Phnom Penh

Each country has a very unique culture, vibe and history. It is naive to class counties as Asian or European. This is not felt more than from the ultra laid back vibe in Laos to the hectic chaos that is phnom penh. Both show the french colonialism that you see in Vietnam and all have the brutal scars of war. The people may even look the same but they are so different. As their t shirts suggest 'same same, but different' that is Asia.
PP has had a tragic history of invasions. At the start of the Khmer Rouge devastating rule they forced a complete evacuation of the 2m citizens in just 3 days. Pol Pot may not provoke the same memories in the west that Hitler or Stalin does but he is just as evil. Forcing a Chinese style agrarian communism on the country and inflicting child labor and mass executions on a scale larger than Auschwitz.
The s21 prison (a former high school) is smack in the middle of the city and perhaps the most disturbing thing is the surrounding areas are still so undeveloped. Poverty is still a serious issue in Cambodia and children begging is something I've consistently had to deal with. The killing fields where the skulls of thousands that were executed are shown is eerie. It's not to the scale of Auschwitz but this because nobody lived here. People were hauled of trucks and killed on the spot. Every time I see things like this it brings me back to Stalin quote that we will say we've learned but we will continue to make the same mistakes.
I watched CNN this morning whilst eating breakfast and learned that Obama had been to the barbers, his daughters wore designer dresses and his mother in law from Chicago may move into the white house., The impeding civil war, famine and possible genocide in DR Congo made a brief caption on the subtitles under other news. Stalin couldn't of said it better.