Happy Birthday to Me!

So in true Southampton Uni style we decided to get cracking on the Vodka, Lemonade and Limes nice and early...we commended ourselves with using the local produce (limes) in favour of lime cordial. So drinks sorted it was time for a spot of Blow the Cards off the Glass followed by our own genius new invention two-handed This is the Witch!

Unable to finish our sizeable beverages we arrived in style on a couple of Motos, beverages in hand! Cleverly I had my passport with me which netted me a dirty coctail and a birthday cake slither from the barmaid whose birthday it actually was as it was still 25th September. I don't remember quite what it tasted of but I'm assured by Martin that it heavily weighted in the top-shelf department!

Being low season it was on the quite side, but not to worry though we found Jenga and a couple of Aussie girls to challenge to it. By this point I was on a pure losing streek - managing to cause something like 16 out of the 18 falls of the Jenga tower due to my decidedly swaying motion both when trying to play and when crashing into the table after returning from a visit to the little boys room!! A good night all in all though even if I didn't fancy clubbing at Sharkies due to my new-found ability to fall asleep on my feet!

Something loud must have happened that night when we got back (I reckon drunken guitar singing) because the next morning at breakfast we got some knowing looks from the family who run it as they politely enquired whether we'd had a good night! Oops...

Anyway we got chatting to Jack the hostel Tuk Tuk driver who was trying to get us to go to the Killing Fields. We'd decided we weren't going to bother as we'd seen and read so much about them already and it basically just sounded like a bunch of exhumed graves. But then Jack mentioned the real reason he wanted to take us there - there was a shooting range with machine guns, antiaircraft guns and if you really have the inclination and the cash you can blow up a cow with a rocket launcher!

So after heading down to this place full of locals with weapons and us with all our valuables on us we contemplated the "menu" (unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos of this) and decided on an AK47 and an M16! Th raw power of the AK47 was phenominal. For the first few shots it was scary enough just being behind the thing...probably not helped by the complete lack of eye protection whilst white-hot bullet cases flew out of the gun just infront of you! Not to worry though - they were heading upwards and backwards towards Martin!!

And then we set it to automatic...there is no purpose for this other than ripping through huge quantities of flesh and just generally mutilating whatever is in your way. I'll be giving guards with machine guns and even wider berth in future!

The M16 seemed a little tame after the Russian monster, though by tame I mean slightly less noise and a little less kick but still completely terrifying! Got our target back at the end and we were glad to see Martin and I obliterated it and made plenty of headshots too. It was funny to see the local kids actually give us quite a wary look when we showed them our target so we must have done pretty well! One thing I'd say for sure is that the Americans must be mad - there's no way I'd compaign to get these legalized in the UK!

We then headed to the Killing Fields, which were as expected a lot of exhumed graves in a field and a memorial with the skulls from the graves in it. Slightly macabre and a bit controversial considering how recent (1978) it all is. The graves were surprisingly shallow for the number of corpses they contained. As you were walking around it seemed like the wear and tear of visitors might have started to bore down into unmarked graves as you'd see tell-tale signs of clothing partially buried in the earth. It was certainly interesting, but lacking in information compared to the Genocide Museum and certainly not the tourist hotspot they were trying to make it out to be!



To continue my birthday celebrations we headed to the backpacker area of Phnom Penh around the lake where we found a nice restaurant/bar over the water and played a bit of pool with some randoms (Tom a plumber from Kent and later two Israeli guys). Then it was decided another full body massage was in order where we got chatting to two guys just about to go and work for the WWF in the jungle for a year on only $100 a month! We're budgeting about GBP600 a month!

As we were leaving Cambodia the next day we decided to try the legendary (Cambodian?) traveller's dish of "Happy Pizza", well actually we had large pizzas with extra happy! Surprisingly it seemed to have no immediate effect.

Couldn't find anywhere with webcams to chat to my parents and Laurie so we hit the waterfront, managing only to find an internet cafe which was so slow and frustrating that we'd only normally get sound in one direction so we should have probably just stuck with msn. Grrrr. At that point good old Mr Happy kicked in with a bang and sent us both packing straight home to bed! Fortunately not on the back of Motos as Martin suggested but in the back of a Tuk Tuk!