Phnom Penh was a short 6 hours away from Siem Reap and with a relitavely comfortable bus it went pretty smoothly. The joining road seemed to be the one and only smooth and straight one in the whole of Cambodia so our beaten bums were very grateful! As we walked down the steps of the bus we were hounded by at least 20 tuk-tuk drivers dragging us this way and that way, trying to hoax us in to their carts, shouting "where you go lady??" As the heavens seemed to have split open and were in the process of ejecting several thousand tonnes of water over Cambodia, were were in no position to be choosy so we plucked the most persistant driver out of the crowds and he pushed us to his battered old tuktuk. After several uninspiring hotels we chose a rather swanky one for 2 pounds fifty a night with all the things we wanted... most importantly satalitte TV! We obviously took full advantage and watched a few films before drifting off to sleep.

 The next day we arose bright and early, ready for an extremely busy day. We had asked the lovely tuk-tuk driver to come back and collect us in the morning so he could be our offical chauffeur. We started off our itinery with the most delicious baguettes with chips and then headed off down yet another pot holed, clay road, which this time the tuk tuk couldnt handle. One of its wheels came loose at one point and we had to push him out of deep ditches on numerous occasions! Our first stop was the shooting range, a tourist attraction many people say is the main reason to come to Cambodia (In their case it is to shoot a poor unsuspecting cow... something we opted against you'll be happy to hear!) We chose an AK 47 the most popular gun with 25 bullets and really got in the mood when we put on our oversized army coats and ear muffs. Shooting the gun, was not really anything to get excited about. After the first couple of shots where the sound even with our ear muffs on was almost deafening it got kind of repetitive. We were expecting an all action escapade, lying on the floor, jumping up, diving around in the dirt and shooting at moving targets.. however in reality we sat at a chair and shot all our 25 bullets in one go. You couldnt ever tell if you had hit the target or not. Still we can all now say that we have shot an AK 47 which is rather cool. We turned down the other options on the "menu" such as throwing hand grenades and setting off rocket launchers costing $200 a pop!

Next we stopped at the Killing Fields. This is now a kind of memorial park for the victims who suffered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Polpot (self titled after abbreiviating the words political potential) the leader of the Khmer Rouge had nearly 20,000 innocent people put to death in this one site alone and they way that they were killed is almost unrepeatable. We joined onto a small group with a guide and he told us about some of the mass graves in the area. There were 127 altogether in the park and the biggest had about 450 bodies. Other graves had headless corpses, whose skulls were kept inside the peace memorial in the centre of the feilds. He showed us a tree which babies were beaten against, and sharp palm brances with a serated edge, which were used to saw off peoples heads taking around ten minutes. Other babies were actually killed by being thrown into the air and caught on the end of a long sharp knife. As you walk alond the muddy paths the guide showed us that the victims clothes and in some places their bones were coming through the earth. In one place there were two peices of string poking through which was thought to have been used to tie up the victins hands and legs. In the rainy season the mud washes away and you can see the clothes and bones fully. We were told that all final killings in Phnom Penh happened here, but that they imprisoned, tortured and beat them in the city centre in a local High school. They named this vile prison S-21 and was discovered by the vietnamese when they invaded a few years later.

