Phnom Penh

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After our Mekong Delta trip (and 2 weeks of a busy sightseeing schedule) we were ready to settle ourselves on the beach...but after diverting our trip several times due to bad weather...we decided to postpone the beach just one more day. We saw a weather forecast for clouds and rain in Sihanoukville and so we spent a day in Phnom Penh to explore the citys sights and most of all, its horrific history of the Khmer Rouge / Pol Pot.

In the morning we took a tuk-tuk to the Killing Fields. I don know whether Im glad we did this before going to the Toul Sleng Museum (in the city, where prisoners were kept and tortured). The Killing Fields is just outside of town and basically a field where prisoners went to be killed. The middle of the field there is a beautiful white Pagoda, which upon closer inspection is more scary looking. It holds the skulls and bones of the people killed there. So surreal...a sight to send shivers down my spine. An eerie thought that this all happened just a few decades ago.

Just after entering the fields, I tripped over a trunk and broke my slipper. I walked the route on one bare foot, which was not fun....When I overheard the guide saying that there will still many people buried under the ground (and that you can see bones, teeth, clothing of the victims coming out of the ground, rising from the grave because of the rainfall) - the walk was even eerier..

After a quick pit stop at the hostel to pick up other slippers we headed to Tuol Sleng Museum. Set in the centre of the city, you can't imagine that this was a place where thousands of people were tortured. Walking through this run-down school, it made me sick to my stomach. Photos of victims and their killers, the rooms where they were tortured...it reminded me a lot of my middle school visit to the concentration camp Mauthausen. Two places so different and yet a lot of the same horrific scenes.

While it wasn't a very 'happy day', it was an impressive insight into the life of the Cambodians.

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