PHNOM PENH

Left Battembang at 7:30 and arrived in the city 7 hours later. Both Emma and I took turns looking for accomodation which seemed to pretty thin on the ground. However, having left Emma with an iced coffee in a bar I managed to find a nice room on the top floor of Hotel Mingood which overlooked the river. Dumped the bags and went for an explore .........

Pnom Penh is just an amazing city ..... vibrant, buzzing, gritty, dirty, pretty, noisy, interesting and a host of other things! At this point in our travels we had started to miss th ecreature comforts of home and so threw ourselves at the Foreign Correspondents Club with wanton abandonment. Food and drinks 3 times those of a restaurant outside but damn those cocktails are good! Actually, we would have to say that they are second only to those at the Pnom Penh Hilton which are really really really good (and strong). Spent many an evening enjoying the food, wine, cocktails and view from the balcony which overlooked the Mekong.

Phnom Penh iteslf has a host of attractions such as the Royal Palace, an excellent Museum, a good traditional Khmer shadow puppet show (very very few of which exist due the Khmer Rouge reign of terror) and just great spots to people watch. We spent close to a whole day at Tuong Sleng (S21) Museum where the evidence of man's cruelty is painfully abundant. We cannot begin to describe th esuffering of the Cambodian people but recommend people to at least read one book on the subject. Surviving The Killing Fields by Ngor S Haing is a very readable but also deeply disturbing book which describes life in Cambodia pre and post Khmer Rouge rule.