Around Phnom Penh

It's been a busy few days.

We've been to the Cooperation Committee Cambodia to do some research on local NGO's. Following this we've had a meeting with RainWater Cambodia (whose office is in a very very difficult to find place: at the back of some far away market) and with PATH, who support the private sector to run development projects. These have been eye-openers and we're learning a lot. Any simple ideas we had in our head of how international development works are being blown away.
Tomorrow we've got a meeting with the head of biosand in Asia for Samaritan's Purse, a massive NGO.

We've also been eating in nice and varied restaurants, something not available to us in Poipet. These two were very happy:

And we've been swimming...

Today we've had no meetings so went to visit the killing fields and S-21, a prison under the Khmer Rouge. The killing fields were weird: nature has taken back the site and there are now animals and birds all around. Something had even dug a burrow in a mass grave. There were still some fragments of bone and clothing on the ground.

S-21 was hard to walk round. All the evidence of the torture that went on there has been kept. Thousands of people went from there to the killing fields in the four years of the Khmer Rouge regime. Only 7 people survived it. There were photos of every person who had been taken there, none of them for any good reason. Even those within the Khmer Rouge were taken there if their loyalty was suspected. When the Khmer Rouge marched in to Phnom Penh the people celebrated, little did they realise it would end like this.

On a lighter note, we were taken aback to see an elephant walking through the busy streets this evening.

Angus