1.1 Billion People and Everything That Comes Along With It...

After a day's worth of flights and waiting at KL Airport, we arrived in the world's second most populated country, India. We've only been in Delhi a day but we're already starting to get a feel for the place. It's funny noticing the similarities and differences between here and SE Asia, or anywhere else for that matter. The traffic is madness but not as bad as the worst of SE Asia. Cleanliness and general organisation here is definitely a step below though. The streets seem to have been randomly placed, with tiny, interesting little alleys darting off in every direction. There are several cows on the particular tiny, interesting little alley that we're staying on. And this morning we walked out the door to find ourselves in the middle of a bustling political demonstration of some sort. Drums were banging and people were yelling and clapping as they walked on by, flags and placards in hand. All in good spirits and absolutely classic to watch.

Our introduction to the city was as expected I guess. The first person we intended to rely on, our taxi driver, tried to scam us. Good old Lonely Planet had prepared us for this though so I wasn't having a bar of it. After a bit of unintentional sight-seeing around the city and a few stern words, we ended up where we wanted to be. The scammers are everywhere, as we've continued to find out, and they're so believable. Even in my cynical, defensive frame of mind some of them have almost had me believing what they were saying. However, as the Lonely Planet also says, if you can look past that, India has plenty to offer. We're also guessing that Delhi (like Bangkok is to Thailand) will be one of the worst places in India for all the bad things, so what better place to start.

As I said, once you look past the bad, you definitely find the good. And it didn't take long. It was pretty late when we arrived but we headed out for a quick look around and a small bite to eat once we found a place to stay. Just round the corner there was a hole-in-the-wall food joint still open. We ordered a curry that we'd never heard of and a couple of naans to share. Despite being easily the shittiest place we have ever eaten (probably even been, come to think of it) the food was fantastic. Oh yeah... and it cost us 30 cents each! Breakfast cost a massive $2 each but that was a fruit lassi and a giant masala dosa (lentil-flour crepe, stuffed with potatoes, onions and more, and served with dipping sauces). I love this place!

Today was a whirlwind tour of the city. We first checked out the backpacker area, Paharganj, that we're staying in. Then we headed down to Connaught Place, which is a massive circular area surrounded by a huge roundabout. Inside there are shops, streets and at the centre is a big park. After that we headed up to Old Delhi on foot. The big thing to see there is the Red Fort, which was completed in 1648, as a show of Mughal power. It sits on a massive, walled site that now contains a couple of museums and plenty of impressive architecture to check out. After having a look round the bazaars (markets) we caught an autorickshaw back. As we've found in the past, this cheap mode of transport is worth it just for the ride. Insane.

Mo Update

Since we are now in India, we felt it was time to start blending in with the locals. So we had our first shave-in of the stupendous 'stache. Disappointing, pathetic and woeful are all words that come to mind but it's early days so hopefully we can lift our game!

South East Asia Wrap Up

So we've finished SE Asia, sorta the first leg of the trip really. Because we're geeks and we had to kill a few hours, we came up with a few stats as well as the first annual "Marcus and Kevs Travel Awards".


The Marcus and Kevs Travel Awards - South East Asia:

Best Beer Category: 1. Beer Lao (Laos), 2. BGI (Vietnam), 3. Chang (Thailand)

Best Food Category: 1. BBQ Seafood (Nha Trang, Vietnam), 2. Amok Curry (Cambodia), 3= Spicy Coconut Noodle Soup (Launag Prabang, Laos), 3= Vietnamese Pancake (Saigon, Vietnam)


Most Fun Category: 1. Tubing (Vang Vieng, Laos), 2. Night Life (Nha Trang, Vietnam), 3. Playing sport with the locals (All Countries)


Most Impressive Category: 1. Angkor Wat (Siem Reap, Cambodia), 2=. Toul Sleng + Killing Fields (Phnom Phen, Cambodia), 2= War Museum + Cu Chi Tunnels (Saigon, Vietnam)

