Monday

Today was to be a boring but essential admin day as we needed to get our documents together to apply for our Chinese visa. We took ourselves to a nearby cafe where we spent a couple of hours eating cakes & drinking amazing tea & coffee whilst we printed our life stories.

The cafe made the most beautiful cakes and I've definitely got some ideas for ones I wanna try to make when I get home. It was set up by a lady who wanted to provide an employment & skill training opportunity to victims of people trafficking & the sex industry here. There are many charities & NGO's empowering women to show them job alternatives in Cambodia. Unfortunately Cambodia had been one of the worst areas for children earning in the sex industry & women often turned to that as the opportunity to do something different or learn a new skill was something they couldn't afford.

We then went to hunt for a printers which was an interesting experience in itself. We found a local place as I sat for maybe 30-45 minutes as Sy worked with the locals to get the info off the USB stick! I watched them bind new books with gaffa tape and photocopy books in their entirety to flog to the tourists.

Tuesday
Headed off to the Chinese Embassy to be in good time for the doors opening. Never been so nervous as they questioned our application, left not knowing whether we'd passed the test or not. Find out in 4 days time so we keep moving and head to a very sobering but important stop in Cambodian Khmer history.

The Toul Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21) is slap bang in the middle of the city. Reason being is it was actually a school before the Khmer Rouge regime toppled the government & started their 3 year, 8 months & 20 days reign of power. They converted the building into a prison, the classrooms into cells & the playground into a torture area.

I didn't know what to start to think when we entered the place, talk about residual atmosphere. My stomach wrenched as I walked into the 1st cell in Building A.

The school has 4 main buildings that were named A, B,C & D. Building A was used to interrogate and house those people they considered to be important spies of agencies such as the CIA & KGB. The other buildings housed either small cells that had been built by bricks or wood or large cells where many people were detained. Most people who made it here were tortured to confess (make up a lie as probably none of them were CIA or KGB!) before being transported to the Killing Fields for execution.

In Building A remains the raw reminders of what happened as a rusty iron bed centres the room with the shackles still there and a picture of the person they found there, dead on the same bed. When the regime was overthrown a few people managed to escape. Discovered inside were 14 prisoners, tortured to death on their beds. They were documented then moved to real graves outside that remain in the playground area today.

Up to 20,000 people were imprisoned here and interrogated before being taken to the killing fields. Most were beaten, had nails removed, water boarded into some sort of confession. As the regime were rigorous administrators every entry into the prison was measured & photographed. The photographs on display in the museum are upsetting as you look into the eyes of photo after photo of people you know suffered this hideous ordeal. The scale of what happened here starts to become apparent. On one wall was a map of all the other prisons & killing fields around the rest of Cambodia. I had no idea, I knew about the killing fields but not the other hundreds of sites where the same thing was taking place. The sheer enormity of what happened knocked me for 6 there. I honestly just felt physically sick as I realised there had been nowhere for people to flee to as no matter where they went there would be a prison & a killing field. With 3 million killed it works out that 1 in 4 was murdered during the regime. Everybody knows a friend or family member that was lost.

We came away from the museum understandably contemplative & sad. It's so important to learn the history of the places we're going to but so so hard when it's so violent like this. Sy & I both commented on how grateful we are to those who fought for us which has meant we have not suffered. We know no atrocity like this & both felt extremely lucky.

Wednesday
After yesterday I was expecting to have a really hard morning at the killing fields. I wasn't wrong. For the prisoners from Toul Sleng this was the final stop. They were transported here by truck & stood before large pits then executed before falling to their final resting place. Their hands were bound & they were blindfolded. The regime used any weapon except guns as they saved the bullets so most people were bludgeoned or cut by machete.

Now the killing fields are still very sombering but I found myself appreciative of the flowers, butterflies & wildlife around. Such horrible atrocities happened here but for those that visit people they lost I'm glad it doesn't look like it did then.

There are many graves sites here, every little crater site is a grave and they have marked the large ones with pictures of when it was excavated. I can't imagine how those people felt as they uncovered the horrible truth under the soil.

There was one grave that got me completely and I'm sorry in advance for the graphic nature of this paragraph. Unfortunately the truth of what happened is shocking and it's not nice but I feel I can't skip it because it affected me there & made me feel the pain of what the people here have gone through. By all means, if you don't want to read then skip this next paragraph.

We walked past a few different grave sites containing anything from 450 people to 166 headless corpses and then 100 corpses that were discovered to be woman, children & babies. This grave's fence was covered in bracelets locals & foreigners had left as offerings to the lost souls here. Beside the grave was a tree, a tree that will probably mourn in eternity for what the violent men used it for. We followed the audio guide around the fields and when you were told of this trees use you could see everyone stop & stare in disbelief before tears fell. Apparently the regime used to take the children by their legs and smash their heads against the tree before throwing them into the grave. The mothers would often have to watch before they were killed themselves. There are no words to explain how I felt. Whilst walking around you often see clothes entwined with roots, bones starting to protrude through the earth & teeth in amongst the soil. They say that after a heavy rainfall the earth shifts and more is revealed. Walking in amongst that was so hard, what these people went through, utterly destroying.

Of the nearly 150 graves there they have only excavated around 80. They have found nearly 9,000 people, with 20,000 reported to be there, they are leaving the others covered.

We left feeling good that we'd paid respects but an impression of sorrow is on my heart from what we learnt.

Thursday
Inspired from the elephant park we wanted to see other good work towards wildlife along the road. We found the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Sanctuary. The animals here are all ex-pets or victims of poaching etc.

Taking an open top jeep there we got to know our fellow passengers. On arrival we were immediately greeted by a monkey!

A lot of the animals are so friendly here and we got up close & personal with many. Most of the gibbons loved a back scratch, the deers loved a stroke. We left the crocodiles alone! The leopard surprised one of the group as we were so busy watching the otters, he ran and jumped on the fence to try and reach him.

The tour company we went with has a long standing relationship with the sanctuary so we had a lot of backstage access into the animals private enclosures & inside the tigers house. It was great to see so many animals up close and learn their history. If they can be released into the wild they are but if not they are looked after like a rest home. We also saw some 4 metre pythons receiving their medicine by 4 men trying to hold it while another places the pills in its mouth! Never see that usually. I got to see giant squirrels and slow loris up close which I was so happy about!! We even met an 8 year old elephant with a prosthetic as his leg had to be amputated from being caught in a poachers trap. He was super cute!!

All in all it was a great day trip and the local lunch they cooked was delicious!!!

And you'll be pleased to know that after an agonising wait we were granted our Chinese visa's!! Off for some daytime cocktails to celebrate. :-)

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