Our last days in Cambodia

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Night of 19th of January

Amanda and I as planned finished the night at a nice French restraunt overlooking the Mekong and the Cambodians playing in the dwindling sunlight. They play some quite interesting games including badminton with no net and kick your brother but my favourite was a family of 3 kids a girl about 5 a boy about 7 and their little brother 1-2 (just started walking). The game was quite basic run around and hide from your little brother. It took them all over the path around the Mekong and looked like heaps of fun. We had a couple of drinks during happy hour/s (5-8) and made the most of the advertised French cuisine by ordering a pizza.

20th of January - Toul Sleng (S-21) and the Choeung Ek killing fields

Don't read if your in a good mood, it is a very confronting paragraph

We knew today would be a fairly sombre day as we knew a little about the atrocities carried out during the reign of the Khmer Rogue and Pol Pot but some of the images and information is very confronting so skip this paragraph if you don't want to read about it. We finally found our way to the Toul Sleng Genocide museum at about 0930 an hour after we left our hotel. Toul Sleng our S-21 as it was called by the KR was previously a primary school and if you didn't know better for all purposes it still could be giving the whole place a very eerie feel. The different levels of each building were used for different but equally diabolical purposes whether for torture or simple imprisonment without having committed a crime most were sent to S-21 under the premise that they were either CIA, KGB or Vietnamese agents. The most haunting images are the hundreds of faces displayed of the people tortured and later killed at Choeung Ek, they all have the same eyes all knowing there fate but probably the most disturbing of all were the eyes of the children which still had a glint of hope, only 7 people survived S-21 none of those 7 were children. There are also pictures displaying the various different torture techniques employed by the KR. All of which are foul but one method really hits home. There is a piece of gym equipment that was used by the kids for physical education I'm guessing probably a climbing rope, the frame was modified to hang people by there arms until they passed out when they would be dunked in filthy water for the nightmare to start over again. I left there feeling emotionally drained and pissed off that this could happen only 30ish years ago, wondering how the rest of the world could let this happen. That question was answered at our next destination. We tuk tukked it from there to the Choeung Ek killing fields, which in hindsight was a strange trip too as the people from S-21 would have followed a similar route. We arrived at the killing fields and immediately decided to get a tour guide as we had so many questions to ask. He explained about the secrecy of the KR genocide all foreign journalists were killed (including one Aussie) and the killing was carried out at night and covered up horrifically as he would explain. The graves of the killing fields were just ditches or holes a couple of metres deep it grave contained 70-90 bodies each hole represented one nights work (one truck load from S-21), he then showed us a tree where the KR used to hang speakers from the branches to play loud music to cover up the screams of their victims. The Cambodians were pulled of the truck one by one blind folded and confused as they were told they were being rehoused, they were beaten to death with bamboo sticks and thrown dead or close to death into the ditch, another one of the methods employed by the Khmer Rogue to camouflage the killing was to spray DDT a chemical insecticide used by local farmers on the rice fields it masked the smell of the decomposing bodies. The guide then showed us probably the most horrific of all the deeds carried out at Choeung Ek. It was what to me looked like a simple tree our guide explained that this was the "Bashing Tree" where babies and small children were held by there legs and bashed against the tree and thrown into a ditch next to it. There were around 100 skeletons exhumed from this grave. I will not write any more about the killing field called Choeung Ek only to sat I'm glad we went and very happy that this will hopefully never happen again. I have purposely not uploaded any images of Toul Sleng or the Killing field, if you want to see them I'll show you when we get back. I will right a more up beat entry tomorrow when we get to Singapore.

I just noticed a massive rat in this internet joint if it bites me I am in deep trouble. It is twice the size of my feet. I'll try to get a photo for you.

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