Best Local Experience Category: 1. Local Village Wedding (Luang Prabang, Laos), 2. Hill Tribe Trek (Chang Mai, Thailand), 3. Orphanage (Phnom Phen, Cambodia)



Worst Experience Category: 1. Too much "local" pizza (Siem Reap, Cambodia), 2. Lao Whisky hang-over (Luang Prabang, Laos), 3. Motorbike crash (Chang Mai, Thailand)

Best Value Category: 1. Transport, 2. Food and Drink, 3. Clothes and Souvenirs


Best Purchase Category: 1. Guitar (Phnom Phen, Cambodia), 2. Krama (Siem Reap, Cambodia), 3. Beer Lao T Shirt (Luang Prabang, Laos)

And the overall award for best country goes too..........

1. Laos

2. Vietnam

3. Cambodia

4. Thailand

The Stats:

Days: 42

Distance Travelled: 3715.32km

Time Spent Travelling: 84 hours

Money Spent: $1000.00 US each

Beer Consumed: 85 Litres each (unfortunately this is a conservative estimate and doesn't include spirits)

Days we didnt drink alcohol: 3 (the 3rd being last night after we calculated the above statistic!)

Offers to buy marijuana: 156

Avg Temp in Day: 33-34 C

Days of Rain: 5 (4 in Nha Trang)

Avg Temp at Night: 26-28 C

Nights with Air Con: 5

Nights in the same bed: 8

% of showers with hot water: 30%

Good Times: Too many to count!

Life's a Beach

Nha Trang

After the full on schedule over the last month or so, it’s great to have some time to relax for a bit. And what better place to do just that than here in Nha Trang. It’s small enough to have a quiet day at the beach but big enough to stay out boozing til all hours of the morning. The first day we had here was brilliant weather-wise, leading to a bit of sunburn the following day. Unfortunately, it packed in a bit for the next few days. That didn’t stop us going to the beach though, since it was still 30ish degrees and the water was nice and warm as well. We’ve had the occasional massive down pour but otherwise it has just been overcast with some patchy rain.

Gladly, the sun is back out today and hopefully it will stay that way. There is also plenty to see and do here, night or day. So far we’ve done a fair bit, including visiting a temple with a massive Buddha over looking the city, a cable car ride to an island (see below) and a boat trip. We were hoping the boat trip was going to be a whole bunch of people around our age, since the they are renowned for being great booze trips. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work out that way. Instead we had a bus load of middle aged Chinese tourists. Surprising what a bit of Vietnamese alcohol can do though. They ended up being rowdier than expected and we actually had a pretty fun day out. The boat stopped at four islands throughout the day. One had an aquarium, one had good spots for snorkeling, one had a fish farm and one was just a nice place to relax. The trip also included a massive lunch and a bit of booze, all for a measly US$6. Also, for all you divers out there, Nha Trang is meant to be a great place for it, with visibility up to 30m on a good day and plenty of fish, coral and other sea life to see.

Now I know I go on about food all the time but this place deserves special mention. With the fishing port a couple of kms away from the centre of town, a wide variety of unbelievably fresh seafood is available at all of the numerous restaurants here. And it is superb. The best seafood meal we’ve had here was a big mixed platter served with rice and veges. It had prawns, mussels, oysters, calamari, clams and a whole snapper. It’s funny how quickly you get used to paying next to nothing for food here. This was a bit of a splash out for us, as it cost a whopping US$10 for the two of us! Other highlights include marinated bbq pork, massive hotpot meals and a plethora of fresh fruit (including pomelo, mango, tamarind and of course pineapple).

