Phnom Penh and The Killing Fields

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The three of us lads plus Felix took the bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh
the Cambodian capital on the 29th. The bus journey was even more hair
raising than some of the trips within Vietnam. He drove with his hand
almost permanently on the horn, overtaking on blind bends and passing
5 vans at once. The only rules for overtaking seem to be small
vehicles yield to big ones no matter what direction you're going! We
stayed at the Happy Hotel right on the lake in Phnom Penh and met up
with a crowd from we'd met in Saigon (Glynn, Alice, Caroline and Taz).
When we went out for a meal that night we noticed the whole menu was
priced in US dollars and were pretty expensive compared to Vietnam.
You could easily survive in Cambodia on US dollars alone. It was my
birthday at midnight and we celebrated in style at the local club
called Heart of Darkness.

The next morning we headed off with our tuk tuk driver to see the
Killing Fields. On the way (or maybe it was out of the way) we were
brought to a shooting range. The "menu" was pretty unusual… "AK 47, 30
bullets -- $30" followed by "Coca Cola -- $1"! I'd never fired a real
gun before so I tried the AK47. Good fun but the recoil from the shots
gets a bit tiring after a while.

Next we went to visit the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek and it was just
shocking. It's one of the places where the Khmer Rouge government carried out
executions during their genocidal regime between 1975 and 1979.
Estimates of how many people were killed are varied but a recent one
puts the figure at 1.7 million out of a population of 7 million.
They targeted anyone with links to the former government, foreign governments and also intellectuals and people who simply wore glasses.
In the afternoon we went to the S21 museum in Phnom Penh. Here we saw where the torture of prisoners took place. Gruelling stuff.

That night we needed a change of scenery so we headed out to a pub quiz. Long story short, we ended up winning the quiz and the prizemoney paid for the night out. The next day we hit the road again on our whirlwind tour of Cambodia.

The next morning Johnny left us to head on to Australia. He's accepted a job back in Ireland so he had to change his travelling plans. He's starting in January so he's going to make it home for Christmas. We are hoping the Irish winter might get to him though. Maybe he'll quit the job after a few months and we'll see him on tour again!! Either way, it's been a blast Johnny!

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