The Killing Fields

The bus to Phnom Penh wasn't the most pleasant journey I've had, although we had much worse to come. We were on a sleeper bus where the beds were a foot too short for Henry, there was a local playing a Cambodian film out loud on his phone, and the roads were unpaved the whole way.

Anyway we got there in one piece and found a hostel with 3 travellers from the bus. While in Phnom Penh we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum and the killing fields. These were both horrific and incredibly moving experiences. I was shocked at how little we are educated at home about the acts of genocide that went on here not so long ago. We learnt of the millions of people that were slaughtered there in only a few years and of some of the atrocities that occurred at the death camps. There is however a lovely memorial in the place where 20000 people were murdered and a service is held every year to remember those who died.

I spent the final day with a guy from Malta, going round the markets and visiting a few temples. That night we all went for a couple of drinks on the river. However we ended up drinking 6 jugs of beer, playing pool with some Cambodian children, getting a blessing from a religious

Canadian nutjob, and finished up in a local club.

Needless to say we missed our 7am bus the next day to Kratie. However we soon found out this wasn't such a bad thing. Somehow we had booked a bus to Kampot not Kratie (which are 300km apart). So by getting too drunk and missing it, we actually saved ourselves a lot of embarrassment by turning up in the wrong city! Lesson learnt: two fuck ups will correct themselves.