In other news, we have decided to grow some filthy mo’s for the Indian leg of our journey. Yes, that’s right folks, contain your excitement, today is officially the last day that we are allowed to shave the ‘stache. Serious consideration has been given as to which style to implement, with a number of factors determining the outcome. While the handlebar was certainly high on the list, both of us will instead be aiming for a decent (and incredibly attractive) full width slug. Due to the overwhelming interest that this will undoubtedly evoke, weekly updates will be shown on the blog. And no, Nath Hay, they will not be enhanced with mascara (I don’t think mascara comes in ginga orange anyway).

Vin Pearl

There's an island off-shore here called Vin Pearl. I'm sure that's not it's proper name but that's what the sign says so we'll run with that. Vin Pearl is connected to the main land by a massive cable car system that is a pretty cool ride with some good views of Nha Trang. The fun and natural beauty of this place stops however the moment you get off the cable car. From the mainland Vin Pearl looks like a place you can go over to and have a relax on the beach and a nice lunch or something. But once there it can only be described as Disney Land with a brain hemirage. The whole place is being set up by someone to be an amusement park come resort. You step off the cable car onto a terrace with roller coasters, ferris wheels and people walking round in costumes resembling Disney characters (Donald Duck et al) but just different enough to avoid a copy write infringement. The strange thing is the place is dead, the rides aren't moving and there was hardly anyone there. There is all this fake rock about and they are in the process of building a beach. This blew me away as Im not sure what was wrong with the beaches and rocks that were there already.

We wandered into a fake rock building that turned out to be a mega games arcade. There was all this stuff like Virtual Reality jetskiing, it's not like you can hire the real thing on the mainland or anything! My favourite was a "4D Movie Cinema". This got me pretty excited. I dont remember much from school apart from we played touch rugby at lunch time and in 3rd Form I got my arse kicked by an Asian kid called Gabrielle who went on to become Dux. I do vaguely recall though from Yr11 physics that the 4th Dimension is theoretically time travel. I pondered the many options now available to me, do I go forward to the future, or travel back to the past? After some debate between my brain and my imagination I thought it would be cool to travel back in time and see Jesus, before he was famous. I could have given him some tips like the fact that long hair, beards and caftans wont be in fashion until 1962, so he'd be better off keeping his hair short and buying some cargo pants. Im sure if we got on well he could have given me a shout-out in the New Testament or something. It turned out to my sheer disappointment that the 4D Cinema was just one of those ones where you wear 3D glasses and things jump out at you. Stink bro.

The rest of the island was more crap, it's the sort of place you would go on holiday of you dont want to move. You could stay at the hotel, take the shuttle that goes to all the places on the island, ride the escalators into the buildings and Im sure you could pay someone to feed you your food if you wanted. To really drive normal people off the island, every few metres there is a speaker inside a fake rock which plays music along the lines of a saxophone Celine Dion covers. I was surprised to not see more speakers ripped from their mounts and thrown in the ocean, because that's what you feel like doing after 30 seconds of hearing it.

The whole thing was kinda strange and we were convinced that it's all a big cover for something, our favourite theory is that there is a nuclear warhead hidden underneath and when they want to fire it the whole island will open outwards. A girl told me yesterday that it's run by the Russian Mafia and it's a cover for a money laundering operation. This is an OK theory but I have my reasons not to trust her. These were 1. She was drunk and it was 2pm. 2. She was Scottish. 3. Her voice was lower than mine. But despite all that she wasnt too hard on the eye so I heard her out.

While I'm talking rubbish I thought I would share that I have discovered the worlds most annoying song, bar anything with Crazy Frog in it. There was a song that was a hit in the early 90's that went "She wore an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini...". Yeah that one. Well here all the restaurants think it's really cute to play a plonky style beach cover of it over and over. I'm not usually the murderous type, but I swear if I hear that song one more time I'm going to rip the stereo unit from its mounting and strangle the DJ with the cord!

Last observation. There are 3 ways of crossing the road here depending on what part of town you are in. In most places you have to do the Hokey Pokey as you cross the road, or the Moonwalk if you decide to do it backwards.

