Lest We Forget -
Part 1 - I am sitting in a cafe waiting for Kat to finish her tour of the Toul Sleng Prison Museum. For several reasons I have gone around quicker (including the fact I have visited it before). I am pleased that they have changed very little. The main change however is for the better, they have put in a classroom area where 3 times a week they give lectures about the atrocities. This, I think, is a good thing as I don't think it is the remembering that is important but the learning from the past.

Kat's Comment
I don't quite know what to say about today. It isn't really an experience that can be expressed correctly in words. Just if you come here definitely visit! You are presented with a very complex view of the situation here in the late 1970s. Yes, the horror is heavily emphasised but not with a grisly or sensationalist voice and not in a way that demonises anyone. The guards and even the prison director are allowed to be human beings. Sometimes cruel, sometimes weak, but always still identifiable as someone you could meet everyday. Someone you could become if placed into a similar regime. That is probably part of what makes it so difficult to go round. There are no villains here (with the possible exception of Pol Pot and 4 of the main party leaders) and in a country that is still trying to heal that is an incredibly strong message!