16 - 19 March

The trip to the border on the slow boat was magical. Surrounded by jungel on either sideoccasionally passing through a village of smiling, waving people. Young lads throwing themselves of the dock, splashing the boat and showing off, this was the Vietnam I wanted to see more than anything. Nothing aimed at tourists, it was brilliant.

The border crossing was quick and easy, off the boat and back on the boat on the new side. A few hours more down the river and we got off the boat and boarded a bus to the capital. This was so much better than the bus, if I was I ever to do this border crossing again, I would pay extra and do this boat.

Phnom Penh was a really hard palce for me to go back to, I have probably spent about three weeks of my life in that city as Mark loved it. I couldn't bring myself back to stay at the place we used to stay, but we stayed near there. We had the same view at least. We stayed at number 11, Happy Guesthouse. The room was basic, but it sufficed, but it wasn't the room we were here for. We were here for the lake and the atmosphere. As you walked towards the lake where the reception and the bar was you found a small paradise tucked away. It was a large open aired room balanced on stilts jutting out into the water so you could enjoy the sunset, which was amazing. It had lots of sleepy chairs and hammocks, a big TV with hundreds of films and a pool table, so I could thrash Adam.

The area round the guesthouse was made up of dusty streets filled with bars and restaurants trying to pull in punters with happy this and happy that. There was a multitude of tuk tuk and taxi drivers offering lifts and drugs to all that wanted. It was a great place, anything goes there, totally lawless.

You get a mix of people that travel there, people who are there for the fun of travelling and those who are there for that and the the drugs, some just come for the drugs. I really don't mind people having a happy shake or smoking a joint, it upsets me to see people doing harder things, they don't move much. Opium, herion and other hard drugs are readily available and you can tell. A lot of travellers come here and don't leave for a very long time, becoming hermits in their own rooms, you could really do that back home surely. I am making this place sound bad and in a way it is, but I quite like that. You have the choice without consequence to do whatever you want. If you want to blow up a cow with a bazuka you can, you may be a bit disturbed inm wanting to partake in that, but if you really want to you can.

On our first full day we went to the killing fields, a genocidal mass grave of 30,000 people. During the war in Vietnam, Cambodia was bombed heavily. Desperate and paranoid countryside dwellers became agitated and some formed the Kymer Rouge, a ultra maoist idea of communism founded by Pol Pot. After months of continued bombings and thousands of innocent deaths and casualties, the Kymer Rouge had had enough and invaded the capital and evacutated the whole city making them work in the fields. They overthrew the government and created the new Democratic Kampuchia. They cut themselves off from the enitre world and turned the clocks back to year 0. They killed all those religious, foreigners and the educated, anyone willing to question there authority. Most of the killers were young children under the age of 12. This lasted for five years and over a fifth of the population, two million people were slaughtered for the cause and one million died of starvation during the aftermath.

Some of the victims of this brutal regime were buried here at the killing fields. There is a monument made out of thousands of skulls and a dozen mass graves that they have opened, the fields themselves stretch for miles. There were signs saying where different types of people we killed, eg. where babies where babies were smashed against trees.

This place was truly horrible. a grim reminder of the past, to make sure no one forgets what happened here and no one forgets the lost.

Walking in silence, hand in hand, trying not to step on the bodies' clothes that were sticking out the ground. An extremely sad and upsetting experience, but necessary to help understand what really happened here. I will never forget this place.

We went to S21 after that, a high school that was turned into an interrogation camp. More than 20,000 people were killed there and only 7 survived. The head of the centre is the first up on trial in Cambodia at the moment, charged with the murder of 29,000 people.

Classrooms here had been turned into torture chambers. Blood was such a frequent visitor to the floor that it remained there in places. Pictures adourned the rooms the chambers, showing the last dead victims of the Kymer Rouge, each one beaten and bloodied and unrecognisable. Many of the other rooms were filled with snapo shots of the victims before they died, those of men, women and children.

After a grim few days of sightseeing, I am hoping that this will be it for a while.

We spent one more day doing things and went to the Royal Palace, which was beautiful but a little overpriced. We tried to go to the central market so Adam could eat tarantulas but it was closed for renovation. I think someone in heaven was looking out for me that day.

I never intended to go back to Phnom Penh in my life time and I was so worried that I found myself going back there, but it was really nice to say one last goodbye.