Saturday 27th April

We left Sihanoukville at 10am the next day back to Phnom Penh; we pretty much slept the whole way so the journey felt quick! When we arrived, a horde of tuk-tuk and moto drivers stand right at the door asking everyone if we need a ride. It annoys me; all I want to do is get out get my bag and then find a ride! There's always one guy that follows you the entire time wearing you down, we had booked a pick up so waited around for 5 minutes. But no sign of him, so reluctantly we chose a tuk-tuk and headed to our hostel.

When we arrived we were greeted by the ever so friendly owner, Nigel! He said that the bus company had told him the 10am bus had arrived…hmm…well that was incorrect! Never mind got there ok. We checked into our dorm which literally was a mattress on the floor with a fan each. It was damn comfortable!

We decided to go for a walk down to the riverside and search for some dinner! We settled for a Mexican restaurant, yes very Cambodian! We headed back this time the market we passed was very lively and we realised this is the night market. We had a browse and brought a few items and checked out what food they had on offer for tomorrow night!

We headed back to the hostel and sat outside watching the traffic go past and talking to other people staying at the hostel.

Sunday 28th April

Today we got up early ate our breakfast and went to do some site seeing, we had booked a tuk-tuk to pick us up and take us to the killing fields and S-21. Not the kind of site seeing I enjoy, but a must to see to understand the history of what these people went through only 30 years ago.

It was a long ride to the killing fields, weaving in and out of traffic, I felt highly vulnerable! It was only $5 entry with a free audio guide, which was fantastic. The audio guide took us through from start to finish, from when prisoners entered to their doomed end. It was a very moving and we could hardly begin to process what it must have felt like being here. The area itself was in full bloom and looked lovely (despite its hidden secrets) which made it all the worse. There are many killing fields but the most famous is Choeung Ek just outside Phnom Penh.

We had done a bit of research before visiting the sites to get ourselves familiarised with the basics;

The Khmer was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia. It was formed in 1968 as an offshot of the Vietnam People's Army from North Vietnam, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu Samphan. Democratic Kampuchea was the name of the state as controlled by the government of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979.

The Khmer Rouge attempts at a radical social reform process that was aimed at creating a purely agrarian-based Communist society. The Khmer Rouge forced around two million people from the cities to the country to take up work in agriculture. They forced many people out of their homes and ignored many basic human freedoms; they controlled how Cambodians acted, what they wore, who they could talk to, and many other aspects of their lives. Over the next years, the Khmer Rouge killed many intellectuals, city-dwellers, minority people, and many of their own party members and soldiers who were suspected of being traitors.

The population in Cambodia was around 7,100,000 at the beginning of the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Throughout the next ten years, 3,300,000 people (including men, women, children, and foreigners) were killed and by the end of the genocide, there was a total of slightly less than four million that were lost to the ways of the Khmer Rouge. This number is still being debated as they discover more graves across the country.

The movement gained strength and support in the northeastern jungles and established firm footing when Cambodia's leader Prince Sihanouk was removed from office during a military coup in 1970. The former prince then looked to the Khmer Rouge for backing. With the threat of Civil war looming, the Khmer Rouge gained support by posing as a "party for peace." Once the party was in power the ideology of an agrarian-based Communist society came into force.

Money was abolished, books were burned, teachers, merchants, and almost the entire intellectual elite of the country were murdered, to make the agricultural communism, as Pol Pot envisioned it, a reality. The planned relocation to the countryside resulted in the complete halt of almost all economic activity: even schools and hospitals were closed, as well as banks, and industrial and service companies. Banks were raided and all currency and records destroyed by fire thus eliminating any claim to funds.

There is a lot more history I could go further into detail, but it might take me all night to write it!

The prisoners at the killing fields had been escorted from the S-21 prisoner where they had been interrogated, beaten and tortured. The prisoners were arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. They were forced to name their families, neighbors, friends and colleagues who in turn were arrested and sent to S-21 and onto Choeung Ek.

The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees. The rationale was to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parent's deaths.

