Cambodia ... Phnom Pehn and Siem Reap

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Arriving in Phnom Pehn to find that our hotel room had a view of the Royal Palace and walking along the river front for a nice Khmer meal was a good welcome to Cambodia. Our first day in the city we hired a moped again and headed our to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre (The Killing Fields), the complex was very small in area and the only building is the memorial, which contains 9000 skulls all excavated from the site in 1980. All around are mass graves of thousands of Cambodian people killed between 1975 and 1978 by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime. Most of the people had been tortured and detained at S-21 (Tuol Sleng Prison) which we visited in the afternoon. Around the killing fields site there are shreds of fabrics and shards of bones poking through the soil as the rain brings them to the surface. It was a sombre and harrowing experience, that we weren't prepared for, having read little about the countries histroy prior to our visit. The Prison is a converted school and there was an exhibition in one of the classroom blocks with hundredsf photos of prisoners that were sent to Choeung Ek to be killed, it was chilling to walk through a place that should have been filled with children that was used for such evil and inhumane purposes. Later we had to tackle rush hour traffic on the moped and got stopped and fined by police ($3) for driving the wrong way up an unmarked one way street. Funnily enough the numerous locals doing the same thing were not.

Our second day in Phnom Pehn was more relaxed, we visited the Royal Palace and National Museum, both very luxurious and extravagant buildings. The palace is the current residence of the King/President and contradictory to the communist values of the government it has been filled with gold decoration and furnishings, had a hall floor tiled with silver and a 60kg solid gold buddha statue encrusted with diamonds! In the afternoon we had a bone shaker bus ride to Siem Reap, the home of the Angkor temples.

We got a 3 day pass to Angkor and started with some of the lesser known temples: Pre Rup, East Mebon, Ta Som, Neak Prean and Preah Khan. The structures are immense and surprisingly well preserved considering they date from 830 AD. In the late afternoon we had time to visit the Bayon and the Elephant terrace in Angkor Thom, the largest of the cities. It is a huge maze of galleries and temples all with towers with huge faces on each side. It was an exciting day visiting the temples and it is good that you can still climb round the ruins and explore. After we climbed a hill to watch the sun set over Angkor Wat. Our second day we headed out with our Tuk-Tuk driver at 4.45am to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat and its relection in the pools in front of the entrance. After we went to some of the earliest temples further afield and visited one that was minute in scale in comparison to the other temples, with the central shrine closed off as the door is only 80cm high. By day 3 we were knackered but had saved the best until last, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. Angkor Wat is the best preserved temple and is large with each terrace rising so steeply from the last, unfortunately we couldnt go right to the top temple as we were wearing shorts and no where warned us not to! Ta Prohm was a real adventure as it has been left unrestored and it is covered with huge silk-cotton trees and thier roots engulf the stone work and have caused much of the complex to collapse, this was used as a set in Tomb Raider, and was probably our favourite temple.

Siem Reap town was fantastic and the night markets were buzzing, we enjoyed the good food and retail therapy! Our last morning before flying to Laos was spent at a fairtrade crafts workshop and we saw the silk production process and the dyeing and weaving workshops which was really interesting, the finished products were beautiful but unfortunately very expensive.

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