I have always been interested by the actions (good and evil) of mankind; it's been a morbid fascination which I share with my dad and sister. Over the years, I have read hundreds of books recalling moments in history where human beings have achieved amazing and wonderful things but have in turn created devastation, atrocities and have carried out appalling crimes against each other. Heroes, heroines, despots and serial killers...sounds weird I know but it would be weirder if I was no longer shocked by these things but I still am....

Phnom Penh was our last stop in Cambodia and after our experience with Bunthorne in Siem Reap definitely a place that I felt I needed to visit.

As a city it's another completely bonkers, busy, 'in ya face', hassly tuk tuk place. The streets are a hive of industry with people doing their best to make a living. We saw barbers on street corners, proper barber chair, broken mirrors and cut throat razors.. no shop just the street corner and tiny Cambodian woman carrying vast weights of fruit and veg on carrying poles, perfectly balanced but incredibly heavy and people in pointy conical hats crouched over steaming pots, selling deep fried slices of papaya, sticky rice, deep fried critters and banana fritters!.

But the city's macabre claim to fame is that in 1975 the Khmer Rouge (Cambodia's communist army) captured Phnom Penh, overthrew the government, and established a new regime with a new leader, a crazy communist called Pol Pot.

As the new ruler of Cambodia, Pol Pot set about transforming the country. The cities were evacuated and people sent to holding camps in the countryside, factories and schools were closed, currency and private property was abolished and anyone believed to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, doctors, teachers, lawyers or any skilled workers were immediately executed even those who were caught in possession of glasses, a wristwatch, or any other modern technology!! The only people who were spared were those who were young enough, fit enough, uneducated and impressionable enough to carry out orders without argument. Farmworkers were spared and teenage boys became the army. Pol Pot wanted to create a classless and obedient communist society.

We took a tuk tuk ride to S21, Tuol Sleng, the infamous high school that was used as a place of torture and interrogation. I knew this wouldn't be a happy experience but I wasn't expecting the enormous wave of emotion and sadness that came over me as we walked around the old classrooms which had been converted into places of such appalling cruelty, torture and neglect.

All around the walls were hundreds of black and white portrait photos of the victims and photos of scenes of torture and execution taken by the Khmer Rouge as a way of recording and collating the victim's .

Torture was used to extract false confessions from prisoners and force them into implicating others as CIA spies. Some were beaten with bamboo rods, forced to eat faeces, given electric shocks to their ears and other extemeties toenails were ripped out with pliers...(gruesome enough but in writing this I have decided not to go into great detail as the photos we saw and the individual stories we read as we walked around were so harrowing and disturbing I'm not sure that it would make pleasant blog reading but if you are interested , it would be easier to explain face to face when I get home..)

As we reached a classroom block that had been converted into about 20 tiny cells I saw a very old, quietly spoken Cambodian man talking to a group of people and what he was saying was being translated by a tour guide. This man was an ex prisoner and one of the very few who had managed to survive his time at the prison. Again his story was heart rending. Standing there listening to his account of what he and his family endured at the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge bought me to tears.

It had been an emotional day and as we started to make our way to the exit I saw the old man again. He had written a book about his experiences, he was 80 years old and his name was Mr. Chum Mey. I walked up and shook his frail hand and bought his book.

If you look him up on the internet you'll find that he was a car/machine mechanic and one of only twelve known survivors of S-21 and when you think that more than 16,000 Cambodians were sent for execution it is amazing that he did survive.

His book recounts how he survived two years of torture and fear in one of the Khmer Rouge death camps; his hopes were only kept alive by thoughts of his pregnant wife and unborn child. They had been seperated by the army some months before. His life was spared because of his high level of skill in repairing cars, sewing machines and lorries for Pol Pot's soldiers.

During this time he had a chance encounter with his wife and young son who was born a few weeks after he was sent to the infamous Tuol Sleng prison in early 1977. Eventually she and the baby were killed by the Khmer Rouge teenage soldiers. This is an excerpt from his book .."First they shot my wife, who was marching in front with the other women," he said. "She screamed to me, 'Please run, they are killing me now'. I heard my son crying and then they fired again, killing him. When I sleep, I still see their faces, and every day I still think of them".......

Mr. Chum Mey has been actively involved in fighting for justice for the victims of Pol Pot for his entire life and appeared as a witness in the long awaited trails of some of the Khmer Rouge perpetrators and their part in the genocide...... He now spends his days, back in the prison recounting his story to tourists..he says 'to keep the memory of those people alive and so that we never forget the horrors that we are capable of'.......What an amazing and inspirational human being........

The next day we again took a tuk tuk to Choeung Ek for the final piece of the story. Choeung Ek is known as 'The Killing Fields' one of hundreds of similar sites scattered around Cambodia and honestly one of the saddest places I have ever been.

We were given headphones to hear the story as we walked around and again so, so harrowing. This was the place where the prisoners were bought after they had been tortured and interrogated at S21. They dug mass pits and were then executed by 'boy' soldiers using farming tools, who knew that if they didn't carry out orders they too would be killed. (Again the means of execution and the atrocities that went on in Choeung Ek do not make pleasant reading, so I'm not going to write in detail)...

It is now a very tranquil place with a huge beautiful Buddhist remembrance stupa (pagoda) which houses hundreds of thousands of skulls and bones of the victims. You follow a path around what remains of the mass graves and pits while listening to some beautiful Cambodian music composed in remembrance of the Cambodian genocide..so sad and beautiful...you cannot help but be moved and tearful. But the most poignant and sad thing for me, the thing that really brings home the scale of what happened there is that every now and then especially after the rain, rags, pieces of clothing and fragments of bones make their way up from the bottom of the pits to the top of the paths and emerge on the walkways almost as a reminder to the world that we should never forget....

I know this has not been the happiest of reads but no apologies......

(See Phnom Penh album)