Getting away from it all...

We have left civilisation! We have just spent two days sitting on a slow boat and travelling up the Mekong River to the very edge of Laos for three days trekking in some of the most remote jungle the country has to offer. Our accommodation is now a small hut on legs with bamboo walls, a plastic sheet on the floor and nothing in the window frames but a steel grill and mosquito meshing. It's all good training though as tomorrow morning a jeep will take us on a five hour journey into Bokeo National Park where one of the most anticipated adventures of our trip shall begin. Remember, "DEET" is the word!

Welcome To The Lao People's Democratic Republic

Despite having had fun exploring a giant western style mall (a sight which we had not seen since China) and then seeing the new Bond film, our brief initial visit to Thailand's capital left us with food poisoning which, sadly, followed me tenaciously all the way to Laos.  The welcome cleanliness of the Thai sleeper train was somewhat wasted on me as I lay shivering in my bunk, my stomach cramping, my temperature soaring and my joints aching with every clatter of the track beneath.  Seventeen hours later, another long border wait and a brain rattling tuk-tuk ride, we finally arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, exhausted and feeling very, very ill.  Luckily there is not much to see or do in Vientiane as the first thirty six hours of our stay were spent with me huddled up in bed and Rosie making life-saving trips to the convenience store for bags of ice, pots of jelly and Gatorade.  I did however manage to get out of the hotel during the second evening and we met up with a lovely French couple whom we'd first met in Vietnam in October.

Three nights of illness later and our second spring board stop on the way to our actual destination in Laos disappeared in a cloud of dust behind us as the not-so-V.I.P. double-decker coach weaved and swerved along the narrow mountain road towards Luang Prabang.  Eleven hours of bumping and jolting, with frequent chirps from the box of chickens in the luggage rack downstairs, brought us rolling into town in the cool moonlight, with frequent blasts of lightning illuminating the growing stacks of cloud above the hills which hug the town.

Being a UNESCO World Heritage site, it goes without saying that the place is just beautiful.  Set on a lush green peninsula separating the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, it is a treasure trove nestled among the jungle, of candle lit bars, of chic Parisian bakeries and of brightly coloured Buddhist temples - their gilt rooves shimmering against the dark outlines of giant palm leaves, their grounds dotted with monks wrapped in deep orange robes.  Riverside restaurants balance on fragile wooden platforms; creaky old structures which hang precariously over the rust red waters on tall bamboo stilts, the strange and exotic plants and animals of the jungle lurking far below where the undergrowth of the riverbank rustles, chirps and slithers constantly.

On all sides of the town, the deep jungle lies just across the river in thick impenetrable layers.  Giant mountains topped with immense slabs of granite wedged into the earth tumble down from the heavens to the water's edge, their outlines constantly converging and crossing, falling and rising, creating stacked layers of verdant countryside broken only by the snaking river, each softened by the increasing distance and silver blankets of wood-smoke which streak across the tops of the valleys like cobwebs.  As the sun sets behind the tallest mountain, a starburst of light spreads out across the vista in golden beams which dance along the dense green edges of the highest peaks and turn the muddied waters of the river to incandescent sparkles of white.  With the horizon exploding into a furnace of colour, an eerie half light descends on the valleys below, plunging us into the cool air of the evening as the candles and fairy lights of town flicker in to life.

Sunset from Phu Si hill

Part of the (ex) Royal Palace

Kayaking on the Mekong River

For Christmas, Rosie now wants one of these.

To The Border!

After a three hour coach journey, a back-breaking three hour queue (with rucksacks) to cross the border into Thailand, and four hours on the front seat of a mini-van, we are now resting in Bangkok for just one day before taking a long train north to cross over to Laos. 

Thailand is a different world compared to Cambodia and I was struck by how a simple line in the sand can cause such change.  Bumpy pot-holed strips of tarmac have become smooth, multi-laned freeways;tin shacks at the side of the road have turned to stone and brick; and the make-shift tables in front of them, selling coke bottles of petrol beside a basket of bananas, have become immense Shell forecourts with Seven-Elevens and car washes attached.  Even the scooter population has plummeted, and shiny new Chevrolet's, Toyota's and BMW's have taken their place.  Driving along on the left-hand side of the road, we could have (almost) been back at home!

So, Cambodia - a flying visit but a memorable one.

Synopsis:

Likes - The people.  So warm and friendly and with a great sense of humour.  One guy, selling silk table cloths, says to us, 'Hey sir lady, you buy table cloth?'

'No, sorry, we don't have a table.' (we really don't!)

'Okay, you buy table cloth, I give you free table.'

Despite the clear widespread poverty, everyone (give or take the odd grumpus here and there) is just so happy and smiley - a truly beautiful nation a million miles from the staring and scowling of China!

Dislikes: The sales patter!  As mentioned above, most of the market stall holders (and some shop keepers), have picked up the phrase 'Hello sir/lady, you buy something'.  Now, I don't know if this is a question or a demand, but as we wandered through markets, you would have this phrase called to you from every direction, at the same time, from everyone.  It got quite frustrating if you simply wanted to window-shop - even more so when you notice that what they are all selling is pretty much the same stuff!  The same touristy 'I love Cambodia' T-shirts, silk scarves, hammocks, wallets made of rice bags and stone sculptures.  But again, it wasn't that bad.  A simple 'no thank you' and a smile was accepted with a smile and a nod of the head and we'd carry on.  Again, lovely people simply trying to earn a living.

Favourite beer: Angkor.  There were only really three on offer.  Angkor, Anchor (which you have to request as 'An chore' to ensure you don't get 'Ang kor') and 'Cambodia'.  Angkor was the most widely available and cheapest.  Often drunk with enormous chunks of ice owing to a lack of refrigerators, it hit the spot after a long day of temple hunting.

Favourite meal:  I'm sorry Cambodia, but it has to be Freebird Bar and Grill in Phnom Penh (serving traditional American fayre).  Run by an American, (Dunk) an ex-bomb disposal worker, it really is the model business.  The friendliest, most genuine staff we've ever met, anywhere, (who clearly love their jobs and are very well looked after by the boss - he even takes them and their families on holiday!), the most efficient service we've experienced on our trip so far, and the best American food we've ever eaten - both inside and outside of The States.  We went twice; the first time I hit the chili dog and fries (served with real baked beans and real cheese) and the second time, well, I went big and did the double chili dog and fries - it was that good.  Rosie had a sloppy joe and on the second visit, Dunk's Grandmother's meatloaf - both delicious.  And, both our meals were all served at the same time - a rarity in this part of the world where food often arrives as and when the chef gets round to cooking it.

Favourite day:  Can I choose three?  The two days exploring Angkor on push-bikes were perfect.  I've said a number of times on this trip - "You know you've had a good day when you have to have a double shower at the end of it" (ie. soap, rinse, soap rinse).  This was true of Angkor.  Sunscreen, mosquito repellent, sweat, dust, blood and muck, all caked and baked onto our skin with some of the most stunning sights I've ever seen as the reward.  Finally, watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat was a memory that won't fade for a while, and come to think of it, may have been the first time I've ever watched the sunrise - I thoroughly recommend it.

Next stop, Vientiane, Laos...

Three Days in Angkor

The ancient city of Angkor, built over one thousand years ago.  The first true metropolis, the world's first city and the first with a population of over one million people.  It was also the seat of the ancient Khmer God Kings for whom over a thousand temples and palaces where built.

We started our tour by pedalling around the 26km 'Grand Circuit' which led us deep into the jungle where some of the most exotic and alluring temples in the world lie hidden among the dense undergrowth.

The first gateway we came across, our first taste of what lie ahead, was astounding.  As we approached, the web of tree branches above began to open, as if the jungle were peeling itself apart to envelop us.  And there, peering down from lichen covered stone towers, three giant ghostly faces carved into the rock, each softened and eroded by a thousand years of heavy monsoon rains and a pounding, blazing sun.  It was as if they had been carved by nature itself.  As the full outline of the structure appeared from the shadows, my hands clamped down  on the brakes, bringing me to a squeaking shuddering stop before I'd even had a chance to take my feet off the pedals.

Ankhor Thom - East Gate

Armed with nothing but a map and a picnic, we explored some fascinating places on that first day, stopping off at the side of the road where only small ticket check points marked the entrances to these spectacular locations.  Some were simple - consisting of little more than a small crumbled outer wall at the end of a dusty track with the ruined remains of a solitary temple in the middle, its brick columns leaning and crooked leaving dark crevasses into which the geckos would dart as we approached.  Despite their relatively diminutive size, we enjoyed exploring these lesser known spots.  In most cases, we were completely alone and well away from the giant battalions of Chinese tour groups who flock to the more tour bus friendly temples. 

One of the nicest things about all of the temples in Angkor is that, more or less, they are completely open for you to explore as you wish - only where deteriorating walls and ceilings pose a danger do you find a "do not enter" sign or a rope barrier.  And explore we did, climbing up into dark chambers, squeezing through tiny doorways and clambering over the stone piles of collapsed structures, long since devoured by the elements and the dense, ever creeping carpet of the jungle floor.

Long, empty roads carried us further into the complex, bordered by dense undergrowth and topped with a twisting ribbon of perfect blue sky.  Giant butterflies fluttered around our wheels, spindly spiders, as wide as my hand, hung from webs stretched high across our path, and armies of termites brought the grassy verges to life, swarming with a moist sizzling sound like oil in a pan.  Eventually, a high wall would appear through the trees.  We would follow it for hundreds of metres before it, and the road, would turn sharply, leading us along yet another vast stretch towards an imposing gate and an entrance into what lay within.

Leaving the bikes under a shady tree, along which ran a motorway of enormous ants, another darkened dusty path took us to the centre of the next, much larger temple site.  Entrance halls, built of darkened rock, dusted with a layer of moss and lichen, led us through to a long raised walkway of crooked stone which disappeared into the shadows.  Intricate carvings and stone reliefs depicting Hindu gods and ancient myths covered every square inch of the stone, and the squawks of bats, hiding deep inside the temples caverns and chambers, sought us through the unknown space ahead.  We moved forward, the dampness of the walls filling our noses, the feverish jungle air bringing sweat to every pore of our flesh.  Long corridors stretched to a tiny speck of light in the distance, a far off doorway perhaps.  Along the way, we stepped into cave-like chambers, each holding the fragmented remains of statues and alters and faintly alive with the sporadic flapping and squeaking of the nocturnal creatures above.  These junction chambers, like internal crossroads, lead both forward and sideways to yet more corridors and chambers - an infinite labyrinth of stone.  As our eyes adjusted to the dark, we looked upwards.  The chamber's ceiling, a terrifying spire of teetering stone blocks, each holding the next aloft like a house of cards, stretched high up to a thumbnail of light which fell down through the darkness in golden shards, the ashen spirals of incense smoke rising up from the makeshift shrines dotted around the walls illuminated in its warm glow.

Eventually, with sweat dripping from our noses, we found it, the centre, the heart of the entire site.  A cathedral like space - vast, consuming, reaching up far higher than any of chambers we'd seen on the way.  A stone plinth stood in the centre of the room, square, with raised edges forming a trough, and a spout like opening on one side as if it once produced liquid.  Within this, five unusual, cylindrical, dome topped ornaments stand in a neat arrangement.  It is like nothing we have seen before, as if placed by the hands of aliens.  The mystery of this sacred place is inescapable.

Banteay Kdei

Other temples stretched as far into the sky as they did across the ground - each outer layer accessed by increasingly steep staircases, all leading to one central shrine perched high above the forest below and again, with an ominous tower of stone resting on top (see the photos on the previous post).

Having cycled just over 40km on day one, discovered and explored seven temples of varying shapes and sizes and having devoured four litres of water each, we crashed into our bed and fell into a heavy sleep beneath the whirling fan which stirred our minds with excitement for the next day's adventure.

Day two was just as thrilling, taking us first to Ta Prohm, also known as the Tomb Raider temple (parts of the Angelina Jolie film were shot here).  At this temple monastery, the forest is actually  devouring the stone, leading to those iconic images of thick tree roots curled around windows and doorways.  In some places, trees grow straight out of the top of the walls and buildings, twisting their roots through them, crushing ceilings and devouring sculptures.  Apart from the obvious Kodak moments, captured while squeezed between one tour group and the next, this temple also offered some of the most serene solitude we'd experienced.  Turning against the guided route signs, we found ourselves alone in a courtyard of collapsed walls and fragile out-buildings - again, with tree routes permeating from every direction.  We crouched through tiny doorways, climbed up over piles of rubble and soon became lost in large parts of the complex no one else seemed to know about, with just the sound of the jungle and the click of the camera echoing around us.

Ta Prohm

The carved towers of Bayon

Day three and our backsides had had enough time in the saddle after cycling around 70km over the first two days.  We hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day in order to access some of the sites too far away to reach on bicycle such as the sparkling waters of Kbal Spean. 

Unknown to the Western world until the 1960's, this stretch of the Stung Kbal Spean river lying approximately 50km from Siem Reap, is home to hundreds of rock carvings.  Gods, Goddesses and other symbolic carvings look up from riverbanks and even from beneath the river itself, supposedly blessing the water which feeds the temples, moats and man-made reservoirs of the Angkor complex - again, all dating back over a thousand years.  To access it, one has to make a long ascent through the jungle, along a treacherous path measuring a draining 1,500 metres.  Drenched in sweat, we leapt from rock to rock across large boulder fields, crossed creaky wooden bridges and scrambled up steep rock faces, using tree roots and vines to pull ourselves up the hillside to the river and waterfalls at the top - it was worth the effort:

Now, day three actually began way, way before we reached Kbal Spean, and at 5 o'clock that morning we were racing through the empty streets of Siem Reap in our tuk-tuk, slipping through darkness and the cool morning air at full speed, straight towards the mighty complex of Angkor Wat.  With the black sky slowly turning to inky blue, we sprung from the tuk-tuk as our driver skidded to a standstill at the entrance gate.  Under the light of my trusty headtorch, we paced across the raised stone walkway ahead, over the wide moat still twinkling in the moonlight, and through the cavernous gate house.  As we emerged, the full outline of this, the largest religious building in the world, stood tall, wide and solid before us - charcoal black against a few warm wisps of colour arcing across the sky.  Deep scarlet flares in the twilight, offering a faint suggestion of the oncoming sunrise and the inferno lurking just beyond the horizon.  Taking our seats on the balcony of one of the many outbuildings - once a library I think - we sat back and watched the sun rise behind the towers of one of the most iconic buildings of the ancient world.  I think this post has had it's fair share of superlatives, so I'll let the photograph do the talking.

At the end of that long day, and the end of three incredible days of Indiana Jones-esque exploring, we hung up our whips and started our way back along the dusty road, back towards Siem Reap, a hot shower and a cold beer.  Rosie was so tired that, with her head on my shoulder and the tuk-tuk bouncing and rocking over the rough dirt road, strewn with potholes and loose stones, and with clouds of dust billowing through the open carriage, she fell fast asleep all the way home.

...

I didn't want to go too much into the history of this place, so here is a list of the temples and sites we visited with Wikipedia links where available:

Preah Khan
Kraol Ko
Neak Pean
Ta Som
East Mebon
Pre Rup
Sras Srang
Banteay Kdei
Ta Prohm
Ta Keo
Chau Say Thevada
Phimeanakas
Baphuon
Bayon
Angkor Wat
Banteay Srey
Kbal Spean
Banteay Samre

Siem Reap - The Gateway to Angkor

Today, just as the sun was beginning to burn through the misty morning air, we were purchasing our three day passes for Angkor - complete with cheesy grin photographs.  In the soupy humidity of the Cambodian jungle, we will be cycling and tuk-tukking our way around this vast temple complex situated just seven kilometres from the town.

With day one over, our saddle sore behinds are looking forward to some comfy chairs and our tired hands a cold dewy beer.  We've scrubbed a thick layer of sweat, mud, fine orange jungle dust and sunscreen from our faces and are already looking forward to what the next two days have in store, including, on the final day, watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat, the largest religious structure on the planet.  I will of course provide a full rundown of the week's events in due course, but for now, here are a few snapshots from our first day of Indiana Jones style adventure.

On The Road Again...

With the help of a luxury coach (which has WiFi!) we're currently on our way to Siem Reap to spend a week exploring the nearby jungle temples of Angkor - real Indiana Jones territory!

Six hours of bumpy roads and hair-raising overtaking lie ahead, and yet again, one of the dozens of Pirates of the Caribbean movies is on the TV...iPod it is then!

And now for a little levity...

With access to various Korean and Chinese music TV channels this week, this is what we can be frequently found dancing around our hotel room to (and humming as we wander around Phnom Penh):

Click Here


Pretty cheesy huh? This next one, however, is what most of China, Vietnam and Cambodia are dancing to right now - the most popular song and dance in South East Asia today, bringing all the boys and girls in the bars and clubs to their feet:

Click Here

Enjoy!

The Khmer Rouge

'Have you got the passports?' Rosie says to me, hurriedly getting dressed, a look of white panic on her face as I dart around our window-less hotel room, grabbing the remainder of our cash reserve, our travel insurance documents and anything else important I can shove into my rucksack before we flee downstairs and into the Cambodian night.  We scramble along the hotel corridor and another huge explosion rocks the building to the sound of yet more screams from the marketplace outside.  And then we hear a ripple of automatic gunfire...

For dramatic effect, I'm going to leave that there and take you back in time by ten hours to nine o'clock yesterday morning.  It's a technique used by many writers but by explaining this to you, you will hopefully sense the ultimate humorous conclusion to which this somewhat troubling opening paragraph will lead, after going through some pretty tough and difficult subjects.  So, Rosie and I were happily rattling through the streets of Phnom Penh in the back of a tuk-tuk towards the edge of town and the most well known of Cambodia's many 'killing-fields' - the execution grounds used by the infamous Khmer Rouge during their hellish rule of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

Very simply, the turbulent history of Cambodia is as follows - The French pretty much colonised the whole of this part of the world during the 1800's (ish) and in Vietnam and Cambodia, we find ourselves surrounded by little snippets of French influence;  the food, the architecture, the towering presence of Catholic churches beside Buddhist shrines and a few older inhabitants who still speak French.  The French arrived in Cambodia in 1863 and with the use of their warships, ended up taking control of the place by 1864.

Territory was handed around for many years, with various power struggles between neighbouring Thailand, Vietnam and Laos muddying the picture somewhat - oh and China got in on the act at some point too.  World War II blurred an already confusing picture of South East Asia into a messy and multi-angled abstract that only books as thick as bricks will fully explain.  But, in 1941, the French placed a Cambodian Prince on the throne, assuming him to be naive and pliable to their own political needs. However, in 1953, the by now well established King undertook an exercise (the 'royal crusade') to seek his country's independence from the French, which they won (by diplomatic means, I think) in the same year.  By 1955 the King was tired of the whole pomp and ceremony of royalty, and promptly abdicated - opting instead to form and run the People's Socialist Community as a 'normal' citizen and as such, was elected with ease.  Things carried on no problem.  The Cambodia of the 1950's and 60's was a pretty stable place.

Then the USA decided that it needed to help neighbouring South Vietnam in exterminating the "evil" communists of the North who were seeking to liberate the South.  After bombing and burning and destroying huge chunks of Vietnam along with it's population, they turned their attention to Cambodia where many communist's had taken refuge.  US B-52 planes carpet bombed the border regions, killing thousands and dragging Cambodia into the war.  Cambodia was also having it's own problems with tensions rising between various rebellious groups and internal powers.  In 1970, while on holiday in France, the former king (now socialist leader) was overthrown in a coup organised by the General of his own army (Lon Nol) who had formed an alliance with the Cambodian communist  party and their own private army - aka the Khmer Rouge, the red Khmer.  The very next month, US and South Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in an attempt to flush out the remaining North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops in hiding - as if a military coup was not enough to deal with!

General Lon Nol, now facing increasing demands and unwelcome pressure from the communist Khmer Rouge (with whom he had colluded), was provided with military and economic aid by the US in order to fully quash the power he had given them to begin with, and so a Cambodian civil war ensued.

In April 1975, Khmer Rouge troops rolled in to Phnom Penh (the capital) to the cheers of a joyous population who saw in their arrival the end of the violence.  How wrong they were.  Within days, the destruction of their entire world began. 

The leader of the Khmer Rouge was Pol Pot, and in his taking of the country, he was able to put into action his own deluded plan for society.  In short, he wanted to implement collectivism, turning the country into an agrarian cooperative - i.e. a giant communist farm, with every man, woman and child put to work for the good of the society as a whole.  It's basically communism pushed to the very extreme, where individualism is destroyed and the population becomes nothing but a machine.  To do this, he recruited an army - made up primarily of young boys and men from the countryside; uneducated, poor, easily manipulated and very much open to the prospect of work and wages.

So, three days after their arrival in the capital, the Khmer Rouge put their plan into action and ordered every living soul in the cities to leave their homes and march out to the countryside where forced labour camps awaited them.  Men, women, children, babies, the pregnant, the disabled - all forced into the streets at gunpoint with the threat of immediate execution for any kind of disobedience.  Families were split apart, children torn from the arms of their crying mothers, husbands and wives separated and siblings divided - for each person to then be sent to whichever part of the country the regime required them to be.  Currency was abolished, as was religion, the postal service and any contact contact with the outside world.  To fully implicate his radical re-structuring of society, Pol Pot set in motion the removal of any citizen who did not fit in with his senseless plan.  During the next four years, the Cambodian people were sent to hell and back, and the stories we read during our visit, written by the very people who survived it, were simply horrifying. 

Seeing society as nothing but a tool for production, Pol Pot also did not believe in education.  All schools and universities were closed down and turned into prisons or warehouses, and thus began the genocide.  Teachers, intellectuals, anyone who spoke a foreign language, musicians, even people who simply wore glasses or whose hands were deemed "too soft", were simply taken away and murdered.  Brutality reigned, and paranoia among the regime was rife.  People began disappearing, dragged from their homes in the middle of the night and tortured into signing false confessions - of being a C.I.A. spy, stealing a banana, not meeting their production quota or just not working "hard" enough - any tiny act of disobedience - death was generally the outcome.  Sadly, once a single family member was targeted, this often signed the death warrants of any relatives. Also, many prisoners were tortured into naming friends or colleagues, who would in turn be arrested, tortured and, ultimately, executed.  Pol Pot had some horrible slogans: "You are no gain if you live, no loss if you die." and "If you want to kill the grass, you must kill it's roots." 

We also visited a former Khmer Rouge prison in Phnom Penh.  Built in the 1960's, Tuol Sleng High School was closed and converted into a centre for torture, incarceration, interrogation and execution.  Renamed Office 21, or S-21, it was now known to the locals as Tuol Sleng Prison.  On the ground floor, large airy classrooms, some of them still with their chalkboards and number lines on the walls, had been turned into desolate, harrowing spaces, with a single steel bed and leg irons still in place where they were left when the Khmer Rouge fled the city in 1979.  These were the torture and interrogation chambers - electric generators, whips, pliers and batons being some of the tools now on display.  Upstairs, rows of hastily built walls, with cement oozing out between the crooked bricks, formed tiny dark cells in long rows along the exterior walls of the classrooms, some with faded plastic containers and ammunition boxes still in place (acting as the prisoner's water container and toilet).  The long outdoor corridors which overlooked what was once a playground were wrapped in high walls of barbed wire to prevent prisoners jumping to their deaths from the upper storeys.  It is estimated that during their almost four year rule, the Khmer Rouge imprisoned somewhere between 17 and 20 thousand people in S-21, and this was only one of many such prisons.  Most of them are thought to have been executed, with only seven known survivors having lived to tell their tale of the brutality that went on inside. 

Staring back from the prison walls today are photographs of the thousands of people who suffered and died there.  The Khmer Rouge were astute in their record keeping and one can only imagine what those people had been through before arriving at the prison and having their photographs taken.  Some clearly had their hands bound, some had ropes and chains around their necks and some had been beaten.  I was most affected by those who were smiling, so naive to what was awaiting them, and no doubt naive to the reason for their being there, so false were the accusations often made by the regime.

......

Having left the fumes and noise of the city, our driver turned off of the main road and onto a quiet dirt road, driving us for a mile or so, past tiny wooden houses, grazing cows, banana groves and rice fields, until we saw the memorial tower of The Choeung Ek Genocidal Center - The Killing Fields.

In a picturesque orchard, once used by the local Chinese population as a cemetery, the Khmer Rouge built a camp.  Sealed off from the villages around it by tall fences on three sides and a lake on the forth, those living around the camp thought it was nothing more than a training camp for combatants and a centre for revolutionary meetings and speeches.  Not until the liberation of Cambodia did the world see what truly went on inside.  Today, a moving audio tour guides you around the site.  Starting at 'The Truck Stop', the point at which, at one stage, several trucks a day would arrive crammed with blindfolded prisoners, dragged straight from their homes or sent from the S-21 prison in town.  A second post marks the location of the building in which they would all be processed, their names taken and cross referenced with the prisoner lists sent from their superiors.  Later, the names would be ticked off a third time, once they had been executed. 

To begin with, the guards would drag the condemned straight to the edge of large hand dug ditches, with their hands bound and their eyes covered.  When knelt at the edge of their own grave, the slaughter would begin.  Often carried out at night, beneath the glare of bright neon lights hung from trees, the roar of a nearby diesel generator and the howling of haunting revolutionary songs (to hide the screams of the dying from the nearby community).  Expensive bullets were replaced with steel batons, axes, hatchets and hammers - even razor sharp sugar palm bark was used to slit throats.  Men, women, children, even tiny babies, wiped from existence.  Pol Pot believed that the families of those put to death should also face the same fate, to prevent them from seeking revenge.  "If you want to kill the grass, you must kill it's roots."

We listened to all of this through our headphones, standing in silence at the edge of a wide, grassy grave site, its surface still pitted and bulging, the soil still shifting and changing as the bodies beneath decay and heavy rain unearths new fragments of bone and clothing.  We saw ourselves the splintered fragments of a thigh bone sticking out of the damp soil.  It is estimated that around 2 million Cambodians died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge - around one third of the population.  17,000 of them died at Choeung Ek.

So what happened to the Khmer Rouge?  Tired of infringements along its border by the Khmer Rouge army, Vietnam invaded Cambodia on Christmas day 1978 and a week later Cambodia was liberated from its evil dictatorship.  The world could finally see what Cambodia had endured.  Genocide, famine, disease, the destruction of a society and its cultures.  Vietnam pushed the Khmer Rouge into the jungle and installed its own pro-Vietnam government.  Although the people were free from the brutality of the Khmer Rouge, a long civil war ensued.  Even China got in on the act by invading Vietnam from the North as revenge for invading Cambodia (its long term financial partner) although the battle hardened Vietnamese ended their attempt within seventeen days.

Having lost the war against communism in Vietnam, the US (and therefore its many allies) could not support their actions in Cambodia - opting to support political back-patting rather than human rights and morals.  The United Nations, therefore, did not recognise Cambodia's new government, and as late as 1992 the now somewhat guerrilla movement of the Khmer Rouge still held a seat at United Nations conferences - until the monarchy was restored and the Democratic National Union Movement was formed.  As the twentieth century drew to a close, thousands of Khmer Rouge members surrendered their arms to the newly appointed government.  Pol Pot died aged 82 in a straw hut in the jungle, not having faced any consequences for his actions, although various bodies were soon established to punish the surviving senior leaders of the regime. 

Three of four of those responsible for the atrocities of the late seventies are still alive and are on trial in an international court.  All well in to their 80's, one must ask what punishment could now be served upon these frail men and women that could even begin to match the brutality they were personally responsible for.

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But what of the tale of the evening after our visit to these harrowing places?  Well, with our minds filled with such chilling images and with the ghosts of the Khmer Rouge era, a time so close to our own, still haunting the streets and the minds of Phnom Penh, a ground shaking explosion, louder and deeper than anything I'd ever heard, violently shook the walls of our little hotel room, compressing the air around us to the apparent screams of people in the darkened market square outside.  We froze with fear.  A country so unstable for so long, and with peace and safety having only been enjoyed for just over a decade, had the ghosts of the Khmer Rouge come out from their hiding places, were we to be thrown into the start of yet another civil conflict?  We flew down the staircase, our hearts pounding, our voices trembling.  'Hello?' I called as we neared the ground floor, expecting to see the market in flames and the aftermath of a car bomb in the street outside.  Lent coolly against the open doorway, our hotel's owner stood looking out into the night sky.  Beyond him, and high above the rooftops, a giant firework display was underway, marking the end of a week long celebration of the former King's birthday.  The blood returned to our faces which were by now grinning wildly with relief.  We stood there and enjoyed the show, half dressed, laden with rucksacks rammed with documents and personal belongings, with my money belt slung over my shoulder.  A tropical storm had also started rumbling towards us from the horizon, electrifying the silvery sky behind the rainbow explosions of the fireworks.

Perhaps a reminder not to expect the worst from this still developing nation, the end of such an emotional day certainly left us with a deeper respect for the Cambodian people who cheered and clapped with every glittering blast of the firework display, although no doubt the wounds of the Khmer Rouge are still very much a part of their lives.

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To find out more about the Khmer Rouge, the first two parts of this CNN documentary are a good start:
Part 1
Part 2

'The Killing Tree' - it's trunk used for murders too brutal for me to write here

The Buddhist Memorial Stupa at Choeung Ek - filled with layers and layers of skulls, thigh bones and other large bones excavated from the site from 1980 onwards.

Tuol Sleng Prison

One of the many rooms with its chalkboard still in place

Barbed wire prevented prisoners from comitting suicide