If there is such a thing as summing up a city in a single word Phnom Penh would be: boooring. Characterless buildings face the buzzing traffic, dirt, exhaust fumes deafen the senses and even the monuments, national buildings, have nothing to say. We just came to the capital of Cambodia for two things: to arrange our Vietnam visa and see the horrific remains of the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. Were it not for the killing fields, there is no reason at all to visit this city. Perhaps I have grown accustomed to Asian cities, but the million motorbikes zigzagging in a never ending flow, the mentally insane tuk-tuk drivers, the heat, the poverty, the prostitutes, the old fat balding Caucasian males exploiting them; it just can't excite me anymore.

We spend the Monday morning fighting off the never ending stream of tuk-tuk drivers, xe-um's to get to the embassy of Vietnam. After filling out some forms, paying the $35 fee for the visa we have to wait till the afternoon to pick them up. As I will be going to China as well, we make a small detour to the Chinese embassy. R&M, Lee, Tali, and a smoker friend she picked up - David - scourge the town for something interesting to do. The national museum will do. We grab a tuk-tuk for us six. I would be embarrassed to call something tiny like this the national museum. It has a few dozen statues from Angkor Vat whose replicas are in the actual temples, some small bronze works, and that's about it. Hardly worth a visit.

For this once, my feeling of hatred towards tuk-tuk drivers is mutual. Tali is a soulless, unscrupulous woman and with every ride lowers the price. We end up paying less than half the original asking price, 2 dollars per ride. And if the driver does not want to accept this we just walk along, someone else definitely will. This technique works very well. It also breaks up the tuk-tuk mafia, who camp outside popular tourist sites and have agreed on a fixed price. Ha, "koekje van eigen deeg!" I guess we were pretty lucky though. While the next day - on Tuesday - I was waiting for the others to join me, I got into talking with one of the drivers. Very friendly once you get to know them, and he confided to me that there are now too many drivers around, the competition is very fierce so they cannot ask the high prices anymore they did in the past. Many motos realised the tremendous income of tuk-tuks and invested in one, grossly inflating their numbers. Bad for them, good for us.

This is also the only time I've seen cab-drivers fight, or at least get into a heavy argument. We were just ready with dinner and going home, finding a taxi. $2 was our fixed price, but all the campers out there wouldn't go below $3. As one finally buckled and did, he got such harsh a verbal beating from the others that I have never seen before. They must've been pretty pissed. As the heated argument didn't really seem to stop, we just left the scene. Walked 40 metres and got another one... for the same price.

Tuesday morning I went to arrange my Chinese visa and embarked on the most depressing day of my whole holiday. We visited a local high school which had been transformed into the main prison in Phnom Penh for interrogating corrosive elements during the Khmer Rouge period: S-21 prison. The three main buildings of the school have been left as they were during the 1976-1979 period. Empty classrooms, flaky paint and just the odd steel bed with a photograph of a tortured and then killed Cambodian remind us of the horror that took place here. No fancy multimedia shows, explanatory text. Nothing. Just photographs taken of prisoners at arrival. Staring back at us from the beyond. Some already know they are going to die, others have no idea what will happen to them. No exceptions. Some of the portraits are really gripping, making you want to leave this place immediately. Young, old men, boys, girls, women, peasants, intellectuals, nobody could escape the Khmer Rouge. More classrooms of black-white photographs of people tortured, beaten to death. So very powerful in conveying the suffering. Horrible.

Out of the 19000 prisoners taken to this place, only four! have survived. The other ten who were still imprisoned at the time of the Vietnamese liberation were beaten to death just before their arrival. The guards must've been horrendous. Instead of fleeing, or taking to destroy the archives, their blind belief in the system has them killing the last prisoners for no reason whatsoever. By the most brutal means. Bullets were always expensive so most prisoners have been beaten to death to save money. Such ruthless behaviour is seldom seen. Upstairs in one of the buildings testimonials, memories of survivors, Khmer Rouge fighters, guards can be read. A general atmosphere of fear, total fear of dying is all they show. Kill or die yourself. A system held in place by fear of others squealing on you, a fear so strong that it makes ordinary people do the most horrible of things. Like this it is really hard to judge what is wrong and what is right. Most of the lower-level people have never been punished. They are 50 and over now, alive, outside. In the cities, in the countryside.

I could never look at Cambodians with the same eyes again. Each and every one of them could've been a ruthless prison guard, killing at the slightest opportunity. Even the serene old farmer working on this rice paddy. Really, really scary.

To finish the day we pay a visit to the Killing Fields. Not far outside of town this peaceful orchard has been used as one of the many execution areas of unwanted elements. All that remains now is crater-like grounds in the ground. Excavated mass graves where the people were thrown in. Even nowadays heavy rains bring bones, teeth to the surface. A nice place to walk around... not. Recently a pagoda has been built in whose seven levels all the skulls and bones of the deceased have been collected.

The whole experience really put its stamp on my Cambodia experience. I was very glad when I left on Thursday for nicer destinations...