(Daniel) If there is one thing which I detest, it is a bad hotel breakfast.  After all, you could have a great night, in a great room, but what is the last thing that you see before you leave?  The stodgy, reheated breakfast that they slop out into serving trays for people to mull over and pick at before deciding that they actually don’t want that reheated rice stodge, leaving it for the next person, probably me.  The only saving grace at these exhibitions of inedibility is the fruit, and here in Cambodia fruit is plentiful and good.  However, at this hotel in their wisdom, they have decided to put out a selection of fruit so meager and miserly that I refused it entirely in protest.  Of course, the only person who suffers when you refuse to eat something is yourself.  I was still feeling bitter about my lack of food this morning as I came out to check the Wolf.

As usual the vehicle was fine, no-one had tried to steal anything or if they had it had been such a bad job that they didn’t leave a mark.  Actually I have noticed that here and in everyplace that we have stayed so far, the night staff from the guesthouse tend to camp out around the vehicle, this makes me wonder how great the risk really is here.  As soon, I would like to stop staying in hotels, as everyone has told me to do, and get back to camping.  Of course that isn’t practical here in Phnom Penh, but my next destination Sihanoukville on the south coast is much quieter, and should be safe enough.  We will see when we arrive there.

As we drove out this morning I felt my heart beat nervously.  Nii had asked to visit the Killing fields of Choueng Ek.  One of the Mass graves left after the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime.  I visited the area on my last visit to Cambodia, and it changed my outlook on the entire country.  I remember only too well my tears at the mass grave that held nearly 9000 men, women and children, innocents killed for having an education or religious belief.  I followed the trip with a visit to the death camps that still held blood stains on the floor and the torturers equipment laid out with photos of them using it.  The Khmer Rouge, as the Nazi’s were, had been ruthlessly efficient in their recording of the atrocities that they carried out.  The photos of the frightened people who died are everywhere, bringing the fear and sadness right to your eyes and your heart.

As we pulled up at the Killing fields I was reminded of that last trip, a sadness came over me.  But this time it wasn’t a shocked melancholy, instead it was more of a considered feeling.  Having been here and seen the place before.  The site itself is, as the name suggests, a field.  There is a stuper, a tall pagoda building, with the skulls of 2000 people stacked inside on glass shelves.  The skulls are organised in ages range, starting with the children’s skulls at the bottom.  Many are fractured from being beaten to death a fact which I didn’t notice on my last visit, but found very apparent on this second chance to inspect the monument.  Nii found the sight difficult to comprehend, and started to babble incoherently.  We left the monument and walked out to the field itself. 

As usual there were very few people in the field, and no-one made any noise.  We simply walked around reading the signs on the various areas that had been marked.  The site consisted of around 80 grave sites, most of which were still occupied, although around 200 people had been exhumed.  I stopped by the first site, a grave that had 200 women and children buried naked.  Then walked to the next site, where over 100 bodies were recovered without heads.  I stopped there to consider the damage that one man and an idea can cause.  Many people do not realise that the Khmer Rouge recruited children, exploiting their susceptible nature and brainwashing them, usually they would have to kill their own parents first, a bloody baptism into a world of hatred and violence. 

As I stood by the grave, I listened to the wind, which seemed to have voices in it.  Maybe it really was voices carried from somewhere behind the walls.  But this was farmland, and I swear I could hear the voices of many people, talking, crying, wailing.  It was hard to tell for sure.  But if you want to go to a place that is haunted, this is the place.  I made a video, intent on capturing the feeling of the place, and the effect that it had on me. 

Nii had wandered back to the Wolf, she had gone very quiet since arriving here.  I’m not sure what effect the burial site had on her, but I can’t imagine that it is very different for anyone.  I rejoined her at the vehicle and we drove out past a group of kids begging for money.  They ran along by the side of the vehicle crying and begging for cash.  I couldn’t bring myself to give it to them, knowing that this was not the answer to their problem.

A fact that I didn’t mention earlier, was that prior to my first visit to the killing fields I had visited a shooting gallery with our driver.  Unaware of the terrors that I would bear witness to later in the day I had fired two semi automatic pistols and blasted away a magazine in an AK-47.  The visit to the prison camp and mass grave afterwards had made me realise that these weapons were probably those left over from the atrocious times that had passed only 30 years before.   This discovery had left me feeling bad about the trip to the shooting gallery, it also made it clear why the driver had been so insistent on going to the range first, as I would certainly not have visited afterwards.

This time however, I had considered the range and decided that a video of shooting one of the rifles would be a good addition to the site, as since the influx of tourists to Cambodia, the ranges had now been forced underground, outlawed by the government.  Since the ranges are run by soldiers and are usually located in the military bases around the area I find this situation to be somewhat strange and therefore worth a second visit to try and record the bizarre setup for the expedition.

I had to ask a tuc tuc driver to take us to the army base, the driver was more than happy, as this would earn him a commission.  He agreed to take us in for free, and drove us the last hundred metres from the main road to the range.  Inside several soldiers attended to us, passing a menu of weapons from a Colt 45 to a tommy gun.

I chose the AK-47 again, and gave Nii the Camera to make a video.  The soldiers suddenly jumped up shouting “no pictures!”  Nii started to put the cameras away, but with a few calm, yet insistent words, I managed to calm them down, and get them to allow us to make a video inside the range.  I really wish that I could have got photos of the menu of weapons and the rack with everything on the menu, and even a rocket propelled Grenade launcher stacked against the wall.  I sat down in the range, once the soldier had primed the weapon I fired off half of the magazine in semi automatic mode, and then switched to fully auto to fire off the rest.  It was not something I actually enjoyed doing.  I have fired weapons many times in the past, and the video I made afterwards showed me looking rather embarrassed and feeling a bit stupid for wasting my money on the stupid activity.

Nii and I went back to the Wolf, and drove back through the traffic to town where we parked up at the hotel and made the vehicle secure before walking out for dinner.  After dinner we had a few drinks in a trendy bar.  On the way home the same Bicycle rickshaw driver from last nights ride home approached us, he was drunk.  We both laughed with the man, who seemed to be friendly enough, but his last comment made us both walk away in disgust.  He made a comment about Nii that suggested that she was a prostitute, something which there is no short supply of in this country.  I didn’t get angry, being an experienced traveler, I know that this could potentially get unexpected and dangerous results.  Nii was devastated though and suddenly burst into tears as we walked away.  For a while she was inconsolable, the man had hurt her so badly with the suggestion.  He didn’t realise that for a university graduate in engineering who comes from a small honest family of farmers and upholds the values of Thai society with pride that this is about the worst insult that you could slap on that person who has worked so hard breaking through a mould of poverty.  Everyday I am impressed and surprised by Nii’s intelligence and strength.  Her family, when I met them were as good and honest people as I have ever met, they took me into their hospitality easily and spent time to understand who I am and what makes me tick.  

I spent a long time calming Nii down, in the end she was unhappy with me that I didn’t say anything to the man.  I had to admit that I too felt that I should have said something to acknowledge the severity of his insult a fact that repeated itself in my mind as I went to sleep.

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