Today I Fired A Gun - Phnom Penh

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Catch Up 2 - Phnom Penh. Made my way via bus to Phnom Penh from Siam Reap and booked myself into the Number 9 Guesthouse on the Lake - a great location, chilled out atmosphere and better sunsets (of which I only saw one - normally it was too cloudy 😞....) Anyhoo, as for the city itself - pretty damn cool. I was staying in the backpackers hub so it wasn't hard to hear about where to go and what to do - the obviouse choices being the Royal Palace, the Killing Fields (sounds ominous I know) and the former Khmer Rouge S-21 Prison. So the first day I headed out the the Royal Palace and National Museum, and I was distinctly underwhelmed by both - the museum was housed in a dank and dark building, with many of the century old exhibits exposed to the weather in the courtyard - one of the best parts on the museum. It also lacked in size and I found myself hanging around before the Royal Palace opened at 2:30. Onwards, and into the grounds of the Royal Palace. In some ways spectacular, but I did wonder how the same nation that built the Angkor temples all those centuries ago could also build such a comparatively poor buiding for the king. There were areas which did impress me nonetheless - the Silver Pagoda - with its solid silver floor and two impressive Buddha statues - one being solid gold and weighing 90-something kilograms and encrusted with over a thousand diamonds, and one carved from Jade (a copy of the original now housed in Bangkok). I spent the evening playing pool with people from the guesthouse, drinking and eating deliciouse Khmer Curry.

Day 2 and time for the Killing fields, S-21 Prison and a detour to the shooting range. The shooting range left me $30 shorter and distinctly un-impressed. For that price I got to shoot off a magazine from an AK47 into a target at the end of the alley (not a moving one...) and although i could tell how powerful the gun was it was the quickest $30 I'd spent on the whole trip. But at least I could say I'd fired a gun. On to the Killing Fields where the Khmer Rouge killed thousands of people under Pol Pot's regime and buried them in mass graves - some of which are still left unexplored. As you entered there was a huge monument, filled inside with hundreds, if not thousands of skulls. Many of the graves were marked with signs such as 'Mass Grave of 450 Victims' and 'Mass Grave of more than 100 Victims, Children and Women whose Majority were Naked'. There were signs for killing trees where children were beaten to death and where the loudspeakers hung to drown out the sounds of the victims being tortured and killed. It all left me shocked at how cruel mankind can be. There was more to come however as I visted S-21.

Formerly a Primary School, this was converted into a prison by the Khmer Rouge, a place where they tortured thousands of people before sending them to be killed. Many of the rooms were quite bare, with just a bed and photograph in, whilst others were used to display photographs of the people who 'visited' the prison during 1975-79. Upon arrival, each prisoner had their photo taken and these were displaed in one of the buildings. The faces stared out at me as if asking for help, pleading me to help them. It reminds you that these were real people who suffered such inhumanities, here, on the same chess-board floor that I was walking on.

I was left quite affected by these sights, and it made me think of what a strange country Cambodia is. How can the same country for who the memories of these crimes is still so much in the forefront of society allow someone like me to go and fire a gun just for the thrill of it? It seemed so backwards. I've heard you can even blow up a cow with a rocket launcher if you have the cash, and here, not 30 minutes from the shooting range they are showing a film explaining and detailing the inhumanities suffered within these very walls. Crazy.

That evening I ventured to eat at somewhere called the Lazy Gecko - boasting proper British comfort food - something that I had missed. So I got myself a proper beaf burger before setting of to another bar to meet a Khmer barmaid I'd met the previous night. We played pool and when we finished headed to a once-a-month pool party in central Phnom Penh. Great fun and I didn't get to sleep until the sun was up in the sky once more. That day I headed out to see more of Phnom Penh - Wat Phnom which was surrounded by charmning gardens filled with monks and monkeys - The Russian and Central Markets, packed to the brim with all sorts of goodies, and down to the banks of the Mekong where I saw a group of people living off the land and creating some quite interesting photos. I was leaving the next day but I'd already decided that if I had more time it would've been great to spend another day in this vibrant city. On to Vietnam.

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