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July 4th 2006
Published: July 4th 2006
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Hello, tis a sad sad day in Bangkok, after five and a half months of spending money I dont have in the far off corners of the world, I have to return home to work. I'll be home tomorrow night.

Since last speaking to you all, I have travelled down from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, on a short, but really really uncomfortable bus, I hated it, but it was cheap, and Phnom Penh is a great city, so its well worth it.

Its full of history, all of it terrible, and everywhere you go you can see remnants of Pol Pot and his mental killings of everything. In one day we visited the S-21 Prison, an old school turned into a prison and torture house where I think 20,000 people were brutally, and I mean brutally murdered, men women and children, most for being intelligent, or related to someone intelligent. Mental. There are photos of what happened, and its not till you look closely that you realise your standing next to the bed, or in the cell that the pictures were taken.

We then went to the Killing Fields which is as chearful as it sounds. You can actually see human bones sticking out of the ground as you walk around, which I can tell you, is fucked up. There are also clothes poking out of the dirt - most with bones inside them. There is also a room with about 9000 skulls piled high inside. Seriously depressing few hours, we even had a Cambodian guide, who had lived during the time of the Khmer Rouge, and he told us all about it. Its a total head fuck to see and hear about, while standing litterally on the bodies, and over 3 million people were killed in a few years here, all Cambodians bar a handfull of westerners.
The rest of the day we watched films and drank heavily.

As a little light relief we headed down to the beaches on the south (only) coast. We are absolute idiots though, as it is monsoon season, and we sat on a bus for 4 hours before putting 2 and 2 together... we sat on a bus for 4 hours in the other direction the next day.

You would not believe how many people try to sell you drugs in Cambodia, even the kids, "You wana smoke?" they say, usually followed by "How 'bout Opium? its strong" if you turn down the weed.
One hotel I checked into GAVE me a huge bag of weed with the room, about 50 quids worth, I didnt take it though, its a shame about the whole death sentance thing around these parts. The hotel was cool though, floating on the lake, no solid floor between you and a hundred feet of murky water, safety precausions strike again.

Im sitting in the internet cafe now, and people keep asking me to translate or explain things to them in English - so far I've told a woman that her text says "I want to touch you" and I typed underwear for a guy into his MSN.

Anyway, I headed back to Phnom Penh, and we had a bunch of drinks before getting to sleep at 1am, getting up at 6am for the bus to Vietnam.
I can't really afford Vietnam at all, but I already bought the Visa, which cost shit loads, so I'm damned if I'm not using it.
Two things with that though - firstly the woman in the embassy messed up the visa so there is tip-ex in it, meaning a half hour wait while they decided if I could come in the country or not, and secondly, the flight out of Vietnam cost me about US$170, which would have been about $50 from Phnom Penh - nobody said it was that expensive

I sat on another bus now, heading into Saigon (HO Chi Minh City), which took another 12 hours or so, and when we arrived

Glad to fly over Phnom Penh in 10 minutes, rather than 12 hours on a bus

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4th July 2006

beef is coming home

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