Almost out of Cambodia

After 25 years of desire, I finally got my hands on a fragmentation grenade.

Guns!

Killing Fields, each crater in the ground being an excavated mass grave.

Silent victims of Pol Pot's thugs.

Trev and I left Siem Reap early the morning after visiting Angkor Wat and headed to Phnom Penh, where we are now. The following day saw us catching a tuk tuk to the outskirts of the city where we intended to spray some bullets into the sky through one of Cambodia's unique "shooting ranges".

Upon arriving, we were each asked to have a seat and quickly had menus brought to us. I handed the slip back to him, insisting that I had already eaten and was here for the sole reason of firing weapons. He politely handed the menu back to me, at which point I realized that it was the most fantastic menu I've ever laid eyes on. All my favourite foods had been replaced with my favourite firearms! (except for Coke and Fanta...which were strangely still on the menu). Where burgers and BLTs usually prevail, the entire selection had been taken over by automatic rifles and handguns. In place of the more expensive dishes were the mouth watering treats of antiaircraft guns and rocket propelled grenades (both well out of my price range unfortunately). I quickly ordered an AK-47 with a side of Colt .45 and a hand grenade for dessert. The hand gun was fun to fire off but the real magic came with the weapon most revered by guerilla soldiers worldwide, the stock issue AK-47. Was interesting getting behind the thing you see featured in every newscast and I was totally blown away by the sheer power of the sucker as I emptied it's magazine into the sandbags 20 metres away. The hand grenade, which was thrown into a shallow pond, was merely the icing on a very strange cake.

From the shooting farm, we continued on in what can be known as Contradiction Day, to the Killing Fields. During Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, the Killing Fields were the place where thousands of innocent Cambodians were taken to be quickly killed for standing in the way of his revolution. In the center of the field (the area where the mass graves have been dug up), stands a giant pagoda packed full of the excavated human skulls, many baring the cracks, splits and holes left from whatever instrument was used to end their lives. Fairly moving place to say the least, I picture it quite similar to what people have told me of the Concentration camps in Europe.

Leaving there we tuk-tuk'd into the city to the Khmer museum at S-21. S-21, ironically was a secondary school before the Khmer turned it into the city's main torture/extermination camp. Of the over 20,000 inmates held within, only 7 made it out alive. Walking through the makeshift holding cells and torture rooms, many lined with photos of victims taken before their "interrogations", you could almost feel the fear dripping off the walls. A necessary thing to see when in the city, but both of us were quite happy to get out of there once we had fully explored it. The whole day (well the last two events...) shed a new light on our little Cambodian hosts and everytime you see someone older than 25-30, you can't help but wonder what they've been through.

We left Phnom Penh the next morning enroute to Vietnam, little knowing that we would be coming back into the city 11 hours later. Contrary to what a number of people told us (including the guest house and bus operator), free 15 day transit visas are only available at particular border crossings into Vietnam, a list which didn't include the one we were trying. So, after a 5 hour bus ride, we were turned around, told to get back on the bus and drive back to the capital to secure our Vietnam visas. After this incident and the money exchange ripoff while entering Cambodia, I'm beginning to realize that my 15 months of travel experience does not protect me from my own stupidity. Upon hopefully getting our passports back tonight (visas included), we plan to try again tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we're taking full advantage of the unexpected Cambodian TV station that is showing pirated versions of The Lord of the Rings movies back to back to back.