In less trendy areas you are required to do the 2-step or the "White Man's Shuffle" as you make your way to the over side.

But in places where cool is the vibe, you strut, disco style.

If you are still reading this then odds are you may well be less intelligent than you where when you started. Sorry.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Ho Chi Minh City

Even though we’ve only visited Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) so far in Vietnam, we already love the place. No real surprise I guess, given the fact that this whole region has been a fantastic experience. As per usual in this part of the world, the people are incredibly friendly, the food is fantastic and the traffic is crazy.

There are a lot of people here, about 8 or 9 million in the greater HCMC. Almost all of them have a motor scooter and a good portion of them seem to be on the road at any one time. Couple this with the fact that there aren’t that many traffic lights (or traffic laws for that matter) and you start to get the picture. Crossing the road becomes an experience in itself as you just slowly push out into the tidal wave of traffic. Apparently there are about 15,000 fatal accidents a year in Vietnam and I’m guessing a fair few of those are here in HCMC. That’s also why they don’t let tourists hire bicycles here!

So far Vietnam seems to be the cleanest of the SE Asian countries that we’ve been to. Despite this being one of the largest cities we’ve visited, the streets are always clean, the market food always seem fresh and well presented and the people in general seem to take a bit more care. There is also a surprising amount of greenery here, even amongst the inner city blocks.

As I’ve already alluded to, the food is superb and cheap, which of course rates highly in my books. The Vietnamese are renowned for their soup (pho) which is eaten any time of the day or night. It is a rice noodle soup, often made with meat balls, mung bean sprouts, chili and a host of varying ingredients (depending on where you get it) in a clear broth. My favourite so far is probably the Vietnamese pancake, which is a massive savoury pancake, eaten for dinner, which contains shrimp, pork, mung bean sprouts, herbs and lettuce. It comes with a chili sauce that I managed to spill everywhere the first time I had it, table, shorts, floor, chair, everywhere. Delicious though. The coffee here is also excellent. It is served as a glass with a simple little single-serve percolator that sits on top. You just keep topping this up with hot water, which drips through the coffee grounds, until you’ve got a full glass. It is normally served with a little bit of sweetened (condensed) milk in the bottom of the glass, which you then mix in.

As for sights to see and things to do, there are plenty of those too. Read below for the details on a couple of the main excursions. We’ve also visited the markets here, done quite a bit of walking around and got through our fair share of BGI (one of the local beers, 640mL bottle for US$0.75). The main religion here is Buddhism but another popular local religion is Cao Dai. We visited the largest Cao Dai temple in Vietnam during one of their ceremonies that takes place four times a day. The temple was very ornate and quite different from a lot that we’ve seen. It was quite interesting to see their religious ceremony but it was also pretty strange being one of a few bus loads of tourists encroaching during their prayers. Oh well, got some cool photos.

Cu Chi Tunnels and The War Museum

Went out to the Cu Chi Tunnels the other day which is the labyrinth of tunnels the Viet Cong used to evade the Americans and South Vietnamese in the Vietnam war. The war is pretty big bikkies over here and I felt like a bit of a dick cos I really had no idea what the two sides were fighting about. To give you readers a brief idea of what and why (I just looked this up on the web and it's pretty complicated but what I think happened was...)

Vietnam gained independence from the French in 1954. The local regime were pretty disorganised and the country ended up splitting in two, the communist North who were the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the South, the Republic of Vietnam. In the 60's the North and a group called the "National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam" thought it might be a good idea if the country became one communist nation so invaded the South. The North were quietly supported by the Russians and the Chinese so it was more than an excuse for the US to jump in and support the South. End of the day the yanks got carried away, realised it was all a bad idea and got out of it after roughly 10 years . The final result it seems that the North won and "liberated" Saigon in the South.

If I have some of that wrong please feel free to correct/abuse me on the comments page.

