Phnom Penh

We left Siam Reap the next day, one day at the Temples was enough! Now onto the Capital, compared to Laos' Capital this place is buzzing, scooters everywhere, a street sellar on every corner and swarms of beggars! But actually we quite liked it - some great bargains to be had at the many markets, and lots of cheap food. But the highlight is 25p beer on tap !!! Its not all fun and games though....Cambodia has a very real and very disturbing recent history, as we were to learn all about! A visit to the Genocide Museum, formerly a high school back in 1975 - but for the four years after this was turned into a torture / concentration camp for the Kymer Rouge and the infamous Pal Pot regime. The school is left how it was found back in 1979 by Vietnamese forces who stepped in to end the mass killing that was taking place, nothing more than a 3 storey decaying concrete block that houses a few relics and still has blood splattered on the walls. Not a great deal of items on display only a few rusty beds, shackles and tiny wooden cells, but what makes it is the endless lines of portrait photos taken of the prisoners who passed through its doors and a variety of short extracts from peoples diaries of some of the 17,000 prisoners, of which only 12 survived. Its estimated that nearly 3 million Cambodians from all walks of life were murdered during the 5 year period, a shocking fact when this was still going on in the year Chris was born!
On a lighter note we had a couple of good nights at the local bars - too cheap to resist! before we decided to head down and visit the coast, of which we haven't seen for about a month!

Central Market, our best haggling techniques were deployed here!