Saigon to Phnom Penh

According to the BBC, it's 93 fahrenheit here. According to the Louise weather forecast it is HOT HOT HOT. And humid, so very humid. I've just returned from a sweltering round of haggling and schlepping in the Russian Market (so-called because lots of Russians used to go there, not because they sell lots of big furry hats) under a tin roof, which was about as breezy as it sounds. I keep dabbing at my face with a napkin, but I'm still glistening constantly (women don't sweat, they glow). However, I absolutely love Phnom Penh, and have decided that it's my favourite place on this whole trip (unless Siem Reap turns out to be nice, which is doubtful since it's just a launch-pad for the zillions of visitors to the ancient Wats of Angkor etc.). The people of Laos were certainly lovely, and Luang Prabang was wonderful, but Phnom Penh has a certain something about it that makes me want to come back – and this is the first place I've been to that feels like I could live and work here (though obviously London remains my one and only true love in terms of home).

The Khmers are very friendly and non-hassley (general offering of tuk-tuks/motorcycle rides excepted) and their relentless cheeriness in the face of all that has gone before (upon which much more later) is admirable and infectious. Plus, vitally for me, the food is lovely and sort of a Thai/Indian fusion with superb coffee and baked goods. Phnom Penh is a surprisingly cosmopolitan city (we've found the best bakery/cafe ever that I would just about LIVE in if they had a branch in London) with a branch of PriceWaterhouseCooper and a bustling commercial centre plus a thriving arts scene, the architecture of the temples and even just the buildings is stunning, and best of all it's set on a lake (Tonlé Sap). Ricky and I are in accordance that we're not really beach people, but we are city-with-a-large-body-of-water people. There's a huge strip of bars/restaurants/pubs along the lake, and at night it feels really safe to walk around. So Phnom Penh has completely taken me by surprise and I love it a little bit. Which is funny, because we only stopped here for logistical reasons; we didn't want to do the whole 10-hour coach journey from Saigon to Siem Reap, and thought “hey it's a capital city, there must be stuff to do”.

History time.

The Khmer empire used to (as in, first to ninth century AD) be the biggest and best in the whole region, before a whole host of tragic and unfortunate events caused it to be as it is today, which is still developed, but far less so than the other countries in the region, even little Laos. This is thanks to various episodes, including but not limited to French colonisation and inter-nation warring with its neighbours. (the town next to the most famous point for tourism in Cambodia, Siem Reap, undiplomatically means “Siamese defeated”). The difference in living conditions was palpable upon crossing the border; and even though Phnom Penh is fairly gentrified in parts, there are many many pockets that remind me far more of India than any other urban settings in ex-IndoChina. There are a fair few beggars around too, many who have lost limbs presumably due to landmines, and others who I would guess have just suffered unfortunately from the reality of a country trying desperately to repair itself after the regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. In three years and eight months, the country was systematically disassembled and all culture, industry and academia was completely destroyed (wearing glasses was enough to have you arrested and tortured/murdered as an intellectual). Overnight, thousands of people were rounded up and marched out of their home city, town or village, and put to work for 12-15 hours a day of gruelling manual labour, with very little to eat. Reading about it on paper is one thing, but actually visiting the museum really forces you to confront it. This morning we visited Tuol Sleng or S-21, which was a school until the Khmer Rouge turned it into a centre for detaining, torturing and murdering those who they saw as opponents of the regime. Unsurprisingly, this was just a thin veil for rounding up innocent people for no particular reason and then forcing them to confess to things they hadn't done. With the exception of a few displays and placquards which describe conditions, the school has been left as it was found in 1979, and opened as “evidence” (their term not mine) of the atrocities committed which they say amount to genocide. Lonely Planet says “Tuol Sleng was the largest incarceration centre in the country. The long corridors are hallways of ghosts containing haunting photographs of the victims, their faces staring back eerily from the Past. Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge leaders were meticulous in keeping records of their barbarism...when the Vietnamese army liberated Tuol Sleng in 1979, there were only 7 prisoners alive at S-21, all of whom had used their skills such as painting or photography to stay alive.” Needless to say, it was incredibly harrowing; I felt nauseous the whole time I was there and we both had to have a pretty lengthy time-out when it all got a bit too much. Obviously it wasn't the most pleasant of mornings, but you can't come to Cambodia without trying to understand what has gone before, which helps to put things into context. The recentness of Pol Pot's regime means that everyone in the country will have either experienced it personally, or their parents will have done. And the casualty/death toll means that many know someone who perished due to the brutality. As I used to close my work emails with at the Department of Health, “happy to discuss further if necessary”, but seriously it is a topic that I've become fascinated by, so always up for talking/learning more about it. More info at www.dccam.org, and www.yale.edu/cgp.

We had some lunch to recover (at a wonderful cafe across the road, serving incredible healthy dishes with the proceeds going to good causes), and then Ricky came back to the hotel to lie down, while I braved the aforementioned market, and am pretty pleased with the proceeds of my efforts and haggling skills, which I have now honed to a T. Oh and this morning in the cafe I had the best coffee of the trip, along with a cream-cheese bagel and an old copy of Glamour magazine. Now I'm sitting outside the hotel on the netbook, while Ricky has gone to get a massage and I have told him NO EXTRAS, or if he does then I'm not accompanying him to the Sexual Health clinic once we get home. Yesterday was a long, pretty much uneventful coach trip to get here, and once we arrived it starting raining torrentially, meaning we were trapped in our hotel, although we did go for a wander along the lake later on. I found affogato, an Italian dish, which combines my two favourite things in the world; vanilla ice-cream drowned in a shot of espresso. I struggle to find that in London outside of Italian cafes, but it's here in Phnom Penh. Just another thing that has impressed me greatly!

So tomorrow we're up early, 4-hour coach to Siem Reap, resting/pottering for the remainder of the day, and the next day having an epic early start to see Angkor Wat for sunrise, followed by as many further temples as we can cope with before the heat forces us to retreat to our hotel. And then we have to make our way back to Bangkok overland; apparently the border crossing is tiring but nothing that a bit of bribery can't fix (wave dollars and they open up another booth, thus saving you the 2-hour-long queue in the blazing, relentless heat). I'll see if my morals win out over comfort.

BBC World Service informs me that Tony Blair couldn't even wait til my return to publish his memoirs: how rude! I take it that the country will kindly refrain from reading/commenting upon it until I get back, pleaseandthankyou.

That's enough from me, something from you now please :)

Louise xxx

ps. Phnom Penh has nothing to do with pens, but rather is named after a temple (Wat Phnom) that was founded by a lady called Penh. So there.