Mango Cambodia Boutique Bed and Breakfast Phnom Penh

... to the countryside, where they were combined with the local population and subjected to forced labour. Those with an education or ability to speak a second language were tortured starved in waves of murder in order to enforce the ideology of agrarian reform by wiping out all the skilled or intellectual population. One of the prisons they used to carry out these atrocities was named S21.

Before the Khmer Rouge, the S21 building was a secondary school, but ...

... those tortured and killed were from the former political regime, academics or professionals of any type (basically anybody perceived to be capable of independent thought or open to foreign influences). Right until the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 this site was being used. Comrade Duch at the very end elected to spend his very last moments in charge here ensuring that every prisoner was killed rather than destroying the records held on site of all the atrocities.

Due to the ...

... that should never be forgotten.

Now the weather seemed to reflect the somber atmosphere lingering over S21 and the heavens opened with continuous rain filling the streets of Phnom Penh. We were so glad to be in the tuk-tuk...dry! Our relieve didn't last long though as because of the boat festival many high authorities arrived in the city meaning that roads were blocked off and we were going to have to walk home! The rain was ridiculously, we ran through ...

... not quite, they unashamedly parade around town with their metered companions hanging off their every word.

Today, it's a city tour by tuk tuk. For those who don't know that this is, it's a trailer attached to a motorcycle. It's like a golf cart hitched to a motorbike. The trailer seats 4, has a roof and plastic panels that come down in case of rain. Most are in pretty bad shape but we found a sparkling new one with an English-speaking driver. For $15 for ...

... read. A holocaust in our lifetime. One of so many that we hear little about but they happen all over the world, at different times, and in relative silence.

We pass a large tree. The Killing Tree. This is where they took the children, and holding them by their legs, they struck their heads against it. We are silenced and just stand there, all of us strangers, but feeling the strength of the emotions and unable to speak. We meet each others gaze in ...

... Mr Samith amongst the missing) sadly made a greater impression, and left us feeling sorry for ourselves and unappreciated, feeling resentment for the time and money we had donated. It was, however, for the kids that we had made the donation, and those other issues are easily swept aside.

Check out their website to see what they're about: www.savechildreninasia.org
They are in the process of setting up an online donation facility - at the moment it would cost you too much in ...

... br>No styles, except pajamas.
No wine. No palm sap hooch.
No lighters. No cigarettes.
No morning coffee. No afternoon tea.
No snacks. No desserts.
No breakfast [sometimes no dinner].

No mercy. No forgiveness.
No regret. No remorse.
No second chances. No excuses.
No complaints. No grievances.
No help. No favors.
No eyeglasses. No dental treatment.
No vaccines. No medicines.
No hospitals. No doctors.
No disabilities ...

... had been suggested to us that we see the museum first before going to the fields but I wasn't sure I would be able to handle the museum so we saw the fields first. It still blows my mind that so many atrocities were going on in this country and no one else in the world seemed to know about it.

When you first arrive you see a very tall memorial building with thousands of skulls that are just a fraction of what was excavated from the mass grave sites nearby. I'm not ...

Ok so blog entries have been few and far between recently, mostly because we've not been doing anything really worth blogging about. Our third stay in Phnom Penh before we head northeast to Laos lasted 11 days and included the 2 main sights we had saved for this last visit - The Royal Palace and The Killing Fields. We also needed 6 working day to get both our Laos and Thai visas sorted. We can't get a visa at the Laos border we ...

... Prison 21) as it was known. This was once a school near the centre of Phnom Penh but was taken over by the KR and turned into a prison and torture centre. We had been warned that this place was both grisly and heart-rending; an understatement. S21 was the largest detention centre in Cambodia and, by the time it was liberated by the Vietnamese in 1979, most of the 17,000 people to be executed at Choeung Ek had passed through here. Many more people were tortured to ...