There really isn’t terribly much to say about today; five hours of it was spent on a hot and airless boat, travelling into Cambodia. I was still with Isabella and Matthias, and we snoozed and chatted and read. The visa process was lengthy, and involved an hour at the border crossing, during which it became clear that the heat was causing many people to lose their shit. Still, here I am with the border guard, who Isabella charmed into posing with us…

We arrived in Phnom Penh just a shade too late for me to catch the hop-on hop-off tour Id booked to the Genocide Museum and Killing Fields. Isabella generously offered to let me drop my bags in their hotel room so I could take myself off in a tuk-tuk. So I asked if they’d like to come with me. They’re Jemima’s age, and so have no memory of the Khmer Rouge, and so on the way to the hotel I gave them the potted history I’d gathered from First They Killed My Father and my own sketchy memories of the time.

And so it is that, half an hour after landing in Phnom Penh, we were puttering our way through crowded and dirty streets together.

Let’s deal with the city first, because I want to let the images of the Killing Fields speak for themselves.

This is a city of extraordinary contrasts. We’ve all commented on the number of street sleepers here – far higher (or far more obvious) than in either Hanoi or HCMC. This evening we have watched a man pulling a handcart seemingly containing all his worldly goods – including three very small children – with his wife walking behind, providing the steering and brakes. They were rounding a corner wide, to avoid scratching the very large, very shiny, very new Lexus off-road vehicle parked there. We’ve passed what look like swanky gated communities, complete with tennis courts, outside whose walls people sleep on the back of trucks in hammocks slung from the crane.

The tuk-tuk took us through some fairly pungent slum areas. Just outside the killing fields itself is a huge field, littered with smashed porcelain pedestal toilets…

The Killing Fields audio tour explained that this is one of 2,000 known killing fields, and that during Pol Pot’s regime many more people were killed in “unofficial” locations. Overall, millions of people died between April 1975 and 1979. This particular site has so far yielded 20,000+ victims – women and children of all ages among them. They were not shot – the Khmer Rouge could not afford bullets – but were mostly murdered by blunt force, being hit with hoes or iron bars or bamboo – whatever the execution squad had to hand.

Victims were buried in mass graves, which contained anything from 6 to several hundred bodies. It’s believed that not all victims were dead when they were buried.

Bones and fragments of clothing are still working their way out of the ground. Every time it rains, and another layer of soil is washed away, fresh fragments are revealed. As the audio guide said, it’s as if the bodies buried here cannot rest in peace.

Everywhere you look. Every dip in the earth, even under the lake. There are bodies everywhere. You think you’re prepared by what you’ve read and the images you’ve seen over the years; you think you know.

You’re not prepared. How can you be prepared to see evidence of this level of cruelty, and listen to survivor testimonies…?