Vang Vieng (for the 2nd time) then into Cambodia

So without any further incidents, I arrived back in Vang Vieng to cover the shots I'd done first time around, however, this time in the hope that there may be some daylight to work with. I was lucky, we had one day, so grabbed a tube and hopped in. Needless to say, it was a complete torment, having to go through the process of floating down the river, randomly drinking cold beers and jumping into the water every now and again. I know, I know, you're thinking to yourself, "when does Mark ever stop working and just find the time to relax". To be quite honest with you, I don't know either!
So it was back on the bus, and this time it had a glowing green underbelly and flashing lights at the back. Not quite sure about the purpose of this, maybe it's to keep the drivers awake , when driving in a convoy at night? Maybe it's because the owner of the bus company has got a brother who works at Halfords, who knows? But back on the bus it was, and this time my travelling companion was a Cambodian man called Bro. At least I thought he said Bro, so Bro it was. I just liked the sound of it, eh Bro?
I was hoping that travelling with a local would benefit me when it came to border crossings, communication and not getting taken to the cleaners by every dodgy taxi and tuk tuk driver in our path. Not quite, but it did make life a bit easier, and I was glad to see that even he paid the extra two dollars that I had to on transport to Phnom Penh. The highlight of the journey was encountering the legendary Cambodian roads, or should I say 'lack of'. Almost immediatly before we crossed from Laos into Cambodia, the road just ran out. Not a jot of tarmac, just miles and miles of red dirt track, with really big potholes in it.......and water in them. Which didn't suit our Toyota blah blah, or whatever it was. Despite all this, the local drivers came through trumps again and before we knew it, we were in Cambodia.
We went through a middle of nowhere town called Stung Treng, where a pharmacist that I was trying to buy antiseptic (for the stuntmans foot) insisted on dressing my wound with an unecessary amount of bandage. So at least I looked the part. On squeezed the flip flops, my 4th pair I hasten to add, and we were on our way to Phnom Penh.
We reached Phnom Penh at some time in the early hours, to be greeted by the all too familiar tuk tuk driver welcome, "hello friend, want something?"

Now "something"can be anything right? Which is pretty much what they are trying to sell, anything. Anything that'll make them a quick buck and they're off before you can say, "no thanks I'm British". This applies to tuk tuk drivers all over South East Asia, and they are more than happy to oblige, although most of the time they're just trying to sell drugs, girls and occassionally a ride on their tuk tuk.

So I found a guest house on the lakeside, walking through a sea of "want somethings?" No.9 for those who've stayed there.

I'm not going to explain, for those who don't already know, about how and why the genocide happened in Cambodia, but two of the main tourist attractions in Phnom Penh are the S21 museum and the Killing fields. The S21 museum is an old secondary school that was used during the reign of the Khymer rouge the imprison people and torture them and the Killing Fields is an area just outside the city, where they were all murdered and buried. The impact of seeing these is quite overwhelming, as they have been left in the same state that they were left in the day the Khymer rouge fled when the Vietnamese came over and put a stop to it. The stories are quite horrific, and not what I would like to repeat on this blog.

Having seen all this and realising that most of the people guilty of those crimes have not been brought to justice and the people of Cambodia have just tried to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives.

Aside from the tragedy and the ongoing suffering that many people still lead with Cambodia still being the most landmined country in the world, Phnom Penh is a great city that still suffers from abject poverty, yet they seem as able to pull out a smile as quickly as anyone I've met.

With the monsoon season already showing its teeth, my days were fairly limited to seeing much else, but there are clear signs that the gun violence is on the decline and tourism is on the up.

I was the treated to a quick flight and four days in Phuket with some old school friends, who made me drink my own body weight in Long Island iced teas (Seb and Gareth, thanks for the stagless stag weekend).

I returned to Cambodia a much poorer and broken man, and this is where I now find myself, although I have managed to muster up the energy to get to Siem Reap, home of the mighty Angkor Wat. I start the first photographic foray in the morning at 5am, so must bid you all (or should I both?), goodnight.