So... got to the tunnels which are about 70km out of town. First thing we did was watch this video on the war. It was brilliant as it was from the Vietnamese point of view, a real 180 from many of those Hollywood movies about the war. The general gist was this: "Vietnam was very peaceful happy place, everyone was happy. Then Americans come and want to destroy Vietnam but the people were too strong for them. This person is hero American killer as he killed 116 Americans. This person is also hero American killer because she destroyed 5 tanks and killed 86 Americans. The Americans could not fight with the mighty Viet Cong guerrillas so they loose the war". I wished we had some Americans in the room as I would have loved to have seen their faces!

The whole place is really well done. We went outside and were shown the tunnels. The entrance too most of them is a tiny rectangular hole about 50x30cm, from there it is crawling space only with no light. These tunnels typically went down 3 levels to a depth of 8 metres as to shelter from bombs. They were full of booby traps and had multiple entrances (some underwater) to escape from . It must have been bloody scary to be the guy that had to go in first to search for the VC knowing that they were probably lurking around a dark corner with a gun or that you could fall into a trap any second. We went from there to see examples of all the traps the VC placed around the jungle. They all consisted of a camouflaged pit that when stepped on would trigger some revolving mechanism that would ram multiple 12" spikes into your legs or arms or places you dont want 12" spikes. There were about 10 variations, each one gave you that feeling you get in your stomach when you see someone wear a soccer ball in the nuts. There was an artillery range in the complex that gave it quite an authentic feeling with the sound of M16s and AK47s being shot. I would have liked to have a few shots myself, but seeing as one bullet cost the same as two beers in town I decided I didn't feel the need to re-affirm my masculinity and saved my cash for more important things.

After this we got to crawl through an actual tunnel which had been widened to fit Westerners but was still pretty tight. It took about 5 minutes and we came out sweating and filthy. It must have been so hard to live like that for years on end. We then saw a display on the VC's guerrilla weapons. What they did was take all the unexploded bombs and munitions that the Americans dropped, cut them open and made these crazy home-made mines and grenades. It was clever stuff, combined with the traps and the tunnels you have to admire their creativity and level of jungle warfare they had.

Next day we walked to the War Remnants Museum. I wasn't expecting much as I hadn't heard much about it, but there were some exhibits there that were seriously scary. S21 in Cambodia was chilling as you were standing in the spot were it all happened, but the images at this place were way worse. Outside there were some US tanks, planes and guns that had been restored which was quite cool. Inside however there were a whole lot of photos and captions, once again from the Vietnamese perspective. The first lot showed the people, many of them kids that had been injured by bombs containing nails or napalm or phosphorus. They had some of the actual bombs sitting there, cut open showing the contents (i.e. nails). I dont know what kind of sick fuck designs these kind of things but they are terrible, and the damage they do is horrific. The worst of the lot is Agent Orange. It doesnt just mutate the people and environment it touches but it screws your whole family. Many people who came into contact with the stuff went back after the war and had children, many are born with massive deformities like missing or mutated limbs or severe brain damage. America has support programs for kids like this in the US who's parents came into contact with Agent Orange while they were spraying it, but they dont appear to be doing anything for the people here they sprayed it on (one area was doused with 81 million litres and it takes a few millilitres to kill a human).

I was starting to feel a bit sick after reading all this, partially from being well and truly hungover and partially because I couldnt get over how disgusting it all was. The next section had shots of GI's torturing and killing Vietnamese. There was a story about a group of SEALs that went into a village and killed everyone there, 16 in all from 4 families with only one survivor, because they thought they were informants. There were other things too gross to mention on here, but the war must have got to the heads of a lot of the soldiers for them to do that kind of thing to prisoners. I dont know much about the Geneva Convention but Im pretty sure it was breached here.

The next gallery was more impressive than shocking, it was dedicated to international and local war correspondants, many of whom died, and showed some of their photographs. There were some great photos taken at just the right point, one of an aeroplane that had just been hit with a missile in mid-air. The tail was flying one way, the rest of the plane the other. Another was taken just as a shell had landed in a trench. It was colour and all you can see is a massive ball of fire and three soldiers running towards the camera, they would have died a few split seconds after the picture was taken.

