Phnom Penh

---

The bus to Phnom Penh was a fricking nightmare. I wasn’t feeling great which made me very irritable and keen to spend the journey asleep as much as possible. Just into the journey the bus driver started playing a Cambodian karaoke dvd full blast which lasted for most of the six hour journey. Cambodian music is shit. The next ‘disaster’ was that my ipod died after having been charged for most of the night so I had to share Joel’s. One earphone each, even with Dave Grohl blasting out Monkey Wrench at full volume, was doing nothing to block out the Asian pop coming from the speakers above our heads. Very pissed off. And then we come across a broken down bus which our driver feels the need to stop and help. Many men gathered around looking at the broken engine, pointing and chattering, none having any apparent clue as to how to fix it. I then realise the bus is empty and am double annoyed at the time wastage. Anyhow, it does get fixed and we are on our musical way again.

The first thing we saw as we entered the city was a big sculpture of a gun. Nice friendly place then. As the bus pulled in to the station, tuk tuk drivers mobbed us trying to secure deals while we were still onboard. Once out on the street it was worse and very overwhelming as all these men crowd you and compete for your money. We had decided on Tat Guesthouse and got there shortly afterwards via Tattoo Guesthouse which convinced us we were being taken for a ride. Our sceptical minds were wrong though and we were indeed in the right place.

The guesthouse had a funky roof top with hammocks and tv where we ate and decided what to do the next day. The family who ran the place were lovely and made us feel at home right away as we kicked back with a beer and indulged in the National Geographic Wild channel.

The next day was Lorna’s birthday and an eye opener to say the least. Knowing nothing (but learning fast) about Cambodia’s recent history we made our way to the city’s Tuol Sleng genocide museum. The museum (I had hoped for an air-conditioned building) was a former school which the Khmer Rouge turned into a Security Office where they killed over 30,000 innocent Cambodians after detention, interrogation and torture. Their crime? Being city livers, being educated, being foreign...being normal. Even more shocking perhaps is that this happened only 33-35 years ago, almost within my lifetime.

The building remains as it was during these years with classrooms converted into cells and furnished with a single metal bed frame, shackles and glass paned windows to prevent the sounds of screaming travelling. The external hallways on each level were covered in a net of barbed wire to prevent suicide. No way out. The museum’s purpose is to serve as a chilling reminder to the suffering and atrocities that happened in the hope that the memory will be the key to building a new, strong and just state.

On one of the walls a tourist has written: “When this building was a school, nobody died. When it was a prison, nobody learned.”
Interestingly the trials of the surviving members of the Khmer Rouge were occurring in Phnom Penh while we were there.

We decided to skip the Killing Fields, we’d had enough heart wrenching for one day so back to the birthday celebrations! We had been looking forward to being back in civilisation and were hoping to find some nightlife. We found a beautiful bar called Elsewhere which had, apart from an extensive cocktail menu and happy hour, a palm tree covered swimming pool! Amazing place where we spent the evening and a lot of money.

---