Phonm Penh

The flies are as persistent as the beggars. Despite having woken up early (8:40 is early to me) to the electricity not working and then, when it comes on being baffled by the complexities of the AC controls - apparently ON/OFF doesn't mean the same thing here - I still have not managed to see half of what I wanted today. Making my way to the Grand Palace I'm accosted by hordes of tuk-tuk, cyclo and moto drivers all wanting to take me to the Killing Fields, wats or markets. Missing the Grand Palace (it shuts at 11am for lunch) I give in to the whines and pleas of two street children and buy them some fried rice. Unlike the kids in Phonsaven, they do not fall upon it hungrily and a part of me feels frustrated: are they not really hungry? I don't understand a word they say as they chatter away in Khmer and my attempts to learn their names and ages are thwarted by a massive communication barrier. I think one says she's 10 but the other says the same and they're obviously not the same age. Then I realise they're just copying the number of fingers I am holding up. I want to take a photo of them: the sweet younger one with big round eyes and a smiley face, and the scrawny, dirty-clothed older one who has a look of hardness and distrust in her eyes except for when she sings a little song. However it seems wrong to take a photo of their squalid suffering.

They follow me from the cafe to the National Museum entrance, wanting me to buy them clothes, give them money. Their clamouring is added to by a dirt-encrusted homeless family - babies wailing in young childrens' arms - physically handicapped men selling books and a gaggle of moto and cyclo drivers wanting to take me to - you guessed it - the Killing Fields. The museum is sweltering and contains a vast collection of whole and dismembered Buddha images in addition to those of other gods, amazing carvings and scriptures carved into stone. At one moment I am struck by a dismembered Buddha hand, palm up: so much like the beggars outside with their hands out seeking money. It's not their fault that their country was raveaged by horrendous civil war and is still in the excruciatingly laborious process of rebuilding itself. But do a few riel from me really help the situation?

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This question repeats itself and is on other travelers' lips. Last night I met Wendy and her partner, two older people on the road for a year. Their answer is to volunteer their time rather than give money - helping out at an orphanage in Sri Lanka, feeding giant pandas in China and, in a few months, working with orangutans in Malaysia. Yesterday a moto driver did offer to take me to an orphanage to play with the children and read to them...but it seemed strange and wrong to pick up any old tourist off the street and take them to see some vulnerable children. Furthermore, being alone and having never heard of the place combined with not knowing the driver, it was easier to say "maybe next time".

I pay $6.25 to enter the Royal Palace complex. It is huge, and a large part is not open to the public as the royal family (once disposed, not back on the throne) still reside there. The buildings look similar to wats and are shining examples to the wealth and splendour of the kingdom's rulers. Opulent throne rooms, highly decorative howdah's (seats for riding elephants) and elaborate painted walls, gold statues...oddly enough the exterior of the buildings look sad and have a haunted quality as they sit in gravel compunds by a busy city road. Next stop - the Silver Pagoda. So called because the floor is made of silver tiles (now mainly covered by carpets), this building houses hosts of small Buddha statues, some old royal family jewellery and an emerald Buddha, sitting above it all like a little alien. The light makes it appear as though this figure is glowing from within...or maybe I'm just in serious need of food!

With so many terrible stories, Cambodia is jam-packed with NGOs and other organizations trying to ameliorate daily life for many Cambodians. I have a delicious tapas-style lunch at Friends, where street children are trained to work in the hospitality industry. The food is excellent - as is the service - and I'm happy to discover that Friends is part of a larger umbrella organisation helpign children return to their families, deal with HIV, get better education etc.

After such a delicious meal it seems wrong to go to S-21, but that is my next destination. As if eating something disgusting beforehand could posisbly make this experience more palpable. Why go? And what is S-21? The buildings used to be a high school, but after the Khmer Rouger "liberated" Phonm Penh in 1975 and threw everyone out of Cambodia's cities they turned the school into a horrendous prison. Tuol Sleng (as it was otherwise known) witnessed interrogations, torturings and killings on a large scale, with prisoners ranging from peasants, teachers, the educated and old government officials to members of the Khmer Rouge and old prison guards themselves. Children, women and men were all kept and killed here or met their end at the Killing Fields. Their crimes? Usually fabricated by the Khmer Rouge and "proven"by confessions written under torture.

The plain rooms that were once places of learning now housed iron beds...the desolation, the sheer inhuman feeling of the place is at odds with the sun shining outside and fragipani trees dropping their flowers over the 14 white graves of the people whoe bodies the invading Vietnamese forces found here in 1979. Every bed had attached to it an iron chain and a metal box...photos on some walls in Building A, where 'higher up'officials etc. were imprisoned, show bloated, beaten bodies. Tourists walk through the rooms, stunned, unable to look each other in the eye. Prisoner headshots from the regime's archival process attack the senses in Building B...so many people, so much senseless suffering. Some images make me retch. The next building along is covered in barbed wire (to stop prisoner from jumping to suicidal freedom) and each room has been "converted" into 11-15 miniscule brick or wood divided cells. Some still have chains and bowls in. Others have ominous dark stains on the tiles.

The disparities between my life and these peoples is hammered home so often. This foul prison, the harsh regimes that had ideals to equalize a nation yet just succeeded in auto-genocide - of people and culture - is still affecting families today. Everyone I speak to has lost at least one family member to Pol Pot's insane rule. This is why I go to S-21, even if it is a gruesome place and other tourists' photographing beds where people died and photos of torture make me wonder why are we inexorably drawn to such suffering? Sometimes the seemingly endless rows of prisoners faces were overwhelming and I'd be relieved to see a photo of a dead body instead. I just hope that the exhortations of the pamphlet will be true: that by cataloguing these atrocities and turning the old prison into a museum will stop anything similar happening again.