It's a Holiday In Cambodia

Today we were up early and ready to take on the world. Instead we got to see evidence of some of the most heinous shit that ever happened to any country in the world. We got a motorbike (yes the 2 of us with a driver) to take us to S21 which is now a museum, but it used to be a school which was commendeared by the Khmer Rouge and used as a prison and place of torture. The school building is covered in barbed wire and the rooms were sections off with bricks to make rows and rows of tiny little cells with nothing inside - not even toilets. Some rooms in the building now show thousands of photographs of every person taken in. The photographs are depressing as is the whole place. The Khmer Rouge kept meticulous records. Only 7 people survived, the rest were taken to be excecuted with metal bars and slit throats. There are prisons and killing fields all over Cambodia - the one in the capital is just the best known. Here's some brief history: The Khmer Rouge (funded in part by Mao Tse Tung) walked into Phomn Pehn in the early 70s and ordered everyone out of the city saying the US were going to bomb. They were told to bring nothing as they would return soon. They never did. Instead they marched day and night into the fields including people kicked out of hospitals. They were put to work tilling fields as the Rouge saw this as the way to a modern Cambodia. Many people died in the fields. People weren't allowed to talk to each other or do many things like sing. Distrust was common as people were made to confess (sounds familiar - Mao again) to being allied with the 'enemy' and tell on friends and family. The Khmer Rouge soldiers often were ordinary people who were told either kill or be killed so they did - often family or friends. First to be killed were the intellectuals. Behind all of this was Pol Pot who was never convicted and died years ago.

At least they saved the bones!

In 1997 Cambodia asked the world for help to raise the 43 million US dollars needed to put the heads of the Rouge to trial. Now it's been almost 30 years since around 2 million Cambodias were killed and the people responsible still haven't been convicted - many of them now heads of Cambodia. Cambodia finally has the money needed being able to raise only 1.5 million itself. The Vietnamese finally came to the rescue and what they found was atrocious. Rooms filled with 14 corpses of people who had been tortured - their bodies still tied up and rotting.

Isn't That Special

After S21 we rode out to the Killing Fields which is the area of pits which the excecuted bodies were buried in. Only some of them have been dug up. It seemed there were pits everywhere. There's a memorial built which houses hundreds of skulls with holes in them from the blunt object used to kill them.

Cambodia has such a sad history and the people are truly poor. There's amputees everywhere - the result of land mines placed there by many countries including it's own. There's children, dirty, scruffy and pathetic looking out begging. The children born today are the 1st ever to not see war and turmoil in it's long history of occupations and power struggles by surrounding countries.

Monks getting their daily Alms

That afternoon we walked to the massive Central Market and down to the Riverfront for sunset. The whole day we were covered in dirt and wiping it out of our eyes. Cambodia is really dusty!!!

We eventually found our way to the first place we wanted to go, but didn't make it - the backpacker area of the Lakefront. James (our English friend) was here too and we happily relaxed on the deck of his guesthouse overlooking the lake. We went for an all you can eat curry buffet for $2 US and met another English couple who were great and we saw a lot of after that.

The next day we watched some monks do their daily Alms where they go around and basically beg for food. It was quite late in the day for them to be doing this, but great for us to watch. Ben went to the US Embassy today to get more pages in his passport! We found ATMs that all dispensed US dollars which is great!!! We also moved to a guesthouse on the lake so we could relax instead of stay in the city where we had been.

POL POT

Scale

spiders and grasshoppers at the market

The faces of genocide

The Rules of the Prison

the spider tasted fried and spongy

To save bullets they used this tree!