When we arrived at the prison a begger quickly approached us. When we looked up we realised he had only one arm and his entire face was like something you would only see in a film. It looked as though it was burnt and the only features you could see were his eyes, one of which was missing and the other was pure white. We gave him a bit of money and walked through the gates. The school was only small with 4 buildings in total. Each one had it's different purpose so we hired another guide so we could fully understand what had happened here a mere 30 years ago. All educated people in Phnom Penh were brought here inlcuding teachers, lawyers, doctors.. even people with glasses! The whole family was killed to ensure that the knowledge wasn't passed on. The first building was where political prisoners were kept. They had fairly large individual rooms with a wire torture bed in the middle. Each room had a large picture which was taken by the Veitnamese soldiers when they invaded. They showed how each prisoner was torchered and left to bleed to death. One man was led on his front battered to death, his head however was twisted 180 degrees so it was facing upwards. Another was killed by spliting open his stomach so he endured a slow and painful death. The rooms still had the blood splashes on the ceilings and floors. We walked past the old schools excersise bars outside, which the guide explained to us was used for torture. The guards would hang the prisoners upside down off the bar until they lost consciousness. Then they would wake them by dunking them into large barrels of water which had been mixed with the prisoners urine and feaces. The next room was full of mugshots of all the victims. Everyone wore black, women had to have short hair and they each had a number pinned onto their clothes. Some of the prisoners actually had the number tag pinned through their neck. Next were the pictures of the guards. We couldnt believe that Polpot had ordered that all the guards were young boys. Aged from 10-18 they were easily manipulated and brainwashed into thinking that what they were doing was right. After a year of them working they too were tortured and put to death as they then knew too much about the regime. In Buildin C the Khmer Rouge split the classrooms up into tiny cells about 1 meter wide and 2 meters long. Each cell contained one prisoner who was chained by the foot. They were given 2 tiny bowls of salty rice soup at 8am and 8pm to survive on, with no water. The lucky ones had a small amount of water sloshed on their cell floor so that they could lick it up in desperation. They were not aloud to go to the toilet out of the specific toilet times and if they did they were forced to eat it. They were forbidden to make a sound, even during their torture, which would only result in even more lashings with the electric wire. Babies were killed first as they made the most noise. The final building was where the torture instuments were displayed. Cabinets filled with weapons, huge boxes which the men were sunk into and long shackles which joined upto 60 prisoners. There were huge paintings all around to show the torture processes... women were stripped naked, drowned in water then their nipples were clamped with huge metal pincers and then scorpions and poisonous millipedes were left to feed on the wounds.  

We just cant believe that all of this happened only 30 years ago. Two of the leaders are actually still alive and still in power today. We were walking aoround pretty sullen and deep in thought for a while and on our next drive in the tuk-tuk we barely uttered a word.

It was still only about 2 oclock so we had some more time to cram in some more activities. The tuk-tuk driver had a list of places we could go and we chose the local orphanage seeing as we had completely fallen for all the children, even though they were constantly begging for money. On the way we stopped to buy some rice as a donation for the children. When we got there though we were being completely skanked by the sellers and the tuk-tuk driver alike. We have read that the average family in cambodia earns $30 a month and the cheeky b*****s were trying to charge us $35 for a measly bag of rice! We put up quite a fuss but only managed to barter them down to $20... still an extortion, but we thought wat the hell its for the kids! At the orphanage there were about 50 little happy faces running around playing football, volleyball and playing with the mud on the ground. They ran towards us, grabbed our hands and before we could say hello we were joining in with a pretty disasterous volley ball game. The young children clearly had had plenty of practice at the spot, whilst we just ran away from the ball everytime it came near.  We played a very long game of catch after that and then were ushered into a small hall to watch some of the children dance and sing. Everyone say around and clapped whist the talented little girls and boys did tradition Khmer dance in traditional clothes. The heaven opened yet again during their performances and after just a few short moments the water was pouring through the roof. This did nothing to hinder the dancing though and after a whopping 8 performances they were ready to let us join in. Martha entranced yet another person with her robotting skills and one incredibly excited boy is now a fully fledged roboteer!

After our tiring, action packed and at some points upsetting day we were ready for a slap up $2 meal and bed. We did make friends with a man at our hotel reception who was overwhelmingly gay and hilariously funny. He is so eager to please and he even drove us to the local bookshop which turned out to be shut.

The next day we set off for Vietnam very excited! About an hour into the journey to the border Laura spotted something wrong with her visa... it was a month out of date!!! We were told by the bus driver that a Vietnam visa cannot be claimed at the border and that we had to go all the way back to Phnom Penh to get it sorted. We had to endure another half an hour of bumpyness until we could stop, get off and hop straight into a taxi all the way back to the capital. The driver we chose was most possibly the craziest driver in the history of the world! He was racing down the windy dirt paths, passing trucks, vans, bikes, cars and at some times coming head on with huge lorries neither of which would move out of the way. He drove at approximately 150 miles an hour... not that we would know though as his dials were stuck on 0km/h or the petrol gauge on "empty" We had no seatbelts in the back and it was utterly petrifying! Having said that we arrived back to the city within 40 minutes! Fabulous! So now were here stuck in Phnom Penh... not much to do but we will hopefully find some fun and frollicks for tomorrow for us to report back on!

Cheerio x x x