Phnom Penh

This was not our favorite city but was still quite nice in places such as the riverside, several temples and a constant stream of orange clothed monks strolling about. Away from the touristic places the city was quite rough and very poor. The streets were covered in food stalls, but for the first time we were a little more cautious about buying any.

We visited a silver Pagoda with its friendly monkeys (one of which was heavily pregnant), and another temple which apparently had an eyebrow hair of the actual Buddha inside!

After a little bargaining, we hired a tuk-tuk driver to take us around for the day. We started off at S-21 prison Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The S-21 used to be a high school, but during Pol Pot's dictatorship, it was turned into Security Office 21 and was used for detention, interrogation, torture, and killing after confessions were received. Classrooms turned into tiny cells and the outside of the building covered in dense barbed wire to keep the desperate victims from trying to commit suicide by jumping off the building.

It was a very moving, walking around the prison, as hardly anything had been touched since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. In some of the tiny wooden sells, there was still blood stained on the floor where the prisoners feet were shackeled.

One room was filled with mugshots of a small selection of people imprisoned here for some of the most absurd things, if you were smart, had glasses, spoke a foreign language, knew foreign people, were a doctor or lawyer or teacher etc, or even spoke when you weren't supposed to, you were brought to S-21 suspected of being able to have the resources to overthrow the Khmer Rouge.

Most of the people here were sent on trucks to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields. Over two million Cambodians died and most of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge have gotten away with no consequences, which really angered us just thinking about it.

Our tuk-tuk driver came and picked us up and took us to our next destination, Choeung Ek Killing Fields. Here "prisoners" were taken to be brutally murdered during the genocide. We walked past tons of excavation pits where thousands of people have been unearthed from the mass graves. During rainy season, clothes, bones, teeth and other items still become unearthed in the mass graves. We could see bits of clothing and shoes embedded in the mud.

A giant monument greets you at the front entrance containing thousands of skulls of the people found in these graves. Clothes of the victims found in the pits have been cleaned and deodorized and put on the bottom level of the tower. You read the signs of where the people came in off trucks and were taken to be murdered. A pit reserved for woman and children, most women raped first, killed and discarded. Beside this pit is a tree that was used for smashing the babies on. A tree for hanging a loud speaker to drown out the screams of the victims so that the other prisoners wouldn't know what was coming as they were being led blindfolded in ankle shackles out to the pits was next on display.

The Khmer Rouge used mostly blunt force trauma, bludgeoning their victims with blows to the back of their head and then cutting their throats before throwing them in the pits. They threw dioxin on the bodies afterwards to keep away the smell and to kill any people that may be still alive. It was a gruesome and creepy place to be.

After consuming as much information as we could, we decided to call it a day. Our tuk-tuk took us back to hostel where we had another Cambodian massive pancake filled with all sorts of yummy stuff (cant remember the name of specialty right now).