The site was filled with crater like holes in the grass, which used to be mass graves of the victims. After heavy rainfall, bones, teeth and clothing emerge at the surface due to the rain washing the mud away. It was a very somber experience, even thinking about it afterward I couldn't work our why someone would want to kill their own people. The audio guide mentioned near the end, that Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, died at the age of 82 who apparently listened to 'Good Morning America' on the radio every day. Isn't this against everything he thought? Made me annoyed hearing this.

The middle of the filling fields holds the memorial for those that lost their lives, a giant stupa which holds over 8,000 skulls of victims found at the site. It was kind of a weird experience, not really wanting to believe these were real.

By December 1978, because of several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Cambodia, relations between Cambodia and Vietnam collapsed. Pol Pot, fearing a Vietnamese attack, ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages. These Cambodian forces were repelled by the Vietnamese.

Along with the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, an organization that included many dissatisfied former Khmer Rouge members, the Vietnamese armed forces then invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979.

By 1979, the Khmer Rouge had fled the country, while the People's Republic of the Kampuchea was being established. This meant that life started going back to the way it was pre-Khmer Rouge. The governments-in-exile (including the Khmer Rouge) still had a seat in the UN at this point but it was later taken away, in 1993, as the monarchy was restored and the country underwent a name change to the Kingdom of Cambodia. A year later thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty. In 1996, a new political party the Democratic National Union Movement was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for all of his roles as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge. The organization itself was officially dissolved in December 1999.

Western governments repeatedly backed the Khmer Rouge in the U.N. and voted in favour of retaining the Cambodia's seat in the organization. Margaret Thatcher stated that "So, you'll find that the more reasonable ones of the Khmer Rouge will have to play some part in the future government, but only a minority part. I share your utter horror that these terrible things went on in Kampuchea." Sweden on the contrary changed its vote in the U.N. and withdrew support for the Khmer Rouge after a large number of Swedish citizens wrote letters to their elected representatives demanding a policy change towards Pol Pot's regime.

Here are the top leaders of the Khmer Rouge:

Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) (died 1998), "Brother number 1", General Secretary from 1963 until his death, effectively the leader of the movement

Nuon Chea (Long Bunruot), "Brother number 2", Prime Minister, arrested in 2007, high status made him Pol Pot's "right hand man"

Ieng Sary (Pol Pot's brother-in-law), "Brother number 3", Deputy Prime Minister, arrested in 2007

Ta Mok (Chhit Chhoeun) (died July 21, 2006), "Brother number 5", Southwest Regional Secretary, final Khmer Rouge leader, died in custody awaiting trial for genocide

Khieu Samphan, "Brother number 4", President of Democratic Kampuchea, arrested in 2007

Son Sen (died 1997), Defense Minister, Superior of Kang Kek Iew. Assassinated on Pol Pot's orders for treason.

Yun Yat (died 1997)

Ke Pauk (died 2002), "Brother number 13", former secretary of the Northern zone

Ieng Thirith, arrested in 2007, sister in law to Pol Pot

Hopefully you have understood my brief history. There are a lot of stories I have heard and read about and there is a lot pre-regime history but that's the basics!

After our saddening experience we left the heat of the day and went onto S-21, which so happened to be a school before the regime abolished schools and education. S-21 (security prison 21) or now The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, houses a variety of exhibitions. Another brief history of the prison;

When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng, they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don't turn them away.

2. Don't try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don't be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don't tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don't make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don't follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

Upon arrival at the prison, prisoners were photographed and required to give detailed autobiographies, beginning with their childhood and ending with their arrest. After that, they were forced to strip to their underwear, and their possessions were confiscated. The prisoners were then taken to their cells. Those taken to the smaller cells were shackled to the walls or the concrete floor. Those who were held in the large mass cells were collectively shackled to long pieces of iron bar. The shackles were fixed to alternating bars; the prisoners slept with their heads in opposite directions. They slept on the floor without mats, mosquito nets, or blankets. They were forbidden to talk to each other.

The day in the prison began at 4:30 a.m. when prisoners were ordered to strip for inspection. The guards checked to see if the shackles were loose or if the prisoners had hidden objects they could use to commit suicide. Over the years, several prisoners managed to kill themselves, so the guards were very careful in checking the shackles and cells. The prisoners received four small spoonful's of rice porridge and watery soup of leaves twice a day. Drinking water without asking the guards for permission resulted in serious beatings. The inmates were hosed down every four days.

The prison had very strict regulations, and severe beatings were inflicted upon any prisoner who tried to disobey. Almost every action had to be approved by one of the prison's guards. They were sometimes forced to eat human feces and drink human urine. The prison's medical staffs were untrained and offered treatment only to sustain prisoners' lives after they had been injured during interrogation. When prisoners were taken from one place to another for interrogation, their faces were covered. Guards and prisoners were not allowed to converse. Moreover, within the prison, people who were in different groups were not allowed to have contact with one another.

There were four separate buildings, each with a different purpose, the first, building A, had big cells for 'high ranking' prisoners. In some of the rooms had a picture of a partly decomposed body, these bodies were photographed as the Vietnamese had found them on liberation day. There was 14 bodies in total, there were decomposed beyond identification. The 13 men and one woman are buried at the site with a plaque for each. The pictures were horrific and the cells were horrible.

We moved onto the next building C housed what was once the class rooms which had been turned into small cells to house prisoners. We walked through the cells trying to imagine spending a day in one of these, it was a horrible site. Some of the rooms still had the old school chalk board attached to the wall. The building was also covered in barbwire to stop people from jumping out of the building to their deaths. The building next door, Building B also had the pictures of the prisoners that entered through this prison. They were all pictured before entering the cells, before interrogation, the worse pictures were of the children. Some of them were so small and young it seems so barbaric. There were a few images of the 'after' pictures, the deceased. These were spine chilling pictures of lifeless faces and ill-health people. It was horrible (there aren't really any more words I could use to describe).

The last building D held torture tools, some of which I don't wish to know what their purpose was. There was also an exhibition of the trials currently going on and survivor stories of the few that were lucky to have skills that were needed by the Khmer Rouge. Out of an estimated 17,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only seven known survivors. As of September 2011, only three of them are thought to be still alive: Chum Mey, Bou Meng and Chim Math. All three were kept alive because they had skills their captors judged to be useful. Bou Meng, whose wife was killed in the prison, is an artist. Chum Mey was kept alive because of his skills in repairing machinery. Chim Math was held in S-21 for 2 weeks and transferred to the nearby Prey Sar prison. She may have been spared because she was from Stoeung district in Kampong Thom where Comrade Duch was born. She intentionally distinguished herself by emphasising her provincial accent during her interrogations.

We were luckily enough to meet one of the survivor Bou Meng who was selling his autobiography, we decided to by a copy and I have since read the book. I was extremely moved by his story, he started out part of the party, believing his efforts were towards freeing Cambodia from the French until Pol Pot changed the regime. He was confused and was taken to S-21 where he was confused to what he had done wrong. After months of torture he confused being part of the CIA (most prisoners ended up lying that they were part of the CIA, FBI or KGB after months of torture).

His wife was killed and his two children died in an orphanage, luckily his skill of painting kept him alive in the prison.

After this shell shocking experience we headed back to the hostel, in good time the sky was turning a grey colour and the wind was picking up i.e. it's going to rain…!

We arrived back and sat outside talking to some new people who had just arrived before heading to the night market for our dinner. Dinner cost us $4, together! We had fried noodles/rice with beef! It was delicious!

Monday 29th April

Today we had a rest day, after all the horrible sites yesterday I wasn't in the mood for much. We had a walk along the river side, ventured out for some food and booked our bus tickets to Siem Reap and had dinner at the night market again!

Tuesday 30th April

Our last day in Phnom Penh, we decided to visit the Royal Palace. We had to dress respectable (very difficult for Stu as we all know) and had to wear clothing that covered our shoulders and knees. We were both melting! It was warm; there were plenty of people being turned away due to them dressing inappropriately! Silly people! It was pretty impressive palace, lots of big white buildings and gold everywhere, but I wasn't overally impressed. I guess I am still palaced/templed out from China as there were a lot! It was also really warm and hordes of Chinese tourist were around…my favourite people in the world…!

We tried to visit the night market but apparently it's not open on a Tuesday…hmmm…annoying so we settled for somewhere a little pricier!