Advertisement
Published: November 2nd 2006
Edit Blog Post
We crossed the border from Vietnam into Cambodia by 'speed boat', which wasn't 100% true! It was a boat but there was not even a hint pace on the thing. It took two days to travel up the Mekong Delta and cross into Cambodia, this involved three buses, two petrol boats and one rowing boat. Despite the slow and very uncomfortable journey we did get to spend some time going round some of the floating villages which were very interesting especially seeing the hole in their living room floor which they farm fish in (they make use of everything round here). We also went to some local sweet makers which were cool...instead of Popcorn they have Poprice...which was actually nice.
Finally we made it to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, which was one of the best places I've visited so far. This probably had something to do with the 'Happy Pizza' we accidently ordered when we arrived there, as we didn't realise Happy meant they add there own special ingredient. Anyway after consuming a 'herb' covered pizza I spent the rest of the night watching two kittens fight and finding it the most amazing thing I have ever seen...strange!?!?
We woke up in the morning and vagley remember booking a tuk-tuk (moped with a carriage) trip with a Cambodian guy called Jay who loves football and fighting (he would love a Saturday night in Northampton). So we headed off on the back of Jays moped for a tour around Phnom Pehn, which turned out to be a very interesting day. First we went to S-21 which is an old prison from when Pol Pot was ruler of Cambodia, it was a very moving, and at times a horrific, place. There are twelve cells that each contained one of the only survivors of the prison and they just have a bed, the torture instruments that were found in them and a picture on the wall of how the prisoner was found. Rightly so, they do not censor anything for the public so some of the pictures were horrendous but it showed what really went on in the prison. There were also rooms full of thousands of pictures of all the people that were killed in the prison. Its hard to describe what it was like to see some many faces of murdered men, women and children.
After S-21
we went to the Filling Fields which weren't any nicer as they are just a large expance of craters where thousands of bodies were found buried in mass graves. In the centre of the field was a huge tower filled with the skulls of the unknown bodies found in the area as a memorial to all those who were killed. Again it was an unbelieveably sad sight.
To lighten the mood Jay suggested we go to another shooting range, despite us saying no he took us there anyway. It ended up being the first time since I've been away that I really thought my life might be in danger! We ended up in the middle of nowhere at a house containing four lads (who were happily killing people on their playstation) with every type of gun imaginable hanging on the wall. We were presented with a menu of guns! It included 4 hand guns, 6 machine guns and a shot gun (not too bad so far) then we turned it over and there were hand granades, rocket prepelled granades, mines and a rocket launcher! Sadly I didn't have the money to fire a rocket launch because it would have
been the best $200 I have ever spent. After buying the cheapest thing on the menu we left all in one piece.
Our next stop on the trip was Cambodian Kick Boxing, which wasn't incident free! When we arrived Jay told us it was free to get in but you have to buy one of the sponsors drinks which was like Redbull so it was fine. When it came in a medicine bottle alarm bells should have rang but instead we happily slurped away. In fits of giggles Jay said 'you like drink? It has speed' - after a very confusing converstation we worked out that they put speed in the redbull to make everyone enjoy the fight. We quickly got rid of our 'Speed shakes' when a few 10 year old street kids ran up and nicked them...who knows what happened to them because we were in bad way after drinking half of it. The boxing was really brutal but good fun to watch (not sure if that was because of the speed??) and we saw one of the boxers head nearly fall off his shoulders when he got elbowed in the face - I don't like to
condome violence but I have added a video of it for any one who does! Enjoy!
Sadly the next day I received some bad news from home and had to return for personal reasons. After 30 hours of travelling I arrived back home in sunny England but I think you all know enough about England so I wont bother telling you what its like!
I loved Cambodia so now I have an excuse to come travelling again so I can see the rest of it. After being at home for two weeks I headed back out to Bangkok to meet up with the other lads.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.087s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0202s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb