Phnom Penh and the killing fields

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Since the beach we have been in the Capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. There has also been a bit of an illness going round the group, tummy stuff. I think it might be due to the largest rats (cat size) I have ever seen that lived in the hotel at the beach and were seen coming from the kitchen, also the rooms were infested with cockroaches - if you ever go to Sihanouk Ville speak to me first DO NOT STAY WHERE WE STAYED! Ironically this was the only western owned place we stayed in too.

Phnom Penh is a large very polluted and busy city, similar to Bangkok in ways. Yesterday was the part of my time in Cambodia that I was most dreading and looking forward to at the same time. During the regime of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot of less that 6 years, almost 4 million Cambodians were killed. Pol Pot was a Maoist and had previuosly been educated in France and taught at schools in Cambodia, this did not stop him trying to kill every educated person in the country. We visited Tuol Sleng school which was turned into a prison, interrogation and torture centre, known as S21. The rooms have been left as they were and the fourteen prisoners who were found dead when the Vietnamese arrived are burried in the school play yard. The things they did are hard to describe, what was once a wooden frame used for children to climb ropes was turned into gallows, women were raped and would often commit suicide so they installed barbed wire on the upper floors to stop them. People were questioned and told that if they admitted to being a doctor/teacher etc, they would be given a job in the new regime. If they admitted quickly they were taken to the killing fields and killed with sticks, knifes and oftem buried in mass graves whilst still alive. If they did not confess quickly, they were tortured, often to death. Babies were taken from mothers and swung by their angles so their heads hit trees, it's just horrific and unbelieveable but so important for anyone who comes here to see and try to understand. This all happened only 25 years ago and many of Pol Pot's soldiers still live as free people. Some of leaders were given immunity during an amnesty after Pol Pot's death and now work in the current government. There were things that our guide could not tell us until we were on our bus as free speach often comes at a price here.

Today is my last day in Cambodia, Í'm doing the touristy things - temple, museum and markets - but I just can't get yesterday out of my head. The pain is so recent and raw but the people live in peace together because that is what they want more than anything in the world - peace. Our guide to the killing fields lost 5 siblings and his father during Pol Pot's time. He was sent to a teenage concentration camp where we worked 12 hours a day with one bowl of watery porridge in the evening. He now lives next door to an ex-soldier of Pol Pot but he says that being Buddhist has helped him to accept the way things are as he believes that all those who did wrong will be punished in the next life, it's amazing.

Tomorrow we leave Cambodia for Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, it's an 8 hour local bus so should be interesting!

Amy x

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Comments

[Avis Gardner]

Thanks
Hi, my son is currently in Cambodia but doesn't write a blog himself, so I follow his route via other peoples blogs! Thanks for yours, I've not commented on anyone before, just wanted you to know there's people out here appreciating and learning from your writing! Keep safe on the rest of your trip, Avis