Day 56 22nd jan
We leave the hotel and walk the sort distance to the tour company which we booked last night to take us from here to Siem Reap.
We are followed pretty much from the hotel door to their office door by the same Tuk Tuk driver that escorted us to and from the hotels restaurant which is located just up the road from the main hotel where we had breakfast earlier this morning. He understands every word we say apparat from "No Thank You, I'm not interested in getting in your Tuk Tuk" The Tuk Tuk drivers are either desperately poor or have 100% belief in there own ability at convincing people they want something they previously didn't.... Either way there VERY persistent !
We rescheduled our trip to Siem Reap and book are additional trip down to Sihanoukville... And as we walk back out the door ten minutes later we witness the same bloody Tuk Tuk driver jump so fast out of his Tuk Tuk you'd of thought there was an ejector seat fitted and before his feet have touched the ground he launches himself into his sales speech / attempt at tourist hypnosis for the fourth time today as we walk back to our hotel to return all the paperwork.
We are going to see the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields today, and this involves getting a Tuk Tuk.
I've already made up my mind that I would rather walk than get into Mr Pushy's Tuk Tuk and mercifully he has set his sights on others when we emerge from our hotel. After agreeing a price with another driver we jump in and we're off.....
The killing fields are a 45 minute ride away 15km outside Phnom Penh.. A Cambodian Tuk Tuk is very simular to a horse and cart only this is a moped and cart... The bike has a large coupling that sits on top of the rear seat and is welded to the bike frame, a large trailer with two seats and wooden body make up the passenger area.. Its a bumpy ride, and a slow one too.. The bike engine is small and the trailer is heavy but in the end, covered in dust and shaken to the bone we arrive at "Cheoung Ek" which is the site of the Khmer Rouge's largest "Killing Field"
Are driver is going to wait in the dust bowl of a carpark for us.... We enter the site and pay our fee.... We get given a map and audio set. The headset is worn pretty much the entire time and there's a specific route to follow with numbered boards at places of importance... You type the number into the handset and it gives you verbal information through your headphones....
The whole area is fenced in... There is a tall square monument with elaborate roof 100 meters inside the entrance gates but the audio guild takes you straight off to the right away from this monument.. There are only a couple of buildings within the whole site... There all modern. One is a museum and the others are the toilets... The site has always been fenced in, even in the Khmer Rouge days, but when the Khmer Rouge fell from power and the locals discovered the site they mashed everything up, taking most of the wood and tools from the buildings to help rebuild there own homes, so the site has lost allot of the original items from the "killing" time...
Truck loads of Cambodian people were brought here to be executed, all blindfolded, hand cuffed and tied together. At its peak around 300 people a day arrived... It lasted for around 4 years where an expected 3 million people were killed by there fellow country men all over Cambodia. They were killed because they were deemed a threat to the Khmer Rouge.... Anyone with intelligence was a threat, anyone who supported an alternative was a threat, anyone not doing exactly as instructed was a threat.... And they all died...
The Khemr Rouge purposely created a peasant revolution as a peasant farmer was not seen as a threat, and easily believed in the hope of a better life under the Khemr Rouge rule.
Cambodia was a poorer country then than it currently is... And bullets cost money, so the instruction was to kill people by other means.... This other means usually meant axes, spikes, knives, sticks, hammers, or random farming equipment.... anything that was to hand and didn't cost anything.....
Men and women were stored separately in "Dark Buildings" and within a day of arriving at the site they were killed... Some were forced to sign there own death warrant paperwork, but after years of tourture it may have been seen as a positive. Small children were taken by the feet and smashed against a specific tree before being thrown into a close by mass grave.... They were killed in front of there mother who was usually naked. After watching her child dye she was also killed and thrown into the same mass grave... With exception of the mother and child grave and one other, all the other graves were mixed... The "one other" was a grave for captured Khmer Rouge defectors... This grave held 177 headless bodies within it.... The heads have not been found....
Some of the graves have been excavated and it's from this that the details about death method, clothing type, and restraint type have been learnt, along with survivor accounts.... other graves within the site have been left... Some are now located under water, some are in the surrounding area...

The "Killing fields area" houses some large ponds that are almost completely covered In lotus flower, trees grow everywhere, The ponds are there as a result of a large area of raised ground that the prisoners built to keep water out, but now its retaining water instead.
Birds happily sing from the trees and large numbers of Dragon Fly dart across the sky..... Its a very peaceful and calming place to be.... Seats are placed facing the ponds and the people walking around the site do so in almost complete silence, lost in concentration within there headphones.... Its in stark contrast to what has happened in this relatively small area a relatively short time period ago... A huge number of people met very brutal ends to there life's here. All the murders were carried out under the cover of darkness... screams were drown out by loud speaker systems broadcasting communist songs and slogans, those that were not "dead" when thrown into the graves were simply buried alive... Chemicals were poured over the dead to reduce the smell before they were covered over...
With such a large number of deaths and subsequent burials its common place for clothing, bones and teeth to work there way to the surface, especially after the rainy season.... We are here in the dry season and there's numerous bones just lying on the surface in the areas outside the walking routes.... Parts of people's clothing protrude all over the site... Only the largest of the mass graves have been excavated, and even then, due to the huge number of bones only the skulls were removed....
The large central square monument we can now see holds some of these skulls.... There are hundreds held within this monument on many different internal levels... Many have large holes smashed into them...... Reason of death is obvious.

Once back at our hotel we venture out on foot.... Our Tuk Tuk ride today started of by going along the road by the side Mekong river which our hotel is a stones throw from... We passed many impressive looking buildings whilst we traveled this road so we walk back for a closer look.... The river is lined with Palm trees and impressive stainless steel flag poles displaying all the flags from countries around the world.... At the end of the long line of flag poles is the Cambodian flag.... Opposite this flag and on the other side of the road is a very large open green area and then the Cambodian palace.... Its a very impressive looking biulding, built like so many are out here, in a style that looks Chinese.... We just walk the whole afternoon taking in the sites, and taking many photos before heading back to our hotel for some food before bed.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields