On Thursday Oct 17 we got up at 5am and prepared ourselves for another day of travel. We booked a boat trip from Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) to Phnom Penh, since we felt that travelling on water would be a far more comfortable way to go than on land in Cambodia. When we bought our tickets we requested a seat inside the boat, but when we got to the boat, we were told that the backpackers with no seat numbers were restricted to the roof. The backpackers, who pay about 3 times the price of a local, are sent to the roof, while the local travellers get seats inside with air conditioning. Par for the course in Cambodia. Luckily it was a cloudy day and the roof was not that uncomfortable. In addition, we got to see many floating villages on the way. Once we reached Phnom Penh we checked into a guesthouse and walked around the city. We had not heard great things about Phnom Penh, and it was pretty obvious why. The city was dirty and poor. Beggars were everywhere trying to hunt down tourists. The streets were filled with garbage and motorbikes parked in any which way. It was a large city that was still slow to embrace modernization.

The afternoon that we arrived we went to see the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, situated in the heart of the city. Neither of the buildings were very impressive. When you compare these palaces to Thailand or Spain, they lacked the beauty and wealth. That night we made dinner plans with 2 British and 2 Americans that we had met earlier on the boat. We went to a restaurant called Friends, which was a non profit restaurant where the money went towards helping street kids learn valuable work skills. The food was excellent (Asian style tapas) and the company was great.

The next day we booked a trip on a minibus to visit 4 of the big tourist sites in town. As luck would have it we had the bus to ourselves. Our first stop was at the killing fields which were about 20 km out of the city. This was the most famous of the many killing fields that are scattered throughout Cambodia. They were established during the rule of Pol Pot in the 1970's to murder and bury over 2 million of its citizens. We hired a guide who showed us the horrific sites, including 129 communal burial grounds and a tall tower in the centre of the field, filled with 8000 skulls. Our next stop was equally as disturbing. We went to visit the Tuol Sleng Museum (Prison S-21), which was a high school that Pol Pot had turned into a prison for traitors in the Khmer Rouge army. Of the 20,000 prisons that were brought in, only 7 survived. Our guide was excellent and helped to discribe the horrible tortures and abuse that were conducted on the inmates.

Our next stop was at the Russian market, where we had a chance to shop. The market was dirty and lacked anything interesting, so we left quickly and went to the last stop, which was a temple situated on a small hill near the centre of town. That night we met up with Lawrence, who was the Canadian that we had met in Angkor Wat. We went back to the Friends restaurant and then called it a night. The next day we left Cambodia. In truth, we were not upset to leave Phnom Penh. We were, however, sad to leave the people of Cambodia. The locals that were not involved in tourism were genuine and sweet - even nicer than the locals in Thailand. We were happy we had come to Cambodia and seen Angkor Wat, which was a real highlight of the trip.