Feb 2007

The boat trip down to Phnom Penh was amazing! We were all hung over and after only 3 hours sleep got woke up by the bus of waiting people only to fall back on the bed and back asleep for 20 mins while they though we were gettin ready! After 'zombying' onto the boat and getting on the top deck, Blakey made a comment about being in a giant teacup (the river gets very wide at times so you cant see the land, and there were hardly any fishing boats) which made me think for a while, i almost believed a giant canderell was goin to drop in!

With Eddie Halliwell and Mark EG keeping me company, and the 2 cafflers suffering and asleep, the hair of the dog was inevitable, and i couldnt have felt happier with awesome scenery, the music, the wind in my nipple hairs, and the sun beating down! Mad little villages on stilts well out into the water and locals fishing with no more than a floating bit of wood as a boat and home made nets and poles were also intriguing.

In the end we were all dancing with ipods on, on the top of the boat! Madness.

Found a nice hotel, however all the locals are very touchy feely and it a bit daunting at times. Especially when they make rubbish jokes about their mates being lady boys! Continued the beer, rude not to, and met some randomers. Got anihalated by the locals at pool (they knew all the contours of the table, making it more like crazy golf than pool)!

On valentines day we set off to the S21 torture camp and the Killing Fields. As the names suggest they weren't the nicest of places to go. S21 was a prison and torture camp during Pol Pots regime. In the old cells and buildings, which used to be a school, there were sickening pictures, torture wepons, and paintings by a man who survived the camp (there were only 7), which depicted all the horrifc torture methods that they used, as well as pictures of all the faces of people who were in there, children and women included. There was a list of the rules which the camp employed as well, the 2 memorable ones were While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all; and the last one was if any of the rules were broken then you'd get 10 lashes with the electric whip or 5 shocks of electric discharge :S. With beggars outside with only half limbs and faces which had been nepalmed in the war, it left us all feeling sick!

Got a puncture on the was to the Killing Fields and had to walk the last little bit. Good job there are hundereds of mechanics around seen as there are 8 billion bikes out here. At the place there is a monumnt for the deceased, to try to make this sort of thing never happen again. It was filled with skulls which had been dug up mearby. Inside the skulls were aranged in to groups such as 'Female 15-20'. Nearby were the mass graves with signs saying what was found there, ie 'Many naked women and children were found here, hands still bound'.The trees nearby still had big indentations where the whips were used and there were bones just in piles everywhere with prisoners clothes scattered about, half in the mud, half sticking out, it was all-in-all very sickening!

We were going to go and shoot some guns afterwards but it would have felt a bit weird after seeing these places where hundereds of people were shot. We'll do it in naaam,

Arrived in Vietnam on the 15th, there were corrupt officials at the boarder who made us all pay an extra dollar to them at the 3 different counters. The bus was going to be 2 hours late so we decided to get our own taxi, skip Ho Chi Minh city, and go straight to the beach at Mui En! The 6 hour journey in our own personalised air conditionded mini bus only cost us 40 quid all together!

Update soon!