Beauty and brutality in Cambodia

Well I have reached the end of my travels, as I am back in the pressure cooker of Bangkok awaiting tomorrow's flight back to London. I had a fascinating final week in Cambodia to finish things off.

To say Cambodia has had a turbulent recent history would be an understatement. A millenia ago they ruled Indochina, with the Khmer empire stretching from Myanmar to Vietnam. At the apex of this great empire they built Angkor, a vast complex of temples which combined a mixture of Buddhist and Hindu mythologies. Angkor Wat, the lynchpin of these temples, is now regarded as one of the wonders of the world, having been rescued from the consuming jungle that surrounded it in the last century or so. Huge, crumbling towers surround beautiful galleries, cloisters and terraces, with endless, ornate designs of dancing nymphs, elephants, bejewelled gods, warrior monkeys, and eight-headed snakes. Angkor goes on forever, and people buy week-long tickets to explore the complex in full. There is another temple called Bayon, with crumbling Buddha heads staring you down at every viewpoint, and another which has tree trunks snaking around the ancient walls, semingly a part of the original design. It gives the place an Indiana Jones movie-setting feel, and indeed parts of films such as 'Tomb Raider' were filmed here. Like everyone else I based myself at the funky little city of Siem Reap to explore the temples, which was a great town to have fun in too.

The week before I was in the capital, Pnomn Penh, which the best city I have visited in a long time. It was everything I expected of a Southeast Asian city. It was hectic, scorching, polluted - but fun. There was a dangerous edge to the city but had a passion that I didn't see in Bangkok - it felt more like a South American city than an Asian one at times. The Khmer people are not shy to talk to you (ie sell you stuff) but are very friendly and seem like they are living life to the full. They have every reason to, considering what has happened to them in their very recent past.

Cambodia gained independence from the French in 1953, and after that became indirectly embroiled in the Vietnam war when America bombed Cambodian bases near to the Vietnam border. The Khmer Rouge - a communist group led by Pol Pot - gained strength in the 1960s and won a bitter civil war in 1975, overthrowing Prince Sihanook and taking Pnomn Penh. What happened next shocked the world. They emptied the capital, telling everyone that the Americans were about to bomb it and they could all come back in three days. The capital remained a ghost town until 1979 when the Khmer Rouge were finally defeated by liberating Vietnamese. The regime forced the country back to a Stone Age Year Zero, banning media, schools, currency, hospitals and every civilising function the country had. They forced everyone to work the land, their philosophy being that all they needed to survive as an isolated, self-sufficient communist nation was rice. Rice production went up, but they sold it all to the Chinese to buy guns. If you died of starvation - which hundreds of thousands did, you were lucky. Anyone with an education, a foreign language, or a political view that contradicted the Khmer Rouge's, was tortured and murdered. Even wearing glasses was symbolic of an education in their eyes. In total, two million out of a population of seven million died at their hands.

In Pnomn Penh, the fumes of the Khmer Rouge is still in the air. There is a population of 15 million now, and the majority are under 30. Landmine victims wander the streets. There are still mass graves being found, all the time. The currency (Rei) is in a disastrous state because money had been banned up until 1979. Pol Pot was only captured in 1998 and died before millions of Cambodians could claim any kind of justice with a trial.

Visiting Tuol Sleng, the former school which the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison, is sobering experience, and not one I really want to go into in any great depth. Suffice it is to say, only about two people out of the thousands that were brought here survived. If they didn't die at Toul Sleng they were taken to the Killing Fields, 10km outside of Pnomn Penh, where they were executed and left in a mass grave. It has rightly been turned into a memorial, with a huge tower filled with the 9,000 skulls found in the area. The whole experience was as grim as it can get, but a neccessary one if you want to appreciate the tragedy of Cambodia's recent history at any level.

That's it... no more blogs! The last ten months have been an incredible experience, and I would like to think life-changing. I've managed to see Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat and the Hong Kong skyline. I've made loads of new friends, other travellers and locals, I've lazed around the Thai islands and have been tested to the limit by Colombian schoolchildren. I've seen the sun set on a Caribbean beach and the moon rise on a Bolivian salt flat. Colombia was my runaway favourite place, and where I hope to be back sometime soon. The most rewarding experience for me was going some way to cracking Spanish, and it was Colombia where it really took off. I still have an awful long way to go with it but I feel I have made real progress. My favourite thing about travelling has not been the beautiful landscapes, the ancient ruins or the chilled beaches, but the times when I have been lucky enough to get to know some amazing local people who have shown me what their country is like though their eyes. It's been a blast!

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