SOMBERING AFTERNOON

There was a loud bang at the door, I opened it to find Stevie and Lucie in crash helmets. “oh, so we've got motorbikes” I said. those 2 were on one, mona on the back of Matt's and me on the back of Kai's, he'd had his CBT so i thought that was the best option to go for.

After getting a bit lost in the city we found the Genocide Museum.

S-21 was an old secondary school before 1975, when the Khymer Rouge took over and turned it into a prison. The rooms have been left just as they were found, the same mattresses, and iron bars used to shackle the 'prisoners'. 20,000 people went through that prison, only 7 survived. The mug shots of the prisoners are up on the walls, along with paintings depicting the methods of torture (i saw one that is still used by the USA). There are also picture of the prisoners after they had been killed by whatever method. There are testimonies by the people who used to work there, and people who lost loved ones to that place. we spent about 2 hours there, i think it was enough. truly harrowing.

The tuk tuk drivers inside the gate were trying to get us to go to the shooting fields to blow up a cow, and fire machine guns, now after what we'd just seen and considering where we were i think that was out of order. If it had been a westerner it would have been bad, but these were Cambodians, old enough to probably remember the Khymer Rouge and what they did. But i guess they have to make money, and can't afford to have morals.

We asked for directions for the killing fields and jumped back on the bikes, after about 30 mins of riding out of town we noticed we were going the wrong way. This could wait until tommorrow. We took the bikes back to the guest house, gave the unused petrol to the tuk tuk drivers out side and had something to eat.

Everyone was on a bit of a downer, it was either because we'd had a hard day or the night before had taken it out of us. I however was in a great mood! I'd got an email back from earthwalkers saying they had my hard drive and would hold onto it for me. Result.

We went out for a drink and a meal, it was Mona's last night with us all, she had booked flights to bangkok for tomorrow morning. As I'd said before you do sort of build bonds with people really quickly when you travel with people, and Mona and I had spent the past week or so together, through some of the most strangest experiences, and it was great having her along, and couldn't imagine doing that time without her. I started to think at this point, that traveling is as much about seeing the world, as it is meeting people, and the experiences you have are only as good as the people you share them with, I happen to think that we had a pretty good group here, and it was a shame that it was coming to an end.