---

Hello!!


Just to let you know, I'm not going to start with the most pleasant of write ups, but I believe its something not to be forgotten.



Well, where do I start...We traveled from Saigon to Phnom Phen by bus. We spent a couple of days here. We visited the Killing fields and S21. Under the Khmer Rouge, the route to the killing fields was via an interrogation centre. The most infamous was Phnom Penh's S-21 Prison. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge took over the what was a high school and named it Security prison 21 (S21) and turned it into a torture, interrogation and execution centre. About 1,720 workers controlled the prison. Most of the personnel were boys and girls from peasant backgrounds ranging from ten to nineteen years of age who were trained to work as guards and interrogators. The prisoners included Vietnamese, Laotian, Thai, Indian, Pakistani, British and American nationals, but the majority were Cambodians. Civilian prisoners were workers, farmers, engineers, technicians, intellectuals, professors, students, politicians, and so on. Whole families were taken to S-21 to be interrogated, tortured to obtain a ‘confession’, and then sent to the Choeung Ek extermination centre. Of the 14,000 people known to have entered S-21, only seven survived.
To know that this building was once a place for children to learn and be young and happy, play with their friends, and then seeing it as a prison- metal bars on windows, barbed wire everywhere, chains on the ground of each tiny cell, torture rooms and equipment etc, made it that much more sickening.



Fifteen kilometres from the centre of Phnom Penh is the Choeung Ek extermination centre, (The killing fields) the final destination of some 20,000 adults and children. Words can't really describe this place...Well over a hundred burial pits lie in what was once an orchard. About eighty were exhumed - the total number of bodies was around 9,000. There's a large monument as you arrive, which contains the skulls of about 8,000 victims.



S-21 Prison was one of a 167 prisons throughout Cambodia, and Choeung Ek was but one of 343 'killing fields'. In all, 19,440 mass graves have been identified.



Although visiting the prison and the Killing fields is a harrowing experience, I'm glad we did it. We had absolutely no idea what these people went through, and for the victims, it's important that its never forgotten.



After Phonm Phem we took a bus to Sihanoukville. With some lovely beach's it appeared to be a great place to chill out and sun bath...unfortunately, from when we arrived to when we left it was pouring with rain :( It is rainy season after all! We just spent a day or two chilling in the local bar-Monkey Republic-which is owned by 3 English guys...and served proper English Bangers and mash, which Geoff was MEGA happy about! We met a Portuguese couple, so just hung out and played Pool etc.



From Sihanoukville we got a night bus to Siem Reap. We arrived at 5am and was greeted by a friendly Tuk-tuk driver! We found a hotel, got some breakfast and at 8am our tuk-tuk driver returned and took us to the temples. Angkor Wat, built during the early years of the 12th century by Suryavaram II, honors the Hindu god Vishnu and is a symbolic representation of Hindu cosmology. The temples were amazing and definitely worth a visit! As well as many other temples we visited I favoured the temple called Ta Prohm, which was used in the filming of Tomb Raider! There are massive fig and silk-cotton trees that grow from the towers and corridors, which is amazing to see. Ta Prohm is almost universally accepted as the most romantic temple.



The next day, we arranged to visit an orphanage. It was called the Cambodia Orphan Save Organization (COSO), which is a shelter for the poor, homeless and orphaned in Siem Reap Province. We had an amazing time...the guy that runs it, Sean Samnang, is a really caring and genuine man. He didnt ask for any money, although we donated a small amount, and just wanted us to spend time with the children. There was a few young ones, but mostly older children, with families too poor to support them. Sean taught the children in the small school on site, and provided opportunities for them to learn skills that would later benefit them, such as sewing for the girls, and air conditioning instillation for the boys. The children spoke brilliant English and were so loving and affectionate. They sat close, cuddling us all day. They all put on a show for us. Some children played instruments, some sang and some performed! It was the greatest thing ever...they performed the Monkey dance, where they danced and moved like monkeys-picking each others fleas, walking with their arms dragging! They'd obviously practiced hard, we were so impressed! Geoff was beaming, and spent most of the day throwing the children around, cuddling and being adored by them. Leaving was very difficult 'Are you coming tomorrow?' and 'Not tomorrow? Then when are you next visiting' were some of the last questions asked by the children...trying to explain that we're leaving for Thailand tomorrow and we don't know when we'll be able to next visit was terribly hard for us.
What an incredible day, I'm sure, given the time, we'd of spent a lot longer there.



The website is: www.coso-orphanage.com

---