Goodbye Cambodia...

After the Wat-Fest that is Ankor, we headed for Phenom Penh. It's got tarmac, SUVs and in Cambodian terms is v. metropolitan; for us it lacked charm. We weren't loving Cambodia at this point and we only wanted to see were the killing fields, S21 the Khmer Rouge prison and the royal palace.

The prison, which had been a school, won as the site most likely to put you off you fellow human being for good. After three years of Khmer Rouge rule they turned on themselves and most of the people who went through it during the last eighteen months were disgraced Khmer Rouge, of the thousands that went in, only twelve people survived. Not a good place. Everything is still as it was at liberation, which was only 1979, so it's in good shape and it all works, the tools of torture are there and the shackles haven't rusted. They also took good photos of all new inmates, thereby leaving a comprehensive record of the crimes.

From Phenom Penh we decided to head to Thailand for our last five days in SE Asia. So goodbye Cambodia, it's not just the messiest place we've been, from what we saw of the country it was flat, dry and brown. Their recent history has been dreadful and the rush to improve things feels like it's creating a society at the shallow end of the South-East Asian pool. Maybe we've been too tough, but after Laos it fell short.