Phnom Penh

I'm now in Phnom Penh. Arrived here on Wednesday afternoon and am heading back to Sri Lanka on Sunday afternoon - via Bangkok. I was going to go on a day trip outside of the city tomorrow, but there are still some places in Phnom Penh that I haven't been to yet and I've also decided that I don't really feel like finding out where the bus leaves from and dealing with all the complications of getting out to the place I wanted to go to.

Yesterday I went out to Choeung Ek - one of the 'Killing Fields' - and visited a school here in the city where people were detained and tortured during the Khmer Rouge regime. It's disturbing to think that people were systematically detained, tortured and inevitably killed with such calousness and brutality. I just can't understand how human beings can do such horrific things to each other. At Choeung Ek there's a memorial stupa and inside the stupa are the skulls of all the bodies that were discovered there - chilling.

Unfortunately the accommodation I'd booked online didn't work out, so yesterday morning I had to look for somewhere else to stay. Luckily I managed to find an inexpensive guesthouse and can now enjoy my last few days in Cambodia. I like Phnom Penh. Sure it's busy and there's a lot of traffic, but I like the place. On Wednesday afternoon I got talking to a Canadian guy who lives in Hamburg and we ended up spending the day together yesterday. In the evening we had dinner at a really cool restaurant, which trains ex-street kids. The food was sensational! I love the food in Sri Lanka, but I am going to miss the food here.

The coast was great. I ended up spending 3 nights in a place called Kep - which was the beach resort when Cambodia was a French protectorate. Most of the villas were destroyed during the civil war and when the Vietnamese invaded in 1979, so Kep is a really quiet place now, but it's still got a lot of atmosphere. The place where I stayed in Kep was great - had a bungalow on the side of the hill with sea views, so I could watch the sunset from my hammock. The beach in Kep is nothing special, but I went out to one of the islands off the coast for the day and did some swimming there.

I was planning on visiting Bokor hill station, but when I got to Kampot I discovered that it's currently closed because some private company - no doubt with connections to the government - is re-developing the place and has closed it to all visitors. It was a bit disappointing as I was really looking forward to the trip up there, but what to do?

The evening I arrived in Kampot there was huge outdoor concert happening in the centre of the town - something to do with a wedding, I think. The whole town seemed to be there and the music was so loud that I could hear it from where I was staying, which was a good 10-minute walk away! I disovered the next day that Kampot is actually a really sleepy place and basically it seemed that there was nothing happening - not like Phnom Penh.

Next post will be from Kandy - back to work on Tuesday!