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Phnom Penh and Cambodia's dark history!
After leaving Siem Reap, our almost perfect introduction to Cambodia, we headed to Phnom Penh the slightly more Intense city. Gone are our short jaunts into town on our bicycles, instead we are confronted with a city with an acute sanitation problem. When walking through the back streets piles of rubbish are swept up awaiting consumption by birds or other interesting creatures.
Phnom Pehn is huge in size (well compared to Siem Reap at least). It makes our arrival in the city rather daunting, especially with our get there and wing-it style which we seem to have perfected in recent weeks!
The city's main attractions, bar that of the Palace and National Museum lend itself to the dark period of Cambodia's recent past, Pol Pot and the reign of the Khmer Rouge. A mad idea to turn a nation into a collective group of subsistance farmers turned into, A ghastly and hideous regime who brutally murdered any one that fell under their suspicions, and even thousands that didn't.
We have both become slightly voyeuristic, captivated by the stories of the surviors of this crazy period in this great countries
history. Phnom Penh has two big and very chilling memorials to the brutality that besiged Cambodia for nearly four years, after all this is the city decimated from a thriving pre war population of 4 million, to a ghost town. We first visit the Tourture prision on S-21 where thousands were sent to be tourtured, admit to a crime they didn't commit, and then send them to death at the Killing Fields. Some of the rooms are horrendesly simplistic, featuring a bed frame, some metal shackles and a picture of the dead prisoner as the room was found.
People young and old visiting the prision were wondering around, dazed and some inconsolably sobbing after viewing the museum.
Equally Chilling were the killing fields themselves, where thousands of human skull's are displayed in a 16 story memorial. Hundreds, or even thousands of bodies were buried in mass graves. The grounds where the killings took place still unearth pieces of bones and fragments of clothes still wash up every time it rains.The horror of the masacre that took place numb's the body and leaves a lump in the throat.
Travelling Pain's
We have, for the most
part, shyed away from sharing the slightly less joyus moments of the lives of two travellers, focussing more on the exciting places we have visited, and the usually friendly people we have met. But in Cambodia we have experienced some really, really uncomfortable times. Chris has been the first to suffer what every traveller suffers at one point or another. His uncontrollable stomach pains confines the two of us to our room for the majority of our time in Sihanoukville.
Despite being fully aware that illness is an experience that goes hand in hand with travelling, we cant help but feel slightly disappointed at our lack mobility in Cambodia.
Illness aside, we have really loved our time in Cambodia, where the people are honestly excited to see you, the childrens faces beam with smiles and you dont get blatently ripped off as much as you do in Thailand!! This was the real " Land of smiles" and we loved it!
Hope all is well!
Love Fay and Chris
P.s. sorry about our brief post, we are finding it more difficult to find the time for our blog!
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