Phnom Penh, Cambodia's Capital

We arrived in P.P. and found a wonderful little guest house by the water. The city is a mix of french colonial buildings and Khmer architecture. The city is not maybe the safest place to be although, based on all the renovations and changes we assume its only goign to get better. 

Our guest house was owned by an aussie couple and they had an adorable pug. The room was pretty big and we had adapted to sleeping 3 girls in one double bed to be cheap and get "family" hotel rooms.

 

We went out for dinner when we first got there to a place I found in my lonely planet. Friends, as the restaurant is called is run by youth and involves an apprenticeship program to get people employed and off the streets. It was the best meal I had in Asia yet.

 

On our walk back we found a temple with a lot of monks just walking around and praying inside.

That night we shopped around a bit but were pretty tired so we just went to bed early to be ready for our day of museums and seeing the killing fields. We got up and got a driver to take us further downtown to the Genocide Museum or Tuol Sleng.

Here is some information on the genocide and the Pol Po regime:
All of the info is from . http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/pol-pot.htm if you want some information on what lead up to the events or more details.


Essentially an attempt was made by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to form a Communist peasant farming society resulted in the deaths of 25 percent of the country's population from starvation, overwork and executions.  Between 1975-1979 when Pol Pot was in Cambodia and ruling there was 2, 000,000 deaths.
He began by declaring, "This is Year Zero," and that society was about to be "purified." Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were to be extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism. All of Cambodia's cities were then forcibly evacuated. At Phnom Penh, two million inhabitants were evacuated on foot into the countryside at gunpoint. As many as 20,000 died along the way. Millions of Cambodians accustomed to city life were now forced into slave labor in Pol Pot's "killing fields" where they soon began dying from overwork, malnutrition and disease, on a diet of one tin of rice (180 grams) per person every two days. Up to 20,000 persons were tortured into giving false confessions at Tuol Sleng, a school in Phnom Penh which had been converted into a jail. Elsewhere, suspects were often shot on the spot before any questioning. Anyone in opposition of Pol Pot- and all intellectuals and educated people were assumed to be or had to be eliminated, together with all un-communist aspects of traditional Cambodian society. People who they suspected of being traitors, symbols of the bourgeoise were taken here to be tourtured or inprisioned. The killings mostly took place in the fields outside the city so it would be less noticed. We went there after touring s-21 (the school) the location which is now a museum and the fields.

 It was a really haunting day and one that I will never forget. It was so incredibly sad to see all the faces and documentation of those held, tortured or killed in s-21. The devices for torturing as well as the signs still exist in the courtyard of the once playground of a school. 

 

The gallows, adapted playground equipment turned torture device.

We then went to the "killing fields" where the victims were taken to be "desposed of." We all were feeling a little overwhelmed and sad by this point in the day. The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War. We specifically went to the one where most S-21 victims were taken.

Here is an image of how the cities were emptied during Pol Pot's rule as seen at the killing field's museum.

 

 This monument holds over 8000 skulls of Cambodian people. We each light an incense and placed flowers inside of it for those who lost their lives under Pol Pot and his regime's cruelty.

 There are still clothes and bones to be spotted loosely in the grass around the monument at the Killing Fields because of the mass burial styles.

After a rather heavy day, we hit the night market. Cambodia has the cheapest clothes, books, perfumes you name it over any place in SE Asia I have been to. The food market even had fish that were still moving.

 

 With no copy write laws, any book that is popular Cambodian markets probably have it. They are rebound and even printed in colour for about half the price.

 Looking at temple rubbings in the market.

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 After a long day, we were early to bed for our flight back to Singapore the next morning. I loved Cambodia and definitely consider it my favourite place that I have been to so far. Don't be fooled however, we weren't going back to school...just a layover in the airport before we hit BALI for the next 6 days!