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November 12, 2003 : Phnom Penh
A visit in Phnom Penh is interesting - but the Killing Fields and S-21 can't possibly leave anyone untouched...
Killing Fields / Choeung Ek
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| Memorial stupa at KF |
After eating breakfast at the hotel, we get on a minibus at 10.00 and head for the Killing Fields. I had read two books about what happened in Cambodia during this period ('First they killed my father' and 'Killing Fields'), but still was not really prepared for this. I'm not sure you can be...
The first thing you see when you enter the killing fields is a tower. As you get closer, you see that it's filled with human skulls. They are from the victims that they dug up from the grounds aruond this area - about 8000 of them, sorted by age and gender.
We had a guide that told us a bit about what happened, and showed us around. "In this grave they found only decapitated bodies, no heads". "In this one there were only naked women". "Here is the tree they used to crush childrens heads against by picking them up by the legs and..." and so on. It was horrible. The fact that all over the ground there is human bones and teeth from the victims doesn't help either.
As in all other places in Cambodia, there is people without limbs and young, dirty children begging for money. It's hard, but you have to learn to ignore them... I'm not saying you shouldn't give away some money every once in a while, I think everyone do - but you can't give them all money, there is just so many of them.
We left the place in silence.
| | Skull upon skull |
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| | Walking on a graveyard |
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| | Massgraves |
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Russian market
After this we were supposed to go to S-21, but to be able to see the movie they show twice a day about the place, we first went to the "Russian market", a big market in town where you can buy more or less anything from souvenirs to spare parts for motorbikes. We tried the Cambodian hamburger there, a decent vegetarian meal. But when you have visited a few markets in Asia, you know what they all look like, so to me it was rather boring.
S-21 / Tuol Sleng
After a couple of hours at the market, we got back to the minivan and headed for the former school, that was turned into a prison where about 20 000 people where detained, tortured and raped. When the vietnamese army took over the place, they found seven people still alive - and records over the other former prisoners.
In the museum there were a lot of photographs of the people that had been killed, and over the years a lot of Cambodian people have visited the place to see if any of their relatives where among the people that had been detained here.
There where also paintings, which showed some of the methods used by the Khmer Rouge to torture the prisoners.
After we had walked through the whole place and seen a documentary movie about what happened, we went back to the hotel. I felt that I needed a shower, and that was not only from the heat...
| | Some of the victims |
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| | One of the torture paintings |
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| | Picture of massgrave at KF |
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Party!
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| Partypeople! |
Although not quite in the mood for it this particular day, we decided to go to a bar in the evening, since our canadian friend Julie were going to leave us the next day. We started by having dinner and beer in a place called The lazy gecko, that was close to the hotel, and then we got on the back of a couple of motorbikes and went to the (in- ?)famous The Heart of Darkness. It was a really nice place, although the company I got when the girls went out on the dancefloor was not of the kind I wanted... =)
We got Julie drunk rather fast, and spent the rest of the evening trying to make her even more drunk. That was a lot harder though...
I had a lot of fun, and it was probarbly a good thing we went out, since i didn't want to go to bed with the views from Killing Fields and S-21 in my head...
Old friends...
After a couple of days in Phnom Penh, I come back to my hotel from a walk around the city, and meet 'the english guys' and the swedish girls from Nha Trang again. They had just arrived, and ended up in the same hotel as me...
A little later, Petra (the dutch girl) suddenly appears, she stays in the hotel next door... it's a small world alright! Spend a couple of days hanging out with them, before deciding it is time to head for Siem Reap, and book a bustrip. It was a bit reluctant, considering the roads in this country, but they turned out to be pretty good (well, decent anyway), and I met some other friends of mine on the bus. But more about that in the next story...
Posted in: Cambodia
, Travel
by mdk @ 7:11, November 12, 2003
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