Despite hearing horror stories of robberies and kidnappings at the Cambodian border, we made it through easily with no complications. When we got to the bus station in Phnom Penh we were mobbed by tuk tuk drivers and hotel reps wrestling for our business. One guy even waited outside for us while we got a coffee then followed us for about 20 minutes repeating himself over and over. "Tuk tuk sir? Where you go? Tuk tuk?" We eventually got a room on the lakeside which cost us $6 between three of us; it had no air conditioning and a cold shower but at £1.20 a night I didn't really mind.

On Friday we visited the S-21 prison and the Killing Fields. During the Khmer Rouge regime in the 70s the prison was used to hold, torture and interigate thousands of innocent Cambodians who were deemed to be a threat to the nation, including government workers, the police force and interlectuals. They also closed schools and hospitals and destroyed anything of historic value. Photographs of some of the former inmates are displayed all around the prison and while I was looking around a Cambodian girl pointed out a picture of her Father who was a teacher and was held at the prison for 3 months in 1977 before being killed. The Khmer Rouge were ruthless and would usually kill someone's whole family so that the children would not seek revenge in later life. To save money and to avoid attracting unwanted attention they would use farm tools to kill the adult victims and babies were held by their legs and smashed against a tree. Around a quarter of the population were killed during the campaign. The Killing Fields is where the prisoners were taken to be killed and burried in mass graves. One of the graves held over 450 bodies and was only about 10 metres square. Bone fragments and teeth can be seen in the soil as you walk around the field as well as the clothes of the victims. It was not as sickening as the War Remnants Museum in Saigon but it was still horrible to see how and where it happened and to be told of the methods and scale of the genocide.

On Saturday we said goodbye to Alex as he was travelling South and we were going North to Siem Reap. We had a 6 hour bus journey and found a nice hotel near the centre. We went out for an early dinner and ran into Jag and Meena who had been there for almost a week. As Sunday was Jag's birthday we arranged to meet up the following night.

On Sunday morning we got up at 4:30 and got a tuk tuk to the Angkor Wat temples to watch the sunrise, but it was a cloudy day so the sun was hidden, the place just got lighter. Angkor Wat is the largest group of ancient religious ruins in the world and we knew absolutely nothing about them! We hired a guide for a couple of hours in the morning to explain what we were looking at and went alone in the afternoon. We visited about 8 different sites, all with huge, crumbling temples and kids trying to sell guide books and fridge magnets. Most of the religious statues had had their heads cut off, our guide told us that this was done by the Khmer Rouge in an attempt to destroy religion. Some people spend a week looking around the temples but by 15:30 we were all templed out so we headed home for a power nap before hitting the town. A long day turned into a late night/early morning as we drank our way up and down 'Bar Street'. Siem Reap is so seedy that one tuk tuk driver offered me Crystal Meth and a 'very young' girl when I walked past him!

We woke up yesterday at 12:30 - half an hour after check out and half an hour before the supposed last bus to Phnom Penh but, by doubling the amount that we were wiling to pay, the hotel receptionist miraculously found us a seat on the 3 o'clock bus!

Today we are flying to Singapore for the night and then on to the Philippines tomorrow afternoon. 5 days in Cambodia was definitely not long enough but it was really interesting seeing the 2 most significant pieces of the country's history.