Phnom Phen

Our bus journey to Phnom Phen was not without incident. The bus stopped at a couple of stops for people to relieve themselves and pick up some locally prepared food, as is normal. Less normal for us though, were the woks of fried bugs, served by the bag load, and the girl selling fruit, with a tarantula hanging off her T-shirt which she would thrust in your face if your were caught looking at it. When we did arrive in the Capital we were immediately descended upon by an army of Tuc-Tuc drivers all eager to take us to hotels. It's important to look like you know what you're doing in these situations because any flicker of uncertainty - and they'll ask you questions to expose that flicker - will result in them telling you what 'you need to do' or 'where you need to go' rather than let you find out for yourself. Their intention being to introduce you to the hotel that gives them a commission, and is often more than a walk from town, so you need a Tuc-Tuc. It can be very pressured, but always friendly, and if you can convince them that your mind is not for persuading they always treat you on the level and will take you where you want to go, the problem with even this though, is that on day one you'll probably pay five times the going rate, as such our technique was to don our bags and walk in a fixed direction - the Surabaya technique.

The afternoon heat was starting to wear us down, but after a handful of hotels we settled on The Asia. It wasn't great but we thought it would do for a night - we could make a more thorough venture for hotels later without our bags. We later discovered a laminated menu in the room, which offered breakfast through to prostitutes and we were woken in the middle of the night by what sounded like a body landing on the roof below us, though a look out the window with the torch revealed nothing, and if someone had jumped, they weren't making any more noise about it.

A quick departure in the morning, delayed only by the management being really officious and difficult because the room we stayed in didn't match the booking (as if that was our problem) and we got a Tuc-Tuc to take us to our next pre-arranged hotel. The driver said he was quite used to taking tourists to new hotels from that one, the management are not held in high regard.

Our new hotel was much nicer. There was no laminated menu, and no prostitutes and we were quite happy there until we blocked the toilet. We were rather embarrassed about this, because in Cambodia toilets can't deal with loo-roll, so you're supposed to put that in a wee bin beside you - something we have never got used to. Admitting we had blocked the loo would have admitted ignoring the big notices everywhere, with the uncertain consequence possibly of a fine. Two coat-hangers and a night later and we fessed up, resulting in our biggest tip yet going to the man with a plunger.

We visited the National Museum, unwittingly going backwards through it (starting with the most recent stuff) and remarked that they were very proud of achievements made at a time our ancestors were grappling with electricity. Then we found all the old stuff, which had been removed from their ancient temples at Angkor Wat and around. We went to another museum too, from a far more recent page in the Cambodian history books, the Genocide Museum.

In the 1970's, the Khmer Rouge, a growing communist party overthrew the government and took control of the country, under the leadership of Pol Pot. It's agenda was to turn Cambodians into 'new people' - isolated from the outside world. Their lunatic agenda closed all international links, and forcibly removed the urban population into agricultural labour in the countryside. Since everyone who had been relocated had no farming skills, they inevitably failed and famine spread across the country. Anyone caught picking wild berries to avoid starvation would be killed for engaging in 'independent endeavour'. All schools and institutions were closed. Religion, private property, even money was banned. The leadership became increasingly paranoid, executing anyone it suspected of being their enemy. This included intellectuals and professionals. One of the tests for intelligence was eyesight, because obviously, as everyone knows if you wear glasses you're brainy, so specs meant death. Also, anyone who was known to have had an education was not far from meeting their maker. Practitioners of religion, including monks were considered enemies. The odd westerner caught up in it all, enemy. The neighbour or family member (including babies) of a suspected enemy - also enemy. In the end, Pol Pot even considered his own family enemies and had them all executed.

These supposed enemies were taken to a former high school in the emptied capital and tortured to reveal their alleged secrets and plots. After weeks of torture, and ridiculous accusation, these people would then be taken to the countryside - the area now known as The Killing Fields - near the city and executed, mostly by a club to the head. When the Vietnamese finally succeeded in liberating the country from the clutches of the Khmer Rouge, the administrators of the prison (who were mostly teenage boys) executed the remaining victims and fled, leaving cupboards full of documents and photo's testifying to the atrocities committed. The school/prison, called S21, has been preserved, just as it was found and now serves as a memorial to the atrocities.

The equipment that was used to torture the victims, and the iron rods their legs were ceaselessly fastened to were grim enough but what was all the more vivid was the walls of photographs, taken of the people when they were first brought to the centre. These black and white faces ranged from defiance to terror, and depicted men, women and young children. In some of the photos of women, you could see a baby in their arms, which was certainly also considered an enemy of the state. Even the seat they sat in for the photos was a horrific contraption with a big spike against which they had to rest their head.

Since our visit to S21, it has left the thought in our minds that many of the people around us would have been victims of the atrocities committed not so long ago.