A Sombre Outing..
Trip Start
May 02, 2006
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109
113
Trip End
Mar 02, 2007
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Well it was certainly nice to arrive in PP after 8 hours on a bus (quite short compared to some however).
How to explain PP. I guess there's not much to say really as comparatively to most places we've been it seems such a non event. There's an extreme between wealth and poverty that assaults you at every turn. The corruption in this country is rife and so visible it's sickening. The NGO's that have come in to assist in rebuilding pay massive grafts to corrupt officials who then display their wealth with the latest model BMW, Lexus, Hummers, Porsche etc. Why?
Then you turn the next corner and you're beset by street urchins selling anything and everything, land mine amputees begging beside your table while you eat every meal of the day
01 Victim's Clothes And Skulls..
. Seriously a country from initial impressions that seems to have lost it's soul somewhere along the line.Sad, yes. Any wonder, no. As most would know from the film or memories of Kampuchean refugees in the 1970's Cambodia suffered one of the worst atrocities against humanity in recent history. And it was with this in mind that we went to pay homage to the Killing Fields and the S21 Museum.
Rising amid 129 mass graves is a blinding white stupa that serves as a memorial to the approximately 17,000 men, women and children who were executed here by the Khmer Rouge. Behind the stupa's glass panels and rising upwards shelf by shelf are 8000 skulls found during excavations here in the early 80's. Sadly some of the skulls still bear witness to the fact that they were bludgeoned to death for the sake of saving 'precious' bullets. Quite sombre.
From the Killing Fields you make your way to the S21 Museum. In 1975 Pol Pot's security forces turned this former school into a security prison, the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Almost everyone held here was later executed at the Killing Fields. Detainees who died during torture were buried in mass graves inside the prison grounds. It's said that an average of 100 prisoners died every day. We also read a statistic that showed of 20,000 prisoners that passed through the prison, only 7 survived. To walk through this prison is a frightful experience and one as sad as Auschwitz.
So, we weren't enamoured by Phnom Penh but felt it was worth the visit.
Next Pod - Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), Cambodia.
Love,
Nath and Kat.
