New Year's in Cambodia -

We took a mini bus over the Thai/Cambodian border, overpaid for visa's to some corrupt Cambodian officials, sat in a small bar listening to 60+year old guys bragging about their early 20's Thai girlfriends (errgghh!) before a final 4 hour roof-top boat ride along the Cambodian coast to reach the beach side town of Sihanoukville.

We spent New Years on the beach knocking back $1 pina coladas at a cool little beach shack bar, before having a bit of a dance at another shack a bit further along the beach. My first New Year (Andy) in the heat..and it was good! Although, still can't beat a house party and Inferno's in London! ;-)

After the hospital disaster at Xmas the sun n sand was exactly what we needed, so 4 nights turned into 2 weeks before we could manage to tear ourselves away from the beach. All over the beaches were kids selling bracelets, braids or collecting plastic bottles and cans. It was tough to see but at the same time they were really friendly and seemed happy enough, but they did have to work hard. We also visited a cafe here that helped raise money for those effected by the poverty in the area...it seemed that there were projects to help in place but I guess not nearly enough. So we bought a few things off the kids and tried to eat at the cafe as often as possible.

We stayed in a couple of places in Sihanoukville including a 5 star resort for 5 nights. Yep, we pushed the boat out and it was well worth it as the private white sand beach was so beautiful and peaceful. Of course it's made it hard to go back to being a skummy backpacker again, but oh well.

From Sihanoukville we took a 4 hour bus trip up to the Cambodian capital city Phnom Penh. The most famous (or infamous) tourist sites are the Choeung Ek Killing Fields and Toul Sleng Prison. Choeung Ek is a series of exhumed mass graves, with a stupa at its center filled with the skulls of hundreds of men, women and children. Toul Sleng is the former high school the Khmer Rouge converted into a torture center where around 14,000 people were prepared for their deaths with electric shocks and other atrocities such as having their heads locked inside boxes of scorpions. The victims' photos line the walls, although the skull map of Cambodia has now been removed.

Both sites were pretty overwhelming and depressing, but important to see to understand the brutality of the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime's rule and understand why Cambodia is still struggling to come to terms with this past while the former leaders live out their old ages in peace and at large.

As a result the miltary still seems to be pretty corrupt which luckily for me (Andy) I was able to get to a shooting range where you could choose guns from a menu and test fire them against a target. I was just curious... Still 5 of my 7 with a czechoslovakian 9mm hit close to the centre of the target so I was pretty chuffed!

Despite the torrid past that they've had to endure, its been great to meet all of the Cambodians and to see that their lives now are better (a long way off perfect by all means) and that they have freedom, but unfortunately, very little money. In fact a school teacher or doctor is unlikely to earn over 20 US$ a month.

And for a capital city who's history is so rooted in misery, Phnom Penh is suprisingly characteristic. It still has alot of colonial charm left over from the Frenchies. We spent our evenings in the many riverside bars, great for watching the Mekong flow by, as well as whole families whizz past on just one motorcycle.

We also did a Cambodian cooking class here which was fantastic. First of all we were taken round the Phnom Penh food markets where we saw amazing colours of limes, chillis, watermelons as well as lots of fish, dried, smoked, live, almost alive and some that could have been dead for quite a while! We arrived at a dutchman's house (Fritz) where we each had our own cooking station. We kicked off with papaya salad and then made great 'sausages' - with chicken and pork wrapped in a banana flower and then fried in batter. They were delicious!

For mains we made Fish Amok a traditional cambodian dish which involved steaming sliced fish in a red curry sauce inside a banana leaf pinned together with cocktail sticks. The lady that took the course had had a really tough life and almost died during the Pol Pot regime but had still managed to raise 4 of her 5 children and get them through school and now into Uni - sadly, she had to give up her last son for adoption to a french couple as he had a bad heart condition. She was so friendly and kind to us and is probably the nicest person we've met on our trip.

Finally, like each of the main capital city's we've visited so far...the Royal Palace of Phnom Penh was a spectacular building and complex. From here we made the trip upto Siem Reap and the next stunning site..to rival the Taj Mahal...Angkor Wat!