I have combined a couple days activities into this blog otherwise there'll be too many entries and some of them not worth reading...who wants to read about me walking around town, going for lunch and going to the pub every day...not me and I am writing it!

Sunday night as usual followed a trip to the Night Market with some new people from The White Rabbit. Bless, 3 guys all from Brisbane who are doing a 'crash course' in SEA before going back to Uni. I tell you though, this is making me doubt whether Aussies can drink (aimed at you Tim for a response...) since they went home early even though the beer was $0.75 a glass! I however ventured to watch the tennis and got there long enough to see it start to rain in Wimbledon before getting bored and realising Murray wasn't going to beat Federer.

Yesterday, I got up extra early to go and visit The Royal Palace and The Silver Pagoda. It was alright, I say only alright because most of the palace was fenced off in areas you cannot go into. I understand I suppose since the Royal Family still use it on state occasions etc. It does however have some very nice gardens for visitors to sit in if you can find some shade to escape the rising sun. The Silver Pagoda wasn't really what I had expected, it was more of a temple room with lots of little statues of Buddah in little glass cabinets. Which I thought was a bit random but nice to look at. Bless there were a group of school children visiting and just hearing them 'um' and 'ah' at everything was nice. On the way back I foiled yet another common scam in SEA. A guy said his daughter was going to Uni in London and his wife was worried and could I talk to her a bit about the UK. He actually rang his wife who invited me to lunch to 'talk'. I had to say no as I had heard that they get you into their houses and demand money from you. It's sad that I couldn't trust those people as they could have been genuine and I missed out on a great opportunity for Cambodian hospitality.

I met some new people in my dorm last night who invited me out to dinner at a restaurant called 'Friends'. The restaurant does community work with Children and young adults. Somehow we ended up getting back at 1.30 am yet again. This time we'd gone into some bar called 'Heart of Darkness'...it was...well...not the best. It did however have enough Cheese to rival Chicagos whilst looking like a bling version of Winkers. In short I suspect that if Campbell and I had gone in there together it would have been a bloody good night! After that we went into a 24 hour bar called 'Black Cat' which was blatantly a prostitute bar so I sacked it and went home.

Headed out to the S-21 museum and The Killing Fields today with some of the people I met last night. Definite eye opener for such an early start this morning that's for sure! For some reason I just wasn't upset as I thought I would be. The Killing Fields were as expected, they gave you an audio tour so you could understand what relevance each of the buildings have but to be honest I think the only thing which stirred some emotion in me was the Killing Tree and the music they played to cover up the fact they were killing people. The S-21 museum I think is in need of some development, it still has some of the original structures and has a photo montage of the prisoners who were killed there but I think it's still in the beginning stages of becoming a really good museum. There were also some beggars outside asking for money from tourists but I don't think they got too far. I went with some people I met last night and I think it upset them quite a bit.

This pretty much rounds off my time in Phnom Penh. It's been a long few days waiting for my visa for Thailand but hopefully going to relax for a few days now as I head south to Sihanoukville and the beaches of Cambodia.

The photo is the monument at The Killing Fields.