The last bit was the prison and torture chambers (replicas not the actual ones), which were fairly similar to S21 in the methods used to extract information and living conditions. These were run by South Vietnamese to extract information from the VC prisoners. I was beginning to see why much of the world despises the US. The museum was from mainly one point of view and Im sure some of the US and allied troops were exposed to some terrible things also. New Zealand had a small section as we sent 600 troops (our entire army?), yet we were last in and first out and there was a note that the ANZAC forces were "well disciplined".

I left the place with a couple of thoughts in my head. One was that a lot of us have it pretty easy these days, our problems consist of car breakdowns, increasing mortgage rates and being in the dog-box with the missus. People who live through wars have problems like the fact a bomb might come through the roof, or their children are going to be mutants because of Agent Orange. The other was that fact that I was in a pretty anti-US mood, I thought "Screw you America. Why dont you just stick to yourselves, grow some corn and have incestuous relations with your sister". Then I thought that blaming 250 million people for the decisions made by a handful of guys in the White House made me somewhat of a small-minded cretin, so I stopped thinking altogether and went out for a beer.

Would you like a Rocket Launcher with your Burger?

Phnom Penh

Been in Phnom Penh a few days now and it's been a fairly eventful time. We weren't holding out a lot of hope for this place as the pattern in other countries has been the capital city is not as good as the other cities (i.e. Chang Mai was better than Bangkok, Luang Prabang was better than Vietiane). But it turns out that this is a pretty cool place. We are staying by a lake where all the guesthouses have their restaurant/bar on balconies out over the water with hammocks and pool tables. Anything goes here, you cant walk 100 metres without being offered a tuk-tuk ride by at least 5 guys. If you dont want a tuk-tuk then they are more than happy to sell you marijuana, opium, ladies or anything else you want - some of them walk down the street waving bags of ganja around! For the record we have not purchased any of these illicit goods or services!

Driving round town you see the strangest sights, one motorbike with probably 50 or so live chickens hanging off the back, or two guys on a motorbike holding a bit of furniture that must have been at least 4m high! There is a vague perception of road rules, people generally drive where-ever, just honk your horn if you want to get through! Cambodians are also the masters of cramming people into vehicles, as well as the record 6 people on a motorbike you see vans driving round with at least 20 people inside and another 20 on the roof! Even you average sized sedan will be cruising round with 10 people in it. There's also a place where you can go and fire old military weapons (AK47s, M16s, Hand Grenades, RPGs). You get a menu and order a coke, fried rice and a couple of rounds on an AK47! Contrary to all the craziness there's also a lot of disturbing history from the revolution in the 70's (see below).

So... we checked in around 7pm on our first night and went out to find our new favourite meal, Amok, which is this traditional Cambodian coconut curry. Randomly ran into Martin from Netherlands who we met in Laos so after tea went and hung out with him and our other Dutch friends Pim and Jacco at their guesthouse that had a boat bar out the back. Soon there were about 20 people drinking out there including some locals who convinced us to go to a nightclub in town. It's the first place that I've ever been checked for weapons at the door, I got an extra special extended pat-down, I hoped this was because I look like someone you'd want to do that too, not because I look like a gun-toting miscreant! It was a pretty "pumping" club and we stayed there until the small hours.

Next day we had planned to visit S21 and the Killing Fields but ended up going out to an orphanage with the Dutch boys and a Norwegian guy we met. It was a very cool experience, rocked up to this place in the afternoon and hung out with the kids for a while. It was their day for soccer so we went down to this soccer pitch which was covered in dust and stones as opposed to grass. Had a full on 11-aside game with these kids which was brilliant fun apart from the fact it was 38 degrees (100 Fahrenheit) and there was no wind! Us white boys were covered in sweat and the quality of our soccer really deteriorated in the second half. Our 3-0 half time lead was soon recovered to a 3-3 draw. It's really cool here that the community appears to help out the disadvantaged kids. There are a heap of orphanages around that seem well supported and the kids at the one we went to were really happy. Lots of restaurants and bars donate a portion of their proceeds to these charities too.

Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek

Today was one of the more sombre and educational days of the trip. We rented some bikes and headed off to our first destination, the Tuol Sleng Museum. This museum buildings are the former S-21 (Security Office 21) Prison buildings (it was actually a high school before this), which housed thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge during the Pol Pot era. For those that don't already know, the Khmer Rouge (or more correctly the Democratic Kampuchea regime) ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979 and committed some of the worst atrocities seen in modern times. The general aim of the DK was to introduce an extremist communist society in Cambodia by turning the majority of the country into workers (either in factories or fields). Prior to this time there was quite a class separation in Cambodia, which essentially boiled down to town vs. country. Under Pol Pot and the DK the majority of towns people had their more plush lifestyles taken from them as they were forced to become peasants under government control. During their rule, living conditions worsened, food became more scarce and people were often forced to work long and hard. They also killed (directly or indirectly, through starvation, etc.) in the region of 1-1.5 million people (although this estimate actually varies from about 800,000 to 3 million depending on the source). The details of life under the DK are still under some scrutiny today, as it would appear that initial accounts were somewhat exagerated, however there is little doubt that many people were needlessly and ruthlessly killed. According to several accounts, victims were often beaten to death, just to save on bullets. The DK were evetually overturned by a Vietnamese invasion. Pol Pot was never tried for his crimes, as he died in 1998.

The S-21 Prison is estimated to have held about 17,000 people during its existence. Reportedly, only seven survived. Despite the DK denying the prison's existence, relatively good records were kept, as each inmate was photographed and written up in a biography upon arrival. Any confessions of guilt or traitorship (usually false, as people were tortured daily) were also added to their biography. There were several other similar prisons across the country but this was the premier one. It was used to interrogate anti-government (in the DK's view) people from all walks of life. As peasants (village/country people) were preferred by the government, towns people often made up the majority of people detained. There is evidence supporting the view that the DK were more intent on killing off the educated 'elite', rather than the uneducated. Having said that, there were still many people killed from all across the country. There were also several foreigners killed, especially Vietnamese. Detainees either lived in \n0.8x2m cells or in large rooms where they were made to lie down and were shackled to an iron bar at their feet. Any movement or noise was enough for lashings, beatings or, in the worst cases, death. After their stay at the prison (usually between four and seven months) they were taken to one of the killing fields by bus. Here they met their end and were added to one of the many mass graves.

The Tuol Sleng Museum was set up as a memorial, in order for the public to be able to learn about the DK regime. Some buildings have been left relatively untouched so you can see the cells prisoners were kept in or the interrogation rooms. Others are full of paintings and photos, many of which are the mugshots taken when they arrived and some of which show the horrific violence that occurred. Some rooms contain some of the old torture equipment that was used and others have informative exhibits. There is also one room showing a video documentary of life in Cambodia during the DK regime. It is a very eerie place to visit, not surprisingly, but also very informative and well worth seeing.

After the museum we ventured out to the Choeung Ek Extermination Centre (the closest of the killing fields to S-21). Here there is a memorial building as the centre piece. Inside there is a very tall and quite large stack of shelves encased in perspex. These shelves are piled with human skulls that have been extracted from the mass graves. It seems quite surreal and really only begins to sink in once you see the skulls up close. Several have bullet holes but many contain breaks or have been completely shattered. Many of the bones around the site have not been exhumed (and won't be) and bones can still be found littering the grounds in parts. The rest of the place is made up of the pits where bodies have been removed from.

All in all a pretty morbid day out but an absolute must if you ever visit Phnom Penh.