Untitled... in memory

The day after Angkor, we got up early and boarded a 5hr bus to the nations capital city; Phnom Penh.

It's quite a lot more developed than I'd imagined anywhere in Cambodia might be, though there are plenty of reminders of the horiffic Pol Pot regime that ended in the late 90's.

During our first afternoon, we went to go have some fun at the shooting range. Here, we had the choice of shooting a whole arsenal of firearms.

As it was quite pricy, we shared rounds so we could each fire two guns. We chose the AK47 Kalashnikov and a CZ75 hand gun - purely based on it's compact, but chunky Bond characteristics. The range also allows you to shoot Tommy guns, shot guns, a rocket launcher, anti-aircraft rounds and grenades. But at $35 for a grenade, and $200 for a single shot of the rocket launcher, we figured the money would be better saved for other activities. The AK47 gave a mild recoil and out of our 25rounds, we think about 15 of them hit the target. The CZ75 was much more fun in my opinion though - it really gave a kick when you fired it, and we managed to get around 5 of our 7 rounds into the paper target.

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We were glad we'd fired the guns first, as the next tourist attraction left us in no mood to do the same again. Pol Pots killing fields.

Upon walking in the site, you can see nothing but a tall Stupa and some nice looking meadows off to it's side. In actual fact, the site had been used for mass graves. A large amount of these had been exhumed and the remains taken... except for their skulls. The meadow was full of large craters where the graves had been left unfilled.

I couldn't quite grasp the concept of their memorial, but the temple you see in the picture has many different layers of which each skull that was uncovered is now housed. The guide asked if we wanted to take pictures close up of the remains but I couldn't see why anyone would want to see a picture like that. 8985 bodies were buried in the graves occupying a space probably 100metres x 120metres. Every one of the skulls found now occupy the Stupa. There is also another area across a river next to the site which has around 50% more mass graves, however those remain un-excavated. The guide went into detail of how the prisoners were treated at the camps, but I won't relay those facts.

The prisoners were part of the Khmer people, and nearly all of them were academics, doctors and such - no mercy was shown for any members of these families. Nick, nor I could grasp why and how the Pol Pot soldiers could carry out these acts and it left us feeling pretty sombre on the bumpy tuk-tuk ride home.

Though the thing that cheered me up most, was seeing all the Cambodians carrying on with life, kids playing in the street and the country now enjoying a boom in tourism now it's communist regime had fallen.

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The following day we set out to explore the city. We headed to the riverside to get views of the Royal Palace, then checked out the old markets before arriving at Wat Phnom, a temple sat in the middle of a large roundabout. After this we had a wander through Phnom Penhs centre-piece - the Central Market. A huge domed building with 4 halls housing anything from fresh meat to jeans, jewellery to pharmacies or fruit to Christmas decorations!

After 2 o clock, we were free ($3 lighter in pocket) to explore the Royal Palace. It was quite similar to the Grand Palace in Bangkok - very extraveagent and is home to the Silver Pagoda - a temple with it's inner floors made out of solid Silver tiling, reflecting the image of a small Jade Buddha.

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After another nights sleep, it was time to board another flight back to Bangkok and endeth our giant lap around North Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia. It's been around 5 weeks, I've seen more than I'll ever remember and I thoroughly hope to return to all these destinations again one day. We've been on quite a hectic programme to get ourselves back here in Bangkok before Christmas, so now I'm just looking forward to spending a month on South Thailands beachs doing a lot less!

I hope all is well with all of you in the run up to Christmas, have a good one!