WARNING- some of this might be quite upsetting to read, about the genocide and murdering of cambodian people under the khumer rouge. I know its not nice to write about but they are things I've seen and leant and i hope everyone can learn from this sad history.
We had 3 nights in Phnom Penh. Unfortunately for us it was their new year celebrations so the place was like a ghost town, everyone leaves the city to go to their families in the country for holidays. It was quite strange being in such a big city with hardly anyone around and not a lot open! On our first day we wasted a fair bit of time wandering around looking for places to eat and going to the palace, which wasn't open. We did manage though to get to the genocide museum, also known as S21. Wow. What a sad, horrible, disgusting, unbelievable place. The building was once a school, however in the 70's when pol pot's khumer rouge regime came into power (1975) they took it over and turned it into a prison an place to interrogate people. Over 20,000 people went in and there were only 7 survivors. It's so surprising we were so ignorant to the genocide that occurred in the 70's in Cambodia, for something not all that long ago I don't remember learning anything about it at school and not many people know the details. Basically some crazy psychopath called pol pot got into power and decided it would be a fantastic idea to create a communist country full of working class only (farmers only). He thought it would be fabulous to just kill off anyone that was intelligent, had been to university (funny though that he had!), lived in the city, was an artist, spoke another language or was a foreigner (amongst other things). So he did. Millions of Cambodians were killed, for no reason at all other than a psychopath running the show. The equivalent of one in 4 people died, just unbelievable. It included children as well as men and women. Whole families were wiped out, and others were torn to pieces with many now days still missing family members with no idea if they are even still alive somewhere. You can see the massive generation gap- there are just no old people anywhere! It just is so hard to imagine how this happened and what these poor innocent people went through.
Anyway back to the museum, there are thousands of photos of the victims, the perpetrators were quite anal about keeping records so every poor person who went through was photographed and had their 'confession' taken. Many of the people taken were innocent and were tortured so badly (I'm not even going onto detail on how) they made up confessions about stealing rice or speaking with the enemy just to get them to stop. There was even a photograph and confession of a guy from Perth from mt lawley, he also was killed with the rest of them. Some were put in solitary cells for months with hardly any food and no sunlight. Others were kept with over 30 others in a room, they were treated worse than animals. Many died chained to their bed frame. All the others were taken to the killing field and killed. It wasn't an enjoyable museum but it was a very important place to visit.
That afternoon we bumped into some other Aussies that stayed on the initial bus over the border. There experience wasn't quite as bad as ours but did take over an hour longer due to a detour dropping ppl off at a different town. Anyway, we wandered around to the markets, but also not open because of the new year. We ended up walking to wat phnom, a big hill with a Buddhist wat on top. There were huge celebrations there for the new year, seemed to be where anyone still left in Phnom Penh was! We enjoyed sitting on the hill and watching the festivities below. Big groups of people played with piñatas made out of clay that had flour go everywhere when it smashes. People also played a musical statue kind of game in a circle where they danced around to their own singing. Everyone was having a great time, was great fun people watching! That night we ate by the river, was ok but nothing too exciting.
The next day we got up early and went to the killing field (choeung ek memorial). We took a tuk tuk out there, met a driver the night before who agreed to be our driver the whole next day for $20. We went early in the morning so we weren't there in the heat of the day. Turned out there was a big memorial event there when we got there with lots of people praying and lots of monks, however we still got to walk through and use the great audio guide. Choeung ek memorial is one of dozens of 'killing fields' throughout Cambodia. At this site the Khmer Rouge dumped over 20,000 bodies of innocent people. The people were trucked here from town (alive) and killed one by one and shoved into a mass grave. They used palm tree leaves, sticks and hoes to kill people, they didn't want to waste bullets. The atrocities are just indescribable, up to 400 people were found in one grave on the site. Another grave next to a big tree called the killing tree had only children and babies, they were killed by being slammed against the tree. It is just horrific listening and reading about the history that occurred here and I'm sure it's hard for anyone to read on here too. I guess by visiting and learning about these places there is hope that this sick events will not happen again.
The actual site of the killing fields is a nice quiet, pretty area with lots of trees and a lake. You get an audio guide with your entry fee, it really is fantastic. As you walk around there are literally bones, teeth and material from clothing coming out of the earth on the path you walk on. It is so hard to believe that we were walking on human bones. Most of the graves have been excavated and the bones have been put into the big memorial stupa, however overtime more an more remains come up through the earth. They collect them up every month or so and add them to the stupa. The cover photo for this is from the skulls inside the stupa. There is something like 11,000 of them. It was not enjoyable at all visiting the killing fields but I strongly urge people to do so to acknowledge this history and prevent it ever happening again.
For the rest of the day we went to the markets (not much open unfortunately) palace and silver pagoda, the silver pagoda has a floor made out of tiles made from silver. Pretty impressive but seems like a bit of a waste of time money and resources to me!!! The palace was also quite nice, lots of traditional buildings. After that we walked back to our hotel, Chris got a hair cut on the way, only $3 and really good! They hairdresser took about 40 minutes and used about 5 different scissors a clippers!
Overall we enjoyed Phnom Penh but don't really feel we got to see it in its real form!