Comfort Star Hotel Phnom Penh

... they still wanted to sit down and eat so eventually found a lunch place where they got a great deal on some rice and vegetables for everyone, which tasted great. We then split into two groups and hit the markets themselves. They are packed with stalls of every description, clothes, food, wooden ornaments, material, bags - the girls were in heaven. We eventually made it out of the warren of passageways with a couple of bags extra than when we entered and finally headed ...

... by photographic evidence if considered appropriate for the site, maybe best to hold off...

So after the fun came the stark realisation of why we vowed never to touch vodka and red bull on this trip. So along with the depression of writing off a day in our hotel room, which by the way can only be described as a, 'slipe pit,' we decided we needed to do something good for the soul ...

... haunted pairs of eyes stare out at you; it's horrendous to think that shortly after these images were taken, all of these people were executed. Again, and I repeat my sentiment from earlier, the most traumatic photographs were those of children, and I found one of a cute little baby particularly sad. The mentality of killing an innocent child is so despicable it's beyond comprehension. There were also some particularly grisly pictures of some mutilated bodies that were discovered ...

... s purge in the 1930s and 40s, the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 60s and 70s. The Khmer Rouge followed the same pattern, but they did it much, much more extensively and brutally. In their zeal to create an agrarian society that has no classes, they targeted not only the former government officials and politicians, but all intellectuals and people who lived in the cities and those who they thought had been influenced by western thinking. And the rest of ...

... not the Niagara-Now period.?? But okay, itīs the time of the season...but it made us decide to book a ticket and take the next day bus and leave for Vietnam. So we did, bought 2 bus tickets ( in this case Rain-Tickets ) and tuk-tuked back to the guesthouse.
Had half a good night sleep, as someone in the House decided not to pay for the oldest profession in the world...." or maybe lousy service....who knows?" But okay, next morning said goodbye to ...

... many bats in the trees. and generally got a good feel for Phonm Penh, a relaxing way to get around the city and observe the mood of the place. ( the traffic is a little chaotic but surprisingly tolerant of the cyclos)
for more info on Phnom Penh see http://www.lonelyplanet.com/cambodia/ph nom-penh

... moesten we een slokje uit het glaasje nemen en het doorgeven. En we aten wat van de kip, rijst en bananen (ik imiteerde maar wat de rest deed want had natuurlijk geen idee wat ik moest doen). Daarna werden de stokjes met touwtjes aan alle andere gasten gegeven en iedere gast nam een stuk of 10 van de touwtjes. Ze begonnen de mensen die aan het tafeltje hadden gezeten de bandjes om hun polsen te knopen. Zo ook mij. Het zijn hele dunne witte touwtjes en de gasten ...

... which he volunteers in PP. SO on Tuesday night we paid a quick visit to the orphanage, had dinner and watched an English lesson!
The next day we went out a lot earler and spent a great deal of time playing with the kids and were all able to help teach a lesson! This was quite daunting but very rewarding! We then went back and ate in the orphanage before sadly saying our goodbyes.
This was an incredible experience, the kids were wonderfully warm and so happy that ...

... to show the scale and the impact of just what the Khmer did to it's own people and the people of Cambodia. The Killing Fields we visited just outside of Phnom Penh helped to give a visual perspective on the atrocities that occurred. When walking through the fields there are still clothes visible from where Cambodian people were ordered to strip naked before being beaten to death with bamboo sticks and being deposited in mass graves. As the ...

... many were tortured and beaten to death next to mass graves, so as to save on bullets. During this time Sihanouk had returned from China and was instated as the chief of state (in title only) before Pol Pot decided to have him imprisoned in his palace. He was kept alive only at the insistence of the Khmer Rouge's allies, the Chinese.

Although the Vietnamese had led to the installation of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot was fervently anti-Vietnamese and hated the fact that ...