Phnom Penh

Happy f**king new year!

Hotter than Satan's armpit here. 31 degrees and it's 7pm. Had a great new year - went to a restaurant called "Friends" for dinner where street children are trained to become waiters and cooks and are basically taken off the street and given a job. They were excellent (put your water down and 1.4 seconds later it was refilled) and the food marvellous (water-lilly salad with chilli-beef). After that on to the Heart of Darkness, Cambodia's most [in]famous nightclub. There used to be quite a few shootings there in the 90s. Somehow got home just about sunrise riding on the back of a moped doing 60kmh through the empty streets of Phnom Penh.
My 2 day hangover from New Year has started to subside and was able to get out of bed today and see some stuff.
The happy tour I took involved S21 - The ex-school where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed anyone they wanted and The Killing Fields - Where the bodies of the detained were thrown into mass graves. With Nazi like precision, the Khmer Rouge catalogued everybody they detained, the tortures they were subjected to and the date of their execution. Gruesome is not the word. Particularly shocking is a picture of a prison guard bashing a 6 month old baby against a tree. Another prime example of Man's inhumanity to man if you needed anymore proof.

Phnom penh is otherwise a bit wild westish, dirt streets, guards with AK47s slung across their shoulders etc., but set in the middle of gorgeous french colonial villas.

Off to the 8th wonder of the world tomorrow - Angkor