The Killing Fields, Genocide Museum and Spiderville

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Sokum our guide is just one year older than me. When he was 8 years old, his family was separated and he had to work in the fields gathering buffalo dung for fertiliser so that he could earn a bowl of rice a day, the rice being mainly water and more like gruel. During the three years, eight months and twenty days of Khymer Rouge Tyranny, 16 members of his family were killed by the Government of Democratic Kampuchea, during which time, 1.5-3 million Cambodian people were murdered out of a population of 8 million. No one knows the full numbers as not all of the bodies have been found, let alone identified.

This happened from 1975 until 1978 when the Vietnamese invaded. The impact on the population now is that 60% is under 18 and they have a huge lack of human resources due to the Killing Fields, where educated people were particularly targeted, although the crime of soft hands (therefore not a hardworking farmer) was also punishable by death.

The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek is one of many in Cambodia and is now a memorial place that we visited first. It has 129 communal graves and around 20,000 people were killed there, usually with blunted hoes as one bullet was too expensive to use being worth 2 bowls of rice. There's a memorial pagoda in the centre which houses 8,000 human skulls arranged in age and gender - blue dots for women, red for men.

It is a shocking place to visit and I felt on the verge of tears walking around it, so god only knows how Sokum and all the people who work there feel. Not all the graves have been exhumed so during the rainy periods, soil gets washed away, exposing clothing, bones and teeth. There's signage reminding people not to walk on the exposed bones or walk over the mass graves.

A hollow tree near the centre was once used to house speakers where music played from 9pm to 10pm everyday, this was the killing hour and it was necessary to drown out the screams of the prisoners so that outsiders wouldn't realise what was happening. The government tricked and lied to the people, they would say to a family for example, "Your daughter is so bright, we will take her to the city so she can work for our country." So the family would think she was doing well, but instead she would be tortured and killed. And then the family would be invited to go visit their daughter and they too would be killed.

Another harrowing tree is the one where children were beaten and babies killed. Coming across this and you read the sign and you cannot do anything but stare at it. When I think how seeing this tore me up, I cannot start to imagine how the Cambodian people get past this emotionally

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museuem is 15km away from Choeung Ek. It was originally a school until it became the largest Khmer Rouge detention centre where 17,000 women, children and men were tortured and killed. It was also known as S21 and when the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh in 1978, only 7 prisoners were found alive, some having survived because of their skill as a photographer or artist. Two of the survivors were there today and you can see their paintings depicting the horrific torture endured.

As we walked around the cells, none of us took photos as there were signs forbidding this, but Steve had not seen the signs and went to take a photo and we all told him to stop. Sokum interjected and said it was OK, he said that the signs were only there because school teachers are not allowed to talk about this recent history in class. That's all he said and I got it that he wanted us to take photos, so that we tell more people what happened here. I know that personally I only had one teacher tell me about the situation in Cambodia when I was small, perhaps at the time it was actually happening as I didn't really understand. The information is there for those who may go looking, but how many people do?

So we did take photos of the metal beds with the shackles and tin pots for toilets. We took photos of the ceilings that despite being very high, were spattered with human blood still very visible today. We also saw photos of the bodies of prisoners as they were found by the Vietnamese soldiers and mugshots of all the terrified prisoners and their extremely young captors.

Outside were exercise bars that were used by students when the place was a school to do pull ups, but it was used by the Khmer Rouge later to hang prisoners upside down with their hands tied behind their backs until they were unconscious. After which their heads were doused in human excrement, waking them up so the torture could be continued.

Inside the school rooms were partitioned by bricks (the VIP area) or wood into areas 0.8m by 2m. the prisoners had one small metal tin for a toilet and one small plastic bowl for food.

In another room we saw photos of the leaders responsible for all this. A few have since died, including the leader Pol Pot who died of a heart attack three days after it was decided to press charges against him in 1998 - he still ruled until then. It did say that some were beginning to be tried for crimes against humanity in 2011. But the shocking awful truth is that some of these people are still in power today. They murdered 1.5-3 million of their own people and they are still running the country.

Apparently there is democracy but you can only vote for communist candidates. We asked, why did people want communism in the first place? It was because people saw the wealth gap as unfair and wanted everyone to be equal. So anyone who was successful in life, such as a doctors, teachers, journalists etc, they were seen as greedy when there were farmers who were growing the rice, living at a subsistence level.

I asked Sokum, how do the Cambodian people feel now? He'd been showing us around these places and telling us the history in an unbiased way, so I wasn't sure if it was OK to ask about his personal experiences. But was it uncaring not to? I asked him his age and he's 45, so he would have only been 5 years old in 1975, and he then started to tell us of what happened to him when he was 8 and about losing his family. So how do Cambodian people feel? He said a lot of them are depending on karma, and he does smile when he tells us the all those responsible that have died so far, did so through heart attacks. More sadly though, the people don't have time to think about justice, as most of them are so poor they are too busy thinking about feeding their families and average life expectancy is 63 years old.

So we were rather quiet after this, reflecting on all we'd seen, knowing that Sokum's story is the norm in Cambodia.

Our final stop in Phnom Penh was Wat Phnom, a Buddhist shrine that is the highest point in the city. It was full of incense, buddhas and a handful of worshippers. Outside were a few beggars and vendors selling tat, but only a few. Nearby trees were full of sleeping bats despite it been the middle of the day and full sunshine.

Kompong Thom, which is just over 200km away was our next destination, stopping by Spiderville on the way. This is a market where you can buy delicacies such as spiders, frogs, crickets, grasshoppers, sloe-worms and cockroaches. Upon arriving, some young girls were trying to sell us pineapple and their level of English was brilliant. Yiyi asked them where they learned to speak it so fluently and was told "school of course!" Seems their school teaches languages far better than mine did as Sokum tells us that the kids also speak Japanese, Thai and other languages. I found out later that they were chatting to Yiyi in Mandarin too, she asked, why aren't you in school now? It only opens in the morning and then the kids work on the market in the afternoon.

They were very polite and curious, loving my red and black hair, but one girl was horrified by my lip piercing, asking if it hurt and asking why Glyn has his ears pierced four times on one side. They were also impressed as to how tall he is (6 foot 3). They loved my earrings, so now two young girls in Cambodia have creme egg earrings, I have spread British culture :-)

Andy bought two spiders for $1 and gave them to Glyn to eat. And Glyn did eat one, apparently it tastes like chicken. He also wanted to try cricket and grasshopper but the vendor insisted on selling him a variety bag for $1, most of which he gave back after trying it. The others asked how I felt about kissing him after he ate these things, the answer is no worse than when he eats cows, pigs and chickens. Andy gave the other spider to the girls who were overjoyed and quickly ripped it apart and ate it up. They also gave us the opportunity to have al live one crawl over your hands and I was up for that!

We continued further north-east where the roads are still waiting to be surfaced and are extremely bumpy, but due to the early mornings, I still fell asleep despite being bounced around the back of the minibus. The rural areas have houses on stilts, lots of white cattle and very light traffic.

We arrived at Kompong Thom late afternoon to find there was a pool!! What a pleasant surprise and we stayed in it until after it got dark - which is pretty early as it goes.... 5.30-6pm.

Last thing of note, we've just turned up for something to eat and there are lizards running up and down the walls and lampshades full of bugs. There's also cockroaches in the bathroom and something either in the bathroom or outside is making one hell of a racket!

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Photos

Skulls of some of the many victims
The Killing Fields

human teeth on the ground
The Killing Fields