Yesterday we arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. We dropped our bags off at our hostel before heading out to explore. We followed a path along the lake heading towards some touristy sites.
On our way I noticed a cupcake shop...we swung in for a quick taste and were glad that we did! With Jazz's mum being the Queen of cupcakes, we don't normally go more than a couple of days without getting to taste a new flavour or finish off some left overs, so we got our fix.
We continued on our route passing a palace and various monuments.
In the centre of the city where the monuments were, there were lots of Cambodians getting in there daily exercise, either walking or running around a big grassed area.
After a lot of walking around we were all feeling peckish so we jumped in a tuk tuk to go to the night market, turns out it wasn't on. Fortunately it wasn't actually that far back to our hostel so we walked back and there was some street food close by.

Today we had organised to go to 'The killing fields'. For those of you unaware of Cambodia's history, I'll give you a very brief account of it.

After a civil war, on the 17th April 1975 Cambodia was taken over by the Khmer Rouge, a military political rule. It was lead my a man called Pol Pot. The only comparison you could give is Hitler.
The Khmer Rouge soldiers infiltrated cities, telling families to leave their homes for a few days as Cambodia was being cleaned up.
What actually happened was a mass genocide. Pol Pot wanted to create a pure race that only believed in his way of thinking. This resulted in over 3 million people losing their lives.

An audio guide lead us around, explaining everything we saw in graphic detail. The most graphic had to be the killing tree. Babies were held by their legs and their heads were crushed against the tree. Their bodies were then tossed into the mass graves as if it was nothing.
As bullets were expensive and hard to get hold of, many people died by torture.

Prior to coming to Cambodia Myself and Jazz had read the book 'first they killed my father' this gave us a great insight into what had happened during the 4 years the Khmer Rouge ruled and visiting the killing fields really brought it to light.

We then went to S.21. This was a school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison. We wondered around looking at various disturbing pictures and reading articles equally as disturbing. There was a biography of a survivor from S.21 and as we left he was actually sat at a book stool selling his story in the same place he was tortured and neared death. We all couldn't quite get our heads around it. If it was me I would never go near the place again!

Today you would not even know anything bad had even happened in Cambodia, they are all so happy and friendly!

Tomorrow we leave Phnom Penh for Battambang.