally sunburnt Jo!! Check out the lobster glow in my photos! After 8 hours on a boat believe me we were all glad to get to the hotel in P. Penh and had little cat naps before heading out to a really cool 1920s style "Foreign Correspondants Club" very expat with highball cocktails and waiters etc etc. Everyone had sun stroke from the boat the day before so we didn't head out into Phnom Penh until the afternoon and what an afternoon! We'd visited a landmine museum in Siem Reap and found out all sorts of terrible things about the civil war and khmer rouge soldiers, (the guy who ran the museum now de-mined "for a living" and ran a sanctuary for boys injured by landmines whose parents had thrown them out. He was also a former child soldier for the Khmer Rouge, killing his first man at ten years old. The adult soldiers used to make him walk infront of them through the jungle, so he'd step on the mines first, that sort of terrible thing). Anyway, I'd be forewarned that the S21 museum and the Killing Fields were tough, but oh my god. It was truly devastating. Basically very little has been changed to these sites since they were opened by the Vietnamese just a few days after they liberated Phnom Penh. Blood was spattered still on the walls of S21 and it smelt of torture and dead people. I was almost sick. The Killing Fields were even worse, bits of bone and clothing poking out of the mass graves. Everyone was completely silent for the entire trip. Our guide said the Cambodian government left the sites like this to show to the outside world how truly terrible it was in 1970s Cambodia and why it musn't happen again. Still. Was a bit much even for me as an historian, but I'm glad I saw it as it really does bring it home. And it only happened recently too!! Things were made a bit lighter as it was Joe's 22nd in the evening and basically everyone got completely hammered as the day had been so demanding. There was still an air of sadness though and everyone went home fairly early. I'm in Vietnam now and to be honest I feel a lot more relaxed. I don't know if I could go back to Cambodia, the poverty and destruction of this country has had such a disastrous effect on the people now, it made it really difficult to travel to. I felt bad as a tourist paying 20 dollars for a day of sightseeing at Angkor Wat when the average wage is 50cent a day for a Cambodian. Also so many people have been disabled by the war and landmines you couldn't walk down the street without being reminded of the Khmer Rouge atrocities. Definitely a country to make you think about the way you live your own life. Well I've got a day of sightseeing here in Ho Chi Minh and then Sue, Tamsin and I are getting the night train up the coast to a beautiful beach town to get in some scuba diving and snorkeling. Relaxation is definitely required. Ending on a more thoughtful note this time. Jo Xxxx (P.S. I've uploaded the s21 photos and Killing Fields photos separate to those of Phnom Penh, I'm giving them a rating of 15+ so sprogs like Eliza and Freddie shouldn't see them.)