We arrived into Phnom Phen in the afternoon after a pretty painless journey, no extra people, ok roads etc.....the only problem was that we had decided to come the same time that an exiled politician was returning to the country after getting a pardon!!! Cue rally's and traffic chaos everywhere!!! So after an hour we had moved 10meters, so some other people in the van asked to go out...and luckily pointed us in the right direction to get to our hostel....if not we would have probably spend the night there as the political rally's and madness lasted the whole time we were in Phnom Phen...the elections are coming up shortly!

The main thing to do here is to visit in the Killing Fields and the S-21 building where the prisoners were held by the Kumer Rouge, always going to be upsetting but important to do to understand what has happened here. So first up were the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where over 17,000 were executed. It is really sad to see this place and hear what happened, the saddest part for us was the Killing Tree, where the soldiers held infants by the legs and smashed them against a tree to kill them..horrific. What we found the most outrageous is that over 3 million were killed by the Kumer Rouge, led by Pol Pot and yet he was never tried for his crimes. He lived until '98, only being put under house arrest in '97...so he lived, married, had children and grandkids after he had ordered the killing of millions of innocents, not allowing them any of these things....madness...crazy that it happened so recently, it only ended in 79, and that no one has really faced the music for what they did. From the Fields we went to the Tuol Sleng Museum, which was basically a storage and torture facility, and again its upsetting seeing the pictures and reading what has happened...what was very insightful was reading the "confessions" of some of those tortured and killed, they were so clearly made up no one would ever believe them.

Overall it was a very sobering experience, every bit as upsetting as you would expect. From there we went to have lunch in a restaurant run by an organisation that are trying to transform the lives of some street people by training them up in the hospitality industry. It is great to see that there are places like this trying to make a difference as there really is a lot of poverty about. All the children begging would really break your heart....it also happened to be the best food that we had...Cambodian food will not be going down as one of the highlights.

From there we headed down to Sihanoukville, the number one seaside resort in Cambodia...unfortunately the rain decided to take up residence while we were there...so we basically got our Vietnam visa, went for a swim in the sea and took a bit of a wander around...and that was about it!!!

So from here we are heading to Vietnam....looking forward to a new country as Cambodia hasn't really been one of the highlights for us....so let's hope for an easy border crossing!!!