Its a holiday in cambodia!

We're in Cambodia! In Pnomh Penh at the moment. We arrived the day before yesterday from Saigon. It took surprisingly litle time on the bus, only about 6 hours altogether. We found it kinda hard to get excited about Vietnam... Apart from all the war museums and history of it all it seemed to be having a bit of an identity crisis. Every area was different, I could swear in the last 2 weeks we've been to Vietnam, China, Rio de Janeiro, Miami and France. After being warned about the rudeness of the people we were pleasently surprised, they were all really friendly! I particularly like the fact that they all wear those round pointy hats..

Anyhoo, as soon as we crossed the border and entered Cambodia everything totally changed.. I felt like I was in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy first opens the front door when her house lands and its suddenly all the the brightest technicolour! The lanscape around the border is just stunning! Its all lush, green and jungly with lots of little colourful wooden huts on stilts built in amongst the trees. The monsoon season is just starting over here so everythings wet and sparkling, tis amazing! Definitely my favourite landscape so far. I think we're going to go adventuring at some point out into the jungles to find this tiny town that we've read about, you can go and spot elephants and bears and tigers, yay!

Pnomh Penh is a cool city despite meing absolutely ENORMOUS. Although then again, the depressing war museum in Vietnam was just a warm-up for some of the things we've seen over here! Yesterday we had a day of 'death tourism' as I think its called... cheery stuff! We went to the killing fields, S-21 prison and the royal palace. Arrgh the prison is so so so horrific! It was an old school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison and torture place.. about 14 000 people went in and under a dozen came out =/ You can walk around the actual cells and see the mugshots of all the people that went in there. Its so awful looking into all their faces =/ There are still blood stains on the walls.. Omg its actually the most awful place in the whole world. Then we went to the killing fields which wasn't much better. Thousands of people were taken there, killed and chucked into mass graves. Theres a huge gold monument into the middle which holds all of their skulls.. you could even reach out and touch them if you really felt the need =/ Its bizarre, it is a really beautiful place on the outskirts of the city- there are more butterflies flapping about than I've ever seen in my life! There are tatters of material, clothes of the people who were killed all over the fields and stuck in the mud. Tis all just really surreal.

The only thing that prevented me actually feeling suicidal by the end of the day was our chosen method of transport... back of the motorbike chic! It was so much fun! We were driven around by two of the guys who work at our guest house, haha clinging on for dear life as we zipped around the Pnomh Penh rush hour at 50 miles an hour. By the time we arrived at both the prison and the killing fields we were in such good moods.. haha it did feel slightly inappropriate. I think thats why they have big symbols up all over the place depicting 'No Smiling'. Motorbikes are amazing!! Its probably not the safest thing I've ever done but we raced all the way back to the hotel.. Me and my driver guy won of course... tis obviously all down to my sitting on the back skills

We do like Pnomh Penh though. The people are really friendly and theres lots of things to do! We went down to a market thisafternoon which was coolio, its in a weird huge art deco dome thing right in the middle of the city. There is definitely an aura of sadness about the whole place though.. its really sad, I guess it all only happened about 30 years ago! I think we're escaping the city tomorrow and heading down to the beaches in the South at Sihanoukville despite the mosoons. It keeps pissing with rain and thundering every few hours! Fingers crossed its not too bad down there! xxxxx