After the tourist circus of Siem Reap it was really good to have a dose of what Cambodia is really like in the form of Phnom Penh.

As soon as we arrived off the bus we were attacked on all sides by tuk tuk drivers wanting to take us to their guesthouse but managed to find a lovely guy who didn't hassle us at all and ended up safely installed in a guesthouse on the lake. As it turned out it was full of slightly odd people and very active rats so may have been a mistake!

The lakeside area is the main backpacker ghetto in the city and so you can't walk down the street without being offered tuk tuk rides, 'massages' and all kinds of other things but it's also a very poor Khmer area so you can really see the contrast with the much richer areas of the city. Phnom Penh also really brings home just how young the population of Cambodia really is. Between all the people who died of starvation or were killed under the Khmer Rouge or are simply still too scared to come back there are very very few people over 40 and a lot of the older people you do see are beggars and amputees. It really brings home what a horrific history this country has had and how recent it all was...

This was emphasised even more by our trip to Tuol Sleng or S21 prison. It started life as a school and still really looks like one, until you see all the barbed wire that is... The authorities have kept it in exactly the state it was found when Phnom Penh was liberated and it's a chilling sight. Walking around the tiny cells you can still see bloodstains on the floor and shackles that were left behind. The most chilling thing though is the photographs. The Khmer Rouge documented absolutely everything so there are walls and walls of photos of all the prisoners staring into your eyes. The most disturbing thing is the number of children among them. If one member of a family was arrested and deemed to be dangerous, the whole family was imprisoned, tortured and then killed.

After a very subdued lunch we then headed out of the city to Choeung Ek killing fields. This is where the national genocide monument has been erected and is another incredibly emotional place. The 9000 bodies they have so far found from mass graves on this site have been interred in a huge memorial stupa with 14 levels - most of which are taken up by the skulls. Although it's quite a horrific sight it really shows the scale of the killings the Khmer Rouge were able to commit in such a short time.

Then our guide took us around the killing fields, pointing out all the mass graves that have been excavated. The ground is covered with fragments of bone and clothing that are still working their way up each time it rains but instead of being a horrific place we all agreed that in a strange way it was actually quite peaceful. Maybe just because S21 is so well preserved that it takes little imagination to see what went on there and the killing fields are just that - fields. After the regime fell, the people tore down and destroyed all the buildings so all that remains is a green area full of holes in the ground and so it seems like a much calmer, more peaceful way to remember the people who have died.

After such a harrowing day we treated ourselves to a well-earned drink at sunset in the Foreign Correspondents' Club in town and then it was time to say goodbye to Josh and Zoe and let them enjoy the rest of their honeymoon in peace as Will and I headed off for some quality beach time in Sihanoukville on the south coast...