Phnom Penh, so good no-one knows how to pronounce it...

Having thoroughly chilled out on the beach in Phu Quoc I was ready for some adventure so headed North into Cambodia by very choppy boat and really quite nice minibus. I've been reading a lot about Cambodia; testimonies from survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime which chilled me to my bones, so anticipation of the country was mixed with tredipation. I'd heard that Cambodia was less developed than Vietnam, so expected it to be more like Laos - and the border crossing seemed to back that up! Hugely, enormously overloaded motorbikes piled high with goods, produce, livestock (live piglets stacked up in crates) and truckloads full of people attached to a scooter - crazy. The first thing that struck me was the red dust which coated the land - also that Cambodia seems to be very flat. It's a cyclists dream!

Phnom Penh was the setting for much of The Killing Fields, so I was pleased to spot the Hotel Phnom Penh (where Sydney and Pran spend much of their time) in the city. I didn't see the bridge where the recent disaster took place, but heard a lot of stories about how the locals are very superstitious about evil spirits patrolling the town. Thankfully I didn't encounter any myself - I really liked Phnom Penh and found it to be friendly and interesting.

There is a huge ex-pat scene, which we had a taster of through a friend of Cordelia's, Julian, a French chef who is living here; we went for delicious sushi at his friend's restaurant and had a really nice afternoon. I also became a fan of the Foreign Correspondents Club, on Sarah's recommendation - happy hour cocktails were the best I've ever tasted, and made up for the frankly less than tasty vodka 7ups I've been making do with the rest of the time. We bumped into Ben and Ambika, who we met in Mui Ne, at our guesthouse so headed for a happy pizza with them one night and all had a jolly good time.

*Heather not to read the next bit - skip on by two paragraphs*

Phnom Penh is mainly known as the site of the infamous S-21 prison, and the Cambodian genocide centre (the Killing Fields). Cambodia is still haunted by the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge genocide, indeed the trials of the few still living key members of the regime are still taking place. The Khmer Rouge had a vision of a unified agrarian nation, where the food that the farmers produced nourished them and not just the people in the cities; they systematically wiped out intellectuals, artists, doctors, performers - and destroyed the cultural heritage of the country. Swathes of history of the Khmer culture have been simply destroyed, and the Cambodian people were evacuated from the cities and sent to work in the fields at what essentially amounted to hard labour camps; starvation, disease and violence from the Khmer Rouge led to the deaths of over a third of Cambodia's population.

S-21 prison was originally a school, but was recommissioned by Pol Pot - over 20,000 people were tortured and killed there; only 7 survived. There are photographs of the victims and testimonies from some of the guards (many of whom were forced into the position, under threat of execution themselves, which helped to put into context how anyone could possibly do that to another human being). It was just so sad. Visiting the killing fields wasalso incredibly harrowing; we'd been told that not all of the mass graves had been excavated yet so walking around the site means you literally walk across graves. So far, the largest mass grave unearthed over 600 bodies, there are so many remains at the site that it is too big a task to gather together individual remains - instead, a huge stone memorial has been built, housing the bones of all the corpses found so far. Nothing could prepare me though for seeing the remnants of clothes scattered all over the site - bits of ragged cloth blow around in the breeze, and under my feet I could see bones in the ground. I've taken photos and at first glance you'll see a sunny, quiet, even pretty area of countryside - which makes it all the more eerie when you think about what happened here.

The Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda were two more outstanding sights I got to see in Phnom Penh; rebuilt since the Khmer Rouge (as is most of Phnom Penh; there's very few old buildings here) the palace grounds are vast, with manicured gardens and ornate stone carvings. The site houses a stunning jade buddha, lots of images of elephants and yet more buddhas. Just gorgeous.

Time to move on, next stop... Siem Reap.

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