Advertisement
Published: December 28th 2006
Edit Blog Post
So after an hour of getting out of vietnam and through immigration we arrive in Cambodia. Our destination was Phnom Penh 4 hours away. It was hot and the mini bus (v.i.p me arse!) was packed. So after 4 hours, and an extra 40 mins due to a puncture we arrive in the city. The drive through the villages gave an idea of how the people live. The houses were mainly of wood and most again living off the waters from the Mekong. The city itself is surprisingly modern with plenty of electronics and mobile phone shops like youd see back home. After a long day travelling i headed to bed early for the first time in weeks!
Up early and off to the shooting range. There are 1000s of guns in cambodia so it was not hard to find a shooting range. I chose to shoot the AK47(kalasnikov) over the M16 purely because you got more bullets with the AK47. The first shot was quite firghtening, the kick back was small but the noise, flash and bullet flying out of the holder were all much larger than expected. I shot 25 rounds and riddled the target 30 or 40 meters
away plenty of times in the head when it was on semi automatic(one shot at a time). Once the guy changed then to automatic all accuracy went out the window and the bullets just spayed everywhere!!!! The harsh reality of trying to face these bullets coming from hundreds of guns set in quickly and its something i would never want to face in real life i tell ya. Just one of the bullets would send you flying through the air!
For $100 you could fire a bazooka and for $300 you could bazooka a cow and then barbeque it later!!! Madness....just madness!!!
That was all my fun for the day because my next two destinations were the Killing fileds at Choeung Ek and prison S21, 2 scenes of absolute horrendous crimes during the Pol Pot regieme.
The Pol Pot years were just shocking. He emptied all the cities, and sent the people into the fields to grow rice which was sold to china for ammunition. The year was zero. Everyone wore black. You could not talk, laugh or cry. You could not look left of right, and as we learned later singing would lead to death by a pick
axe mauling. People were starved so they had only enough strength to work for the day and have non for any kind of resistance.
Prison S21 was a school in the city centre taken over and used as a prison when the Khmer Rouge arrived in 1975. All intellectuals and anyone thought of being against the regeime, including other high ranking Khmer rouge were tourture horrifically here and death seemed a happy way out. There were many photos of the tourture bodies. All badly beaten, burnt , electricuted, stretched, drowned, some with fingers and more cut off. It truely was horrible. Up to 100 people were tortured and killed each day. Only 7 people survived the prison.
The people doing the torturing were all girls and boys between 14 and 18 years old who were taken from their villages in the countryside and brainwashed. So much so that they even tortured their own family mambers and parents. They were also afraid of the system and it seemed that the tried to out do eachother in torturing their victims and then send photos to their superiors. Giving a simple beating seemed to be as if you were weak and turning
against the leaders. If this was suspected then the same fate would happen to you too so the torturing just got worse and worse. Nobody could trust anybody both in the fields and in the khmer rouge ranks itself. It became so bad the misturst was rife. The last 14 people killed in the prison were 14 very high senior ministers and military leaders who still lay bleeding on their torture beds as the vietnamese entered the city.
The Killing fields.
This is where the prisoners, workers and khmer rouge themselves met their deaths. They were all sent here from prison S21 if they survived the torture. Over 8000 people were slaughtered in this field alone. Again the deaths were horrific. No bullets used as that was too expensive. It was usually strikes to the head bamboo sticks and other blunt objects. Kids small enough were smashes against "the killing tree" until they died and babies , when there was time, were shockingly thrown into the air and shot for target practice. There are stories of people lying in the body pits pretending to be dead after the beatings waiting for their chance to escape. I think that is
enough said about this place. It truely was hell on earth between 1975 to 1978 in cambodia. After visiting these two places you are in no mood to do anything but go home and call it a day......
The next day was alot more fun as i got invited to a wedding. I only went to the reception part but we all had great craic even though only one or 2 could speak english. The drink was flowing and the dancing and craic was great. Although the poor bride and groom looked terrified throughout proceedings. Weddings are the same everywhere i suppose! There are some good bars in Phnom Penh too and well sure we had to say hello....it would be rude not to!!!! :o)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.182s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 18; qc: 93; dbt: 0.1184s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
bob and aivs
non-member comment
cool reporting
cool reports chris. keep up the good work. that last one got at least a B++ happy new year!