Killing Fields and S21 Prison

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We traveled from Siam Reap to Phnom Penh by bus, Mikey was starting to feel quite sick by this time and had to dash to the front of the bus to be sick. Little did we know this would be a sign that the next couple of weeks would be so hard for him, I think last night in the Angkor What bar finished him off!

The Bus journey was 6 hours, and wasn’t too bad until about 4 hours in to the journey the A/C broke down. There is only one road into Phnom Penh and the last 2km into the city took over 1 hour, which in 36C heat and no A/C and no breeze from the bus moving as it was crawling led to a very uncomfortable last part of the journey. We were literally sweating buckets.

We quickly found a guest house in the main backpacker’s area which was located on a riverside location. Initial thoughts were that this was nice, but with an electricity black out for 14 hours it was hard to see the quality of the rooms by torch light! The rooms were unbearably hot, so we ended up spending the night in hammocks outside on the pier/lounge/bar area of our guesthouse which was actually quite pleasant. Well the first night was ok but the second night of doing this we got savaged by the mosquitos!! Pesky little things! The actual guesthouse rooms were very basic and definitely our worst rooms we have had, and hopefully will have on the whole trip!

The reason for visiting Phnom Penh is to view the Killing Fields and S21 Prison. On the way to the Killing Fields we choose to visit the shooting range. Upon your arrival you are presented with a menu to select your weapon of choice!AK47,M16,Hand Grenades,Colt,Rocket Launchers etc! Rumor has it that you can actually fire a rocket launcher at a cow!! Although whether you can believe this or not is another matter but in Cambodia there doesn’t seem to be many rules so it wouldn’t surprise me. We went for the AK47, the power and recoil of this weapon is unbelievable and when switching to automatic mode almost uncontrollable.
We were glad to fire the guns before we went to the killing fields even thought it still felt a little inappropriate.

The Killing Fields are 129 mass graves which have a White Stupa, this serves as a memorial to the 17000+ people who where executed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975-78. The Stupa contains over 8000 skulls, some show that they have been bludgeoned to death to save precious bullets. The Stupa and graves really hit home the atrocities that happened here. The fact that none of us really spoke either at the Killing Fields, or on the way back spoke volumes about how we felt after viewing this area. It was truly moving.

Tuel Sleng Museum was originally a High Scholl, which in 1975 was turned into Security Prison 21 (S21), by the Pol Pot Regime. It was the largest centre of Detention and Torture in the country, less than a dozen people survived after being detained. At its height it is believed that over 100 people per day were executed everyday here. Again this area was extremely moving and it was hard to imagine what actually went on here and the pain that was inflicted on these people.This is one museum where silence doesnt have to be requested! the power of speech is simply lost here. To be honest I did question if you should be actually allowed to visit these places, or whether they should be laid to rest.

I hope you don’t find the pictures too disturbing.

Next stop Saigon in Vietnam.

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Comments

[Ben Connor]

Cambodia
Great update paul - I beleive it is true about the cow shooting :) .. looks like you've gone shooting at the same place my mates did - they got to through handgrenades into a pond!.