Lakeside

Sunday February 10th

As the Aussie hotel was booked out today. This is unusual but as far as I can gather there are a lot of Aussies who turn up for a week working here, then going home for a week etc, and they all stay in this place - Tonle Sap Guesthouse in case anyone is ever in town. From what I can gather the Aussies and the Japanese are in some sort of battle to turn this country into their little colony. All the roads are funded by Japan (like ours were by the Germans I guess) and a lot of businesses seem to be Aussie run. We'll see who wins (unusually it looks like for once it won't be the Chinese).

Anyway as I had to move I decided to move to Boeung Lak, the lake. This is the big backpacker hangout in Phnom Penh, its version of Khao San Road. Actually its an insult to KSR to even compare them. The cheapest guesthouses are found here because its a kip. The lake isn't very imprssive, and the road out front is the type of road you would expect in Cambodia, even if the rest are actually relatively clean. More about how bad lakeside is tomorrow (or at least the place I stayed).

From here I decided to do the remaining sights in town. To do this I needed to hire a motorbike driver and away we went. First up was S21, or to give it its proper name, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. I was slightly wary of going to this, in case it depressed me too much, but to be honest it didn't, which can only say how used we are to this sort of thing in this world. S21 was a school that was turned into a prison during the Khmer Rouge rule. Most prisoners didn't actually die here, they were sent to the famous Killing Fields, but most that past through here never survived. It is left as close to how it was found when liberated.

It takes a while to go round because they have individual stories on the walls, and you do feel you have to look at them. They also have photos of thousands of the victims, and you do feel you have to look at all of these as well.

I think the problems in Cambodia may mean more to me than some of the others because they were the first I remember, I think I saw it on Blue Peter. Even though I had probably heard of the Second World War, although maybe not the Holocaust, I was only 8 or 9 at the time, it was probably the first time I realised what people can do to each other. Of course the most annoying thing is that it didn't stop it happening again in Rwanda, Bosnia, even Darfur today.

After that it was onto the Silver Pagoda and Royal Palace (as in Bangkok the holiest shrine and main palace share the same grounds). In some ways this was nicer than the one in Thailand, it seemed more colourful, due to the flowers in the grounds, and it was smaller and easier to get around. Because it was smaller, it also seemed more packed, again with a lot of locals, as it was a weekend. Interestingly there are signs of a large Cambodian middle class who can afford to do touristy things.

Back to the guesthouse and eat, drink and watch a dismal performance by Man United against City, before an early night as I had booked a bus back to Bangkok through the guesthouse. I didn't feel like staying up to watch the Chelsea v Liverpool match, although from what I had heard it would have been better at putting me to sleep than my room, where I was playing a game of guess whether the creatures in the walls were lizards, rats or birds.