Phnom Penh

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The night before in the hotel whilst nursing an ice pack to my swollen bruised arm (you taught me well mum!) we met a great guy who answers to the name of Robin. An ex brit who has emigrated to New Zealand and has given us a wealth of information. Anyway, we all hooked up today and shared the cost of a tuk tuk around Phnom Penh.

We first went to The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Some seventeen thousand men, women and children were executed here at the hands of Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1978. The first thing to greet you is a tall Stupa. Housed in a sky reaching glass cabinet are nearly nine thousand of the skulls that came from the excavations. They are grouped together in sex and age and many can be seen with major trauma to the skulls. More hauntingly some can still be seen with blindfolds on. The area is not huge and is covered by excavation pits. Looking closely at the ground many bones can be seen protruding through along with the clothing that was worn by these poor people who lives were so brutally ended. Not an easy place to be at, but then it shouldn't be.

We then visited the Tuol Sleng Museum. Originally a high school, in 1975 Pol Pot's Security Services turned it into Security Prison 21 (S21), the largest detention a torture centre in the country. Several of the downstairs classrooms have been left with a single metal framed bed and a black and white photo on the wall of a tortured person - this is real - nothing else is need to tell you what went on here. Look closely again and the staining can still be seen. Yes it's sickening, it's gut wrenching and harrowing, but it is a necessary lesson for all of us.

An average of one hundred people a day here died during torture and were buried in mass graves within the grounds of the school. Virtually everyone who was detained here died later at the Killing Fields, there was no escape. Hundreds of scared photos of men, women and children look back at you as you wander around more of the classrooms. Photos of torture, cells, sick people, nothing and no-one was immune from the camera or the Khmer Rouge. Displayed are some of the original instruments of torture - a barrel that you were submerged head first into - I won't go on, I don't need to. The top floor classrooms have been left with the wooden cells intact, barbed and razor wire is draped across the front of the building, this was to stop the inmates committing suicide.

Disturbing, uncomfortable, thought provoking and necessary for us to see - this happened and it happend when we were children playing innocently and without a care.

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