There are only a handful of buildings in the city which you would consider sizeable, but mostly, very basic shops in the centre of town, and when you head to the outskirts the streets are lined with small shanty houses, makeshift shops and empty plots of land. Only a few kilometres from the centre of the city, there are vast rice fields, and swamp lands.
The people here are incredibly friendly, all looking to help, also theyre all really good at English in comparison to the Thai’s because they all learn it through school. Most children here do go to school, as opposed to perhaps, 20-30 years ago when most of the children would have worked with their families from a very young age.
Last night was spent in the bar downstairs from where we are staying, watching the F1 Gran Prix, had beers ($1.50) and some delicious scotch ($3.00), met some people, got pretty merry and wandered up to bed.
We hired a driver for the day to take us to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the city and to Choeung Ek, which is the name of the Killing fields, located around 15kms out of the city.
First stop was Tuol Sleng, which in the early 70’s was a High School, which was then transformed into a prison and interrogation centre for the inhabitants of Phnom Penh. The walls are still covered in barb wire and spikes, the front of a few of the buildings were still also covered in wire, the gallows were still set up which they used to hang some of the prisoners as an interrogation or torture technique.
Our tour guide took us through the cells, which were crudely constructed from bricks and were maybe a 1m x 2m in size. She shared with us that it was not uncommon for a woman and all her children would have to share this space.
There was room after room of paintings, sculptors and shines which were very impressive, but the most incredible sight was the thousand and thousands of photos of those who had been imprisoned there. Each had a mug shot taken which was now on display.
On the second floor of one of the buildings there was a floor of cells, which unlike the rest, were made from wood, all of the windows were boarded up, it was very eerie, I was in there by myself and it was a very powerful experience.
There was a man selling books inside the prison yard, I learned that this man was one of the last survivors of the Prison, it is said that of the 17,000 people who were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, only seven lived. To this day, there are only a few still alive.
We jumped back in the Tuk Tuk, and travelled to Choeung Ek or the Khmer Rogue Killing Fields. Records say that over 20,000 people were slaughtered here, and buried in mass graves.
Most of the graves have been unearthed, and forensic investigation has been done to identify, count and determine the causes of death of the bodies found there.
Once liberated, forces set out to excavate the fields, all of the skulls were all collected together and put into a large stupa, which towers up in the middle of the field. It was very surreal seeing 9000 skulls on display in a tower.
It was incredibly moving to think that these were all innocent men, women and children, all of whom had their lives cruelly taken from them by Pol Pot and his communist rule.
As we were walking, you could see bones, teeth and large pieces of clothing which was being washed out of the ground after the past few showers. That was difficult to see.
The whole experience was very difficult to get your head around, definitely happy that I got to go and see it, although happy isn’t the best word to use. It was very moving, and very sad, but if you were to take a positive out of it, it would be the fact the Cambodians, after being through something which was so traumatic on such a monstrous scale have been able to move on, learn from it themselves and also be able to teach the rest of the world about the atrocities that took place there.
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