4. The Killing Fields

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4th entry...
A 15-km tuk-tuk ride was our chosen transport out to the Killing Fields - hot and dusty but as we keep saying, the tuk-tuks have all the benefits of walking without all the effort! Very important for Cambodia to preserve and remember this very recent, very traumatic part of their history. The Khmer Rouge really lost the plot and lost any thread of a vision that they may once have had as they unleashed unremitting and barbaric torture and execution to so many thousands. The detainment and torture barracks are now a museum (the Genocide museum) but the buildings are fairly unchanged and speak for themselves. The Killing Fields (our English term, of course, and one particularly reinforced by the movie) are a truly odd experience as one tramples over remnants of human bone and shreds of clothing that have risen to ground level over the years from the depths of the mass graves. Thousand of skulls (17000 or something) are housed in multiple levels of shelves, categorised according to gender and age. So we photograph skulls and reflect upon how, in the history of the world, this just keeps happening. It is credit to the spirit of the people of Cambodia that they have moved on from such suffering and loss.

Long walk along the riverside last night. A bit further along from the crowds and the action of the bars and restaurants is the quieter areas where hundreds of local families come along and rent a mat (literally a mat) upon which they sit out in the hot evening and picnic on foods purchased from an array of street vendors. In earlier years I'd have relished the opportunity to munch on fried insects or small grilled lizards but that particular penchant has passed, and I was happy just to look. Trevor, being vegetarian, has a ready-made excuse to also not partake.

OK. We're off to the markets to find ourselves a bargain.

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Photos

Still looking at us.
Thousands of skulls, layer upon layer.

Pre-used cothing
Its strange, but I found the pile of clothes - unchanged, unwashed - from those times to be perhaps more disturbing and sobering than even the skulls.