I woke quite early this morning to hear a monkey faffing around on the balcony!! How bizarre! We set off with our Tuk Tuk driver to Choeung Ek, the killing fields from the Pol Pot days. It was out of the city so a long drive! We went through the slums and saw poverty first hand. When we arrived, there were lots of children begging and who were obviously very poor. We went in and looked around the museum part which details all about the Khmer Rouge regime. We also watched a short video about it too. With all the basic knowledge of what happened we went to see the evidence of the atrocities. All the mass graves containing 8985 of Pol Pots victims still remain but have been filled in. However, in some of them you could see bones and clothing. 86 mass graves have been exhumed and the bones, skulls and clothing have been preserved in the memorial stupa which you can go in. 43 graves have been left untouched. It was interesting to see and to learn about what happened in those three years. Pol Pot himself only died in 1998, I didn't realise that it would be that recent. The effects of the regime is still felt by today's generation. When we asked our tuk tuk driver about it, he had strong feelings against it.
From there we went to the S-21 museum where a school was transformed into a prison and interrogation centre. It was here that prisoners under the Khmer regime were housed and tortured before being taken to the extermination camps like what we visited early in the day. The conditions that they lived in were awful and many of the shackles that secured the prisoners still remained, along with other pieces.
We enjoyed learning about the regime and the effect it had on Cambodia, even if it was pretty gruesome!
As it was unbearably hot we decided to head back to the hostel. On the way we passed a van whose wheel had fallen off, literally, and it was rolling down the road in front of him!! Scary! We checked the weather forecast at about 7pm and it was 33c still! Far too warm!
We chillaxed in our room watching tv for a bit before having lunch and then heading out for a mooch in the local area. It was very busy everywhere and you always get hassled by the tuk tuk drivers! We walked along the riverfront, mooching at the area! After a while we were fed up! We're not too keen on Cambodia and aren't feeling great at the mo anyway! We went back to the hostel where it was cooler and on our way we passed an elephant walking down the road during the rush hour! Very amusing!
Tomorrow we leave Phnom Penh to go north to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat.