17/3/18 - Day 49

Happy Paddy’s Day from Phnom Phen. We made it to the bus in Battambang and it left promptly at 8.30, it took 5.5 hrs and the driver was crazy. I spent most of the time reading my book or looking sideways but I could not look straight ahead... according to J we had numerous near misses and the driver left a pile of destruction in our wake. Amazingly we made it to Phnom Phen by a tuktuk driver who took us straight to our hotel, about 15 mins away. Phnom Phen is huge, and still loads of rubbish everywhere, dumped our bags and headed straight to Toul Sleng (S21) the former High School turned torture chamber / prison which was used by the Khmer Rouge from ‘75 to ‘79. Needless to say it was hugely emotional, I walked around in my dark sunglasses crying most of the time, it is a harrowing thing to see and feel. In relative history terms only happened so recently. Some of the actual survivors were also there just as we ended our visit. There aren’t any photo’s of this out of respect, it’s something that everyone should see BUT it’s something that should never be allowed to happen again, anywhere! 3 out of 8 million where killed, those who weren’t killed have been scared by it but despite all this they are a friendly, happy and clearly resilient bunch, development here is naturally going crazy and there is still evidence of a big divide and a lot of corruption. I just pray that lessons have been learnt.

18/3/18 - Day 50

Ate at a local restaurant last night, sadly the food (or my emotions) have taken their toll on me, J ok though, despite this had a good nights sleep, staying at the Double Leaf Boutique Hotel and its nice but there’s some very strange things in the room. See if you can work it out from the photo’s. I think their interior designer was having an off day ;)

After breakfast we headed out to visit the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre which is about 15km away from the centre of Phnom Phen.

So to get there I thought we’d try Uber’s equivalent out here in Asia, which is called ‘Grab’, what a mistake! We had the worst driver in the world, drove really slowly (which is the complete opposite of everyone else out here!) at around 15km per hour, so it took us that to get out to Choeung Ek but that wasn’t the worst part, he couldn’t speak great English but started getting very political and irate, it was a bit scary (I started to worry that he might be somehow related to Pol Pot!?). Anyway, we told him not to wait as we didn’t know how long the visit would take and plus there were tonnes of tuktuk’s around. We went into the Centre and discovered that we were nearly out of cash (ATM’s were you’ve guessed it back in PP!) so had to share an audio tour, fortunately one of the guides took pity on us and gave us a spare set of headphones that you can plug into the one device. Once we’d got used to walking in union and stopped fighting about who was going to press the buttons (I’m joking), we spent good few hours listening and reflecting during our visit. As you can imagine it’s emotionally upsetting and humbling, this site is just one of hundreds that exist in Cambodia, However this site is very peaceful and respectful despite the atrocities that occurred there (estimated nearly 20,000 people killed at this site alone) people were transferred from the S21 prison to this site on the premise of a fresh start or being reunited with their loved ones only to be killed here. Although you can take photo’s in some areas we choose not to, it just doesn’t feel right. After our visit we made our way back out and guess who was waiting for us... Pol Pot’s cousin! I feel bad for making a joke out of it but he was pretty scary. J was brilliant and told him that we were staying for lunch (eating was the last thing on our minds!) and that he should take another fare (we told him all this when he dropped us off). We walked out and away from the Centre and hailed a tuktuk. Phew, lucky escape...Back at the hotel to grab some more water and cash, and after a quick coffee stop for J we headed to the Russian Market where we bought a few items and then we decided to do our good deed for the day (feeling guilty about our taxi driver) and we walked to the blood transfusion unit which was a couple of kilometres away.

We arrived at the unit and it was really efficient, clearly they’re not used to dealing with tourists so they had to track down an English speaker for us. Forms and pin-prick tests completed, I was rejected (low haemoglobin levels at the moment apparently) J was given the thumbs up to give blood, so he did, whilst I watched, held his hand and took photo’s! Back to the hotel to shower before we headed out to Rombeng which is a Tree Alliance Restaurant which supports homeless / underprivileged kids (we found out about Tree Alliance whilst we were staying in Laos and have been trying to eat at all their restaurants in the countries we are visiting on this trip) so we thought we’d go along and eat somewhere which supports another good cause. I feel quite unwell, just returned from Rombeng’s where they had Tarantulas on the menu... did I or didn’t I? ;)

Having an early night as heading to Kampot tomorrow... can’t wait to get out of the City and get near water again. I can’t do big hectic cities anymore!