The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.

I've arrived safely in Phnom Penh after a reasonably hideous 6 hour bus ride. I caught up with Fran and Beckie who I am basically stalking round Southeast Asia (sorry girls). Phnom Penh is a bustling city, with a beautiful riverfront and lots of bars and restaurants. Visited the National Museum yesterday, followed by cocktails on the riverfront and the most amazing traditional Khmer Amok, a White fish curry served in a banana leaf. I'm seriously going to leave my heart in Cambodia.

My first stop today was The Killing Fields, around 15km south of the city. The Killing Fields were basically a mass execution site where the Khmer Rouge would take prisoners from the city for execution and burial. It's estimated a million people, up to 300 a day at this particular site, were killed in the 4 years of the regime. Doctors, teachers, lawyers, pop stars, movie stars. People who wore glasses or spoke a foreign language were killed, deemed "intellectuals" and a threat to this fanatical regime.

The memorial site is set within an old orchard, and is incredibly peaceful. But it is difficult to even begin to put this place into words. I took the audio tour, and at one point was instructed to look down at the ground. There were fragments of bone, teeth and old clothes coming up from the mass graves below, revealed by the heavy rain. The caretakers of the site collect the newly uncovered remains every few months.

Perhaps the most difficult part was the so called "Killing Tree", which was situated next to a mass grave where the remains of women and children had been discovered. The officers of the Khmer Rouge would swing the babies by their legs and smash their heads against the tree until they were dead. A Khmer Rouge slogan was that "to remove the grass, you must also destroy the roots".

As I emerged into the quiet daylight, red eyed and exhausted, my tuk tuk driver Chey asked me how I felt.

I couldn't answer him.

I continued on to the Genocide Museum in the centre of Phnom Penh, to piece together some more of the history at the Tuol Sleng prison,or S-21. It is a former primary school, used by the Khmer Rouge as a detention centre and torture house. The instruments of torture remain in the cells, along with galleries of the prisoners' faces. I read that in Cambodian tradition, without a proper burial, the ghosts of the dead remain present on earth. It was a startling and terrifying experience. Perhaps what I find most incomprehensible is how a people could ever recover from something like this. The Cambodian people are without doubt the friendliest, most welcoming I've ever encountered, but I'm finding it hard to put into perspective.

On to Vietnam on Wednesday.