Beg-steal-eat-make me laugh.......Urchins eh!

Dec 18 - 20 Phnom Penh

Arrived in Cambodia's capital by boat........

New York Hotel ..... Shite (fussyme) so moved to 'J' Hotel

Suasd'ai is hello
4000 Riel is one dollar

Visited the National Museum
The Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Wat Sarawan
Wat Ounalom
Wat Phnom
a couple of seedy bars

Cambodia is already one of my fave places and it is the people that make it that little bit more special. One of the street kids just has that look of the devil in his eye + took chips off my plate the first day so each time I see him now I just give him whatever food i have left - probably takes all the fun out of it for him, but it helps my waistline so what the hey!

Wat Ounalom is now officially my favourite Wat....ever. The wrinkled Buddhist unlocked the temple and we manouvered ourselves thru a 3 foot high door to kneel in a stone chamber about 3 by 3 metres in the presence of the 'eyebrow of buddha'......apparently. Not sure how that ended up there but as I contemplated the hows & whys of brow removal the monk started chanting and before I knew it he was flicking water in my face. chant-flick-chant-flick etc. Would like to say I felt blessed & that whole new avenues just opened up in my mind but I was too busy concentrating on not laughing - Brilliant. Sure Buddha was looking down on me from whereverness trying his utmost to frown which cant be easy him being short in the dept of the aforementioned facial feature.

If you dont know about The Killing Fields then click here.

Tuol Sleng was once a school. It is in a busy, built up area just south of central Phnom Penh. In the early 70's the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison camp (aka S-21). Alongside detention it was also used to torture; maim; interrogate and kill Men, Women, Kids & babies. Today it is a museum. The Khmer Rouge photo'd each prisoner on arrival; during their torture.....and their corpses. The museum has all the photo's on display, literally thousands of faces watch either defiantly or emptily as you pass thru. Each inmate has a number tag that is either pinned to their shirt or literally pinned thru their skin. Tuol Sleng stands cold in the baking heat, a grey empty place that is a monument to pure evil.

The Chuong Ek Genocidal centre (aka The Killing Fields) is about 15km south of Phnom Penh. Today a Quiet Orchard in a quiet town the sound of children laughing drifts eerily thru the air from a nearby school. Almost 9000 inmates from Tuol Sleng were executed here after being processed. A monument containing 5000 skulls exhumed at this site meets you on arrival and they gaze emptily, watching you trace your way around the mass grave site. The fields still now the blood has been shed; fruit ripens in the sun, butterflies drift lazily in the breeze - all keep their tongues to violent historys witness.

After visiting Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek one feels numb. It is incomprehensible......

Equally incomprehensible (+ on a muchmuchmuch lighter note) is the gold statue of a man and his Bull that was espeyed at a local Wat..........