Canadians to Cambodia
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
9
27
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Woke up the next morning and went for a run right along the river
Sad to leave Vietnam!
. Not quite the same as running around Nanaimo, especially when you are running by amazing palaces and shanty towns all in the same run. Our tuk tuk drivers from the night before took us sight seeing. We headed to the National Museum first which houses hundreds of Angkor sculptures. Pretty cool stuff. We then were taken to the Tuol Sleng Museum also known as Security Prison 21 (S-21). It was originally a high school until Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime took it over and housed thousands of political prisoners there to torture them and eventually sent them to the Killing Fields to be executed. At the height of their power (around 1977), the Khmer Rouge were executing 100 people a day. If any of you know about the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, then you can imagine how eerie and upsetting this prison was. It was pretty much left just as it was when Pol Pot fell. Blood stains, chains, torture devices, all there still. There is one floor devoted to just pictures of the people held at the prison (women, children, sick, old). Quite a depressing place, but absolutely essential for every Cambodian tourist to see. As in the museum in Saigon, this one shows just what these people have gone through, but even more recently. Killings were still taken place in the 90's, and many head members of the Khmer Rouge are still walking free today, amoung the people they tormented. After walking through the buildings, our tuk tuk guys took us to an authentic Khmer restaurant . Food was amazing, lots of curry, yum
Royal Palace
! From there we went to the huge market, which we took shelter in once the rains started. As they didn't let up, we decided to head back to the hotel, only after waiting for an elephant to cross our intersection. That evening the UK contingent arrived from Saigon. After regrouping, we decided to celebrate being together again (it had been 2 days!!), so we went for another awesome dinner and headed to a club, Heart of Darkness. Seemed to be a local club, as there was a definite shortage of any backpacker types. But the locals were fantastic and we had a blast as per usual.I took the next day off.....watched TV.... have you seen that polygraph show where they make people tell horrible secrets in front of loved ones... so bad, but so good. Also some Americas Got Talents, and some show on bees.
Awoke the next day and headed to the Killing Fields. This is where most of the prisoners were executed. There are about 129 mass graves where approx 17,000 people were murdered. The main focus of the Killing Fields is the huge glass enclosed tower of skulls, most of which have obviously suffered blunt trauma to the head. This was to save using bullets. Its quite the place. Very strange to walk around, as there are beautiful shady trees, lots of butterflies, and children's voices from the adjacent school
Prison
. Hard to picture thousands of people being killed. After the Killing Fields we went back to the hotel, packed up and hoped on our private mini bus to Siem Reap. More from the temples of Angkor and this great little town of Siem Reap in a few days.....So far Cambodia is quite the place. Very different from Vietnam. A lot more poverty, begging, and lots of street children. The disparity between rich and poor is very apparent here as there are tons of Mercedes, BMW's, hummers, and even Lamborghini's. At the same time the people are very friendly, the food is great, architecture is beautiful, and the culture itself is very unique.
