If there is one thing that can get you stranded, whether because its been stolen, misplaced or you simply read the validity date wrong its your visa to a foreign country! But since its been a while since the last update we will have to leave that story for a bit later on.
We did find a quite place on the beach in Shianokville even though the water was warm and random bits of rubbish kept floating by! A few beers and we were ready for a big night when disaster stuck..... I got food posioning! As I sat on the top bunk of our hot and now full dorm room while Ray comforted me I could only wish that I was at home! We postponed the bus ride to Phnom Penh for a few days while I recovered.
Eventually we were on our way and I was feeling much better although a little tender and wary of food. As our bus was pulling in to the bus station at PP it was as though a wave of tuk tuk drivers came out of nowhere, sprinting to be the first at our bus. It was then we decided to find a driver not so in your face. We met CK a lovely Cambodian man who found us a clean cheap place to stay in the centre of it all. We agreed to hire him for a day tour the next day, unaware of what a good friend he would become in the following days!
Our day tour started off at the Killing Fields just outside of PP. A place with such a horrendous and cruel history that one wonders why it could possibly be a tourist attraction - or in that fact why anyone would want to experience the pain and suffering that was encountered here. We went not knowing how the day would affect us and how it would continue to do so. We walked around empty holes that were once mass graves for innocent victims of the Khmer Rouge. Unable to comprehend the pain and sorrow that the people who died there must have experienced in their last hours. Deeply shocked by the ability of a fellow human to be so cruel we were wondering where else this day would take us.
It took us to the most confronting place I have ever visited. At first you come upon an abdandoned school and head to the first building full of what appeared to be simply empty rooms. You walk around imagining it full of children learning - the old chalkboards are still there and then you look down at the brochure and realise that this school once full of laughter and knowledge had become a prison of torture and pain. S21 or Tuol Sleng is clearly no longer a school, it is preserved as a muesum so that all can remember the atrocities that were carried on there. The empty rooms soon had stories as you view the picture on the wall - a photograph of a dead torture victim and then you look down and there is the exact bed, the attempted cleaning of the blood stain and you realise you are standing where someone died a horrible death.
The other buildings are no better, some single rooms for single victims and then classrooms crudely converted into numerous single cells with shackles and barely wide enough to contain our frames. You continue walking along past the barbed wire up to the 3rd floor purely there so that prisioners could not end their suffering by jumping and you cant possibly imagine the entirity of the place. Then you come to the rooms where the cells have been removed and now lining the walls are the photos of those who were tortured and those that did the torturing. Images that we will never be able to forget yet are the ones that we most wish we could. Although we can now say, yes we went there, I'm not so sure it would have been a loss if we did not go.
That night we sat in silence still shocked by the days events thankful that we would be leaving PP shortly. And that is where the visa issue comes into the equation...
We were sitting at the bus station - 15 mins till we were heading to Vietnam when our friend CK found us for a chat. After a while he checked if we had our visas, we showed him, we realised that it wasnt valid for another 3 days!!!! The bus arrived! CK to the rescue, he changed the date on our bus tickets and gave up a possible fare to take us to find somewhere to stay for our frustrating delay. We found a week old hotel with a pool and Ray bargained like a champion! For the next few days we watched TV, brought some movies, ate food, drank beer and waited! Then finally we were off to Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh!!! Hopefully to be free of the tuk tuk drivers that stalk you down the street, horrified that you could possibly want to walk anywhere and ready to shout at you as soon as you move to get out of your seat! Lets see what the next country will bring!
L&R
