Week 21 - Back to Phnom Penh

We headed back to Phnom Penh as we were flying to Bangkok from there. I didn't make any of you aware about it at the time, so not sure if you knew but there was a lot of trouble going on at the Cambodia/Thai boarder. Won't go in to the politics of it but people were getting shot and all sorts, so I didn't fancy chancing that boarder crossing by bus. I booked on the same flight as Mia and it was cheaper going from there rather than Siem Reap for some reason.

So we headed back to Phnom Penh, and met up with the girls from the orphanage again. We had another good evening out. At the same place as last time actually.

And we also did the 'Killing Fields'. I actually missed out the fact that we also went to S-21 before going to Siem Reap. Here's a bit about it all. Sorry to dull the mood but this is what it was all about...

"The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the country's population), was one of the worst human tragedies of the last century. The Khmer Rouge, headed by Pol Pot, combined extremist ideology, ethnic animosity, and a disregard for human life to produce murder on a massive scale.
As hundreds of thousands of people slowly starved in the rice fields, a select number met their fate inside Khmer Rouge interrogation centers. The most famous of these centers, codenamed S-21, was located in the abandoned suburban Phnom Penh high school of Tuol Sleng ("hill of the poison tree"). To the Tuol Sleng neighborhood, S-21 was known simply as konlaenh choul min dael chenh - "the place where people go in but never come out.

The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families."

I can imagine it's the same feeling as going to Ausvitz in Poland. You could feel the death there. That's the prison and the fields. And reading all about it. We couldn't get over that it all happened within the last 30 years. Ridiculous how it could have happened. It really was so so sad. And we felt stupid for being exhausted when we came out of both sites. That was just reading about it. I was also reading 'First they killed my father' which I would recommend for anyone who is interested.

Err what else. Oh yes so we spent a day or two doing that, and re-visiting favourite places to eat, haha.

Oh and i got a mean infection on my feet. Won't go in to that. Think Sarah got an email with details of that one, haha. Sorry Sarah. You shouldn't read things like that when you're hungover!! So I had to get myself to a doctor. It was an Ozzy doc. So as well as getting the prescription I needed (although I just asked for the name of it as it was cheaper to just buy over the counter - why do you need to know all this info? You just do ok) I also got slated for my crocs. Not in such a way that others have taken the mick but he was stick making fun!! Couldn't believe it!! But I guess they weren't the best thing to be wearing. So I made the decision, after 5 months, the crocs went in the bin. Bad times. I'd have to go back to 'thong' wearing (for us normal people, that means 'flip flops')

So leaving my crocs behind we got our tuk tuk to the airport. Paid a stupid airport tax that we weren't aware of and hopped on to the plane to Bangkok.