Cambodia

Sod coming here in the rainy season without a pair of wellies. One afternoon of rain in the dry months and the roads have already flooded. And in a part of the world where footpaths are abused as extensions of shop displays, and where the gutters aren't clean at the best of times, it's definitely a bad day to be wearing my Dunlops with the holes in them.

The rain actually suits Phnom Penh very well. It was one of the central areas for Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia and is therefore home to mostly quite depressing things to do. The first stop, travelling with a fellow guest at my hostel, was The Killing Fields. I won't go in to too many details, but this is the site of nearly two hundred mass graves containing men, women and children from Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese and European backgrounds. Unexcavated bones can still be seen protruding from the earth. Simply being there is enough to send a shiver up the spine.

After The Killing Fields we visited S-21, a former secondary school turned torture-chamber and prison camp turned museum of genocide. Again, for your benefit, I'd rather not be too graphic in my descriptions. All I can say is that while the Nazis may have been coldly efficient in their methods of extermination, the Khmer Rouge were certainly more inventive and gruesome. I think the comparison is fair. Both regimes aspired to radically 'purify' the societies they led through mass murder, and were fuelled by hatred and paranoia. The biggest difference to me is that I've known about what Hitler did since I was about 11. I've known about what Pol Pot did since about this morning. Shocking too, is that many of those who worked for the regime have been accepted back in to the current Cambodian government, and worse still, none of the Cambodians seem to mind.

Not that Cambodia doesn't seem to be picking itself up off the ground. Before Phnom Penh I was in Siem Reap, a small city that acts as the gateway to the Angkor temples, and a vibrant, fun-loving place it is too. Obviously it's overrun with tourists, but who cares, it's brilliant and has it all. Markets, cheap food, bars, good accommodation and even a place for me to update my iPod. In my very easy-going and lovely hostel I first met Brad and Wayne, who I agreed to visit the temples with the next day, and then my room mates, who I went for dinner with that evening. Later they gave me the nickname of '50 Cent' for a reason I can't remember, but it definitely wasn't because we look alike.

Brad, Australian, and Wayne, Canadian, did an excellent job of forming some kind of plan for the temples, myself having no more knowledge about the place other than seeing a picture a while ago and thinking 'oh that looks nice'. We visited, I think, a total of five temples during the day, all generously spread out across a vast region of land. Most interesting I thought, were the face towers of Bayon, and Ta Prohm, where the roots of large trees have claimed much of the architecture for themselves. And then Angkor Wat itself, a work of genius given that it was built only in the 12th century. In the evening we were joined by a Dutch girl called Susan and we all went to a bar called Angkor What? for a few pints, four shots, and a bucket of gin and tonic.

Brad, a largely gentle and left-leaning man - politically I mean, not literally - had something of a strange and uncontrollable urge to go and shoot something. With a real gun. And so he had an idea that we all head off to a shooting range the next day to give it a go. This was a relief, as I was worried he wouldn't be able to wait til morning. The idea came in to fruition as all four of us piled in to a tuk tuk and travelled ten miles to a military area with our hangovers in tow. To be honest, the night before in the bar I'd been pretty up for the activity, but when we arrived I felt extremely uncomfortable. It was not a shooting range that you might imagine, with nice clean cubicles and small handguns, but quite a dirty affair. The guns hung up on a wall, and they were all very large and very powerful. And old. I assume, and I'm very sure I'm not wrong, that the guns had fulfilled the purpose for what they were engineered. Tell me I'm not a man if you like, but I was quite happy just to watch.

Wayne and Brad chose two guns to shoot with, sharing the rounds on each. An AK-47, a favourite, I hear, with the Taliban and Cypress Hill, and an M16. I don't know what that stands for, but it's a very big gun. Wayne went first, and was apparently very nervous. Next was Brad, whose aim was a bit wonky sometimes, but thankfully we all survived. You can certainly see how those things kill people, but I do wonder how they don't make the user deaf. Within a few minutes all the ammunition was used up, and with Brad happy, we headed back in to town to shop and to take a dip in the hostel's swimming pool. The next day was spent in a similarly chilled-out fashion, even fitting in some time to watch a bit of telly. In the evening we had more drinks. One bar we found was high up - about three storeys. Looking over the balcony to the street below we caught the eye of a taxi driver. We waved, he waved back and then did the hand signal for 'tuk tuk?' and laughed. We decided that guy was pretty cool, so called him up for a beer, and sat with him as we talked about Cambodia and our parts of the world.

I go back to Siem Reap tomorrow, on my way to resume my trip to Singapore. Cambodia was a great place to visit, particularly as it wasn't planned. I also flirted with the idea of crossing over to Vietnam, but as it is I will already have to eat in to some of my time in India, and I'd rather not eat any more. Next stop Bangkok, then Trang, then finally, behind schedule, Kuala Lumpur.