An emotional week in Cambodia, highs and lows in abundance

We eased ourselves into Cambodia with the easiest border crossing since we left England, it was painless and quick, and we were soon headed for Phnom Penh where we stayed for three nights.

Welcome to Cambodia!

Floating houses

This takes moving house to a new level

The first thing we do when we hit a new country?  Try the food and the beer, so we headed out for a late lunch, followed by a beer and a fish pedicure at the side of the road.  It was a bit weird, but after a few minutes you get used the nibbling and come away with smooth feet and the fish get a feed.

Freaky eating fish

A feeding frenzy

Smiling or grimacing as the fish have lunch?

We went to a grimy local restaurant that night where we tried some different dishes, very hit and miss, some great some not so good.  One was pork with ants, but we opted for the no ants option.  We ate our meal whilst listening to a french guy behind us talking to a prostitute via the waiter as an interpreter he was trying to hook himself up with for the night, and he was saying 'no sex as I have a girlfriend and that would feel like cheating'. Nice.

That night I seemed to attract the attention of a Thai guy who bought me a rose and said he would see me in the morning as we were both heading for the killing fields, and if he saw me at the killing fields "I would be his girlfriend". Thankfully for me I had my wits about me the next day and didn't see the nutter, thank god.

Before we went to the killing fields, we all went by tuk tuk to the S21 prison and were shown around by our guide and explained the full horrors of what went on there.  It was truly sickening to hear the ugly truth and to see the places
where people were tortured to death, very painfully and slowly, just for being wealthy or wearing a pair of glasses or working in an office.  Whilst there we met two of the survivors of  S21, and they explained how they were tortured, and
how their wives and children had been killed.  It was truly heartbreaking.  It was unbelievable to think that over 1/3 of the Cambodian population were killed during the time of the Khmer Rouge, and this atrocity happened so recently.

After visiting S21, we got back in our tuk tuks and carried on the somber theme with a visit to the killing fields, 12km out of town.  This is where many people were brought and bludgeoned to death and left to rot in mass graves.   This
site was one of many throughout Cambodia, and we wandered around the site, and were shown a tree where children and babies were murdered by being smashed against the tree trunks, it was absolutely sickening.  People were killed
this way to save bullets and ammunition stocks.  We also saw thousands of skulls that had been found in this area, and were told there were many more out there.  Just unbelievable.

S21 prison

One of the survivors of the prison

A cell

One of the mass graves

After a very depressing day, but a day that had totally opened my eyes to something I knew very little about before, we all decided we needed a night out, so everyone put on their glad rags, mainly their new clothes that they had
made in Hoi An, and headed for a cocktail at the Foreign Correspondence Club, and some of us headed to a local nightclub for a boogie.

Aoife Me and Mel and the FCC

Enjoying a cocktail overlooking the river

To get us over a hangover, we headed to the Palace where we bumped into Richard and Andrea who had left the truck some weeks before.  We caught up with them and then wandered around the opulent palace and even got to see
the President of Laos as they were on a visit to Cambodia!  On the way back to the hotel from the palace, the heavens opened like I'd never seen before and we were soaked to the undies in under 5 seconds, it was like standing under a
power shower!!

The palace

Aoife, Ben and Clare at the Palace

On route to Siem Riep, we stopped for light refreshment at the side of the road as we usually did. Most people had fried rice, I had deep fried tarantula and a few locusts.  Apparently the tarantulas are a speciality of the area, so I
had to give them a go!  In fact it wasn't too bad, but I probably won't have another in a hurry!

Arriving in Siem Riep, we headed straight out to buy our tickets for Anchor Wat, in preparation for a sunrise there the next day!  The next day we awoke especially early for the sunrise, but sunrise was very disappointing, however Anchor Wat wasn't at all!  It was absolutely fantastic, what an amazing place.  We were allocated our tuk tuk drivers for the morning to drive us around the vast site, our tuk tuk driver was a lovely guy and proudly showed us his prosthetic leg, explaining how his leg was blown off in a land mine, and how he has adapted his tuk tuk so he can drive.

We spent the morning being shown some awesome sights, temples that had been overtaken by jungle and trees, with their roots spreading over the temples in a eery fashion. This was where Tomb Raider

Anchor Wat

The trees claiming back their territory

Ben and Denis in our tuk tuk

Balloon in the distance

Some of the gang

My curiosity for strange foods continued that evening as I ate stir fried frog in Khmer spices, followed by a bizarre drag act at the local gay bar which was highly amusing!

Sally, Aoife and I also partook in a Cambodian cooking course and before we started were shown around the local market to learn about the ingredients we were to cook with. We learnt a few dishes and were made to wear very
fetching aprons and hats and had a great feast at the end of the morning with all that we had made.

Sally Aoife and me and our cooking class

Cooking up a storm

We were only in Cambodia less than a week but it made a lasting impression on me and maybe one day I will come back and do the place justice by visiting more amazing sights.