From Killing Fields to Phnom Penh Parties

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Jeep rip soah!
This was definately an overwhelming day. Jim took me to the Cheoung Ek killing fields, about 15 km south of Phnom Penh. It was a very surreal place, luckily I was there early so there were no other tourists, but the sunshine and butterflies made it hard to comprehend the terror of the place. Cheoung Ek is where the Khmer Rouge took people to kill and dispose of. Not even half of the mass graves have been excavated. There is a large stupa dedicated to those murdered which is filled with skulls in a glass case, all organized by age and sex. I burned some insence in front of the stupa. The hardest part for me was how recent it all was. There are lots of bones and such embedded in the paths which go around each of the pits from the excavated graves. What really makes the recency of the massacres hit home are the clothes. Along with the bones are clothes laying about and embedded in the path. It is truely horrific. As I sat under a tree I realized that the trees around the area were there when this was taking place. They watched the murders. The government has done a wonderful job of preserving the evidence. Nevertheless, only two people have been arrested from Pol Pot's clique, and they are still awaiting trial.
After that Jim took me back to town to the Toul Sleng "Museum" as it is labeled on the map. It is an old high school which Pol Pot used as a prison and torture facility. I spent much more time at Toul Sleng and even got a guide, which Lonely Planet had suggested. It was well worth it because she told me so much more than I would have been able to learn from just the signs. What I valued the most was her personal story. She was very little when the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975 and forcefully evacuated everybody to the countryside. Her parents and older brother took her to settle closer to Thailand, in the south. Since her father was a teacher he and his son were killed within a year. It was still early in the regime and they weren't killing women yet, so she and her mother survived. They moved back to Phnom Penh in '87 which she said was still a ghost town. The Khmer Rouge destroyed everything. One other thing that touched me deeply was that Toul Sleng was built as a typical French high school. It looked just like my school in France. I could picture the classrooms, though all around me were torture devices and pictures of the people tortured there. I wrote a lot in my diary about what I saw there. It was too much to keep in.
After that I went back to Anisa's apartment and watched the movie The Killing Fields. I highly recommend it to anybody interested in what happened here in 1975 and after. It's an 80s movie, but very well done. The actor who plays the main Cambodian character actually lived though the events he portrays, he really was in a Khmer Rouge forced labor camp.
I was mentally exausted after all that. I needed to do something ordinary. Washing the dishes was calming and then I had to take a shower to try and rid myself of all the terror. It was all just too much. Anisa had recommended that I get it all over in one day, and she was right. I'm glad I did all of it together, but . . . It's just too much for my calm, simple, Idahoan brain to comprehend.
The evening was a welcome distraction. The high school Anisa works at had the graduation ceremony for their graduating seniors: all nine of them! Afterwards we went out with the other teachers. Graduation was a highly formal affair here, so Anisa dressed me up. We had dinner at a very posh place and I tried my first "amok" which is a type of curry: delicious! The restaurant was overlooking the Tonle Sap River and gekos were darting around the walls and awnings, protecting us from the bugs. Cambodia needs more bats, I've decided. My mosquito bites are all left over from Seattle, but I still think the less potentially-disease-carrying bugs the better. so, the photos are of after the graduation - I just hope they don't get put in with the Khmer Rouge part of the day.
All is well here and I am still enjoying every minute of my time in Cambodia. I got my visa and bus ticket for Saigon today, so I will try to post an entry from Vietnam soon. Tomorrow Anisa and I are going to hang out in town and run some errands. Sunday we're going to a small town called Phnom Oudong outside of Phnom Pen to see some temples and countryside and do whatever it is tourists do there.
Lee howie!
Heather

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Photos

Dinner at FCC
Anisa did her best to dress me up and make me look presentable for the graduation ceremony, which was more formal than any other graduation I have ever seen!

Drinks at Ginger Monkey
The teachers started the after hours party, but Anisa and I only made it to the first bar before getting tired and going home.

The After-After Party
Anisa wanted me to model the outfit she had dressed me up in, so I decided to model our drinking water jug and pump. In retrospect it doesn't make much sense . . .