Phnom Penh

We checked out of our free luxury room at 12noon after a good lye in! We got a Tuk Tuk to an area closer to the river as the free one was a bit in the stix. We reluctantly paid $11 for our room as it is more than we were paying in Vietnam.
We later found out that electricity is ~14 times more expensive than the UK!Apparently Air Con costs $1 every 3 hours!! We could've saved money by not having air con but its difficult to sleep when it is hot!

We headed out and the sky went black so we headed inside the national museum ($3). It was better than expected and had lots of sculptures from the Anchor era (9-12th century for all you history buffs!)

It didn't stop raining all night so we made ourselves comfortable in the bars at the riverside whilst enjoying the happy hours... that last all day!

Another lye in (yeah we're enjoying them now!) before heading off to the killing fields. Our driver from the previous day was there waiting (as he said he would be-not our choice though!) and we negotiated to $10 which seemed pretty steep at the time but we asked someone else and they said the same.

Cambodia has its own currency (the Riel) but for some reason everything is in US dollars. You get given change in dollars and Riel which was confusing at first! $1 = 4000 Riel so 25 cents is given in 1000 Riel. Confused?! So are we! Although if you have to pay $1 in Riel it soon becomes 4200 Riel !!

The killing fields was a series of mass graves found in an area 15km out of the city. What happened there was part of Pol Pot's regime which was forced upon the people. The people executed were intelligent like doctors, lawyers even actors as Pol Pot wanted to go back to the stone age and have no medical facilities, no lawyers etc so Pol Pot would have a country who would follow orders no questions asked and he would have ultimate power.

At the killing fields they have excavated the remains of the victims but apart from that it remains relatively untouched. Nearby the excavated areas, there was clothing poking through the mud and they had left the bones of children that were killed by being hit against the tree (it saved on bullets). We bumped into the couple we had seen throughout Vietnam here. As we were talking, Johnny pointed out a tooth in the mud. We looked down and saw others and it was pretty obvious what it was from.

Not feeling depressed enough we headed to the S-21 museum which before dictatorship kicked in was a school but was used as a torture centre. The pictures were graphic and there were face shots of all those killed.

We made our own way to the Russian market which as expected had no Russians in site! We bought more clothes for a good price! We got a Moto back from the market. That's...Kris, Emma and the driver on 1 moped!! They don't go over 70mph here so its quite safe... - just joking folks they don't go 15mph!!

Not so many photos here, firstly because the museums charge and secondly we didn't feel it was appropriate to take pictures. We didn't take any pictures at Auswich in Poland but it is was one of the places I can picture most about our trip around Europe last year (for all the wrong reasons). You will however see a picture of a random elephant which was walking down the street. It stopped at the bar to get some snacks, then left!

We decided to stay an extra day in Phnom Penh as we were liking it so much, and there were still things to do. We went to the central market but apparently it doesn't get going until 3pm. We haven't eaten any of the street food here yet, mainly because the markets put us off. Its about 35 degrees and they have raw meat hanging on their stalls all day. You see loads of flies on it, so needless to say we don't fancy the local delicacy being sold at the stall next door.

We went to the palace which is very pretty from the outside. There were a lot of restricted areas though, but we saw enough to get the idea! It was incredibly hot and humid that it was actually really nice to take your shoes off and walk around the cool temples.

We ended our day by going to the 'Seeing Hands' massage parlour. The people working there are all blind but trained in massage. It allows them to earn a living as the government doesn't provide any sort of social support (one of the reasons why there's a lot of disabled beggars here - that and land mines). It sounds pretty weird, and to be honest it was, but still very good!! Before anyone asks there were no wandering hands!! ha ha!