Blogs from Phnom Penh, South, Cambodia, Asia - page 207

Van Saigon naar Phnom Penh, zo smooth... comfortabele bus, een gids die alles regelde aan de grens, en voor we't wisten waren we in Cambodia. Eerste dat me opviel: de glimlachende mensen, dnkerder dan hun buren, de ovestroomde akkers, de wegen die in betere staat waren dan ik verwachtte ( de eerste auto' s kwamen er pas 10 jaar geleden, de eerste wegen nog wat later, nu is zelfs in de hoofdstad nog niet overal asfalt ) Phnom Pemh is de hoofdstad, en we logeerden er aan de riverfront, ver van backpackersville. Het is hier wel pakken duurder dan in Vietnam, zelfs in vergelijking met de hoofdstad. Wat rondgelopen, geprobeerd om in de silver pagoda en royal palace tegeraken maar had te weinig kleren aan. Rachel gehoord, zijn al vertrokken, maar Greg, een Amerikaan die we ... read more

So we left you in Koh Toa where we then started our long journey back to Bangkok! To help pass the time the bus kindly played a real quality B-rated or should that be Z-rated movie - "The Salena Incident". For those of you who might be interested and I know that's Sam's family read the reviews (www.imdb.com/title/tt0443626). We were wetting ourselves watching it and these reviews pretty much sum it up! So got to Bangkok in the pouring rain and made our way to our favourite guesthouse. We spent a couple of days in Bangkok picking up our Cambodian and Laos visas and taking in a 2 hour traditional Thai massage.... or should that be torture massage for Sam as his masseur definitely had it in for him! We also managed to venture out to ... read more

There are no puns and no jokes about what we saw this week. In fact we don't really know what to say. We visited Choeung Ek also known as the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng or the S-21 detention and torture centre used by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. The first sight greeting you at Choeung Ek is the memorial stupa containing the skulls of 8000 of the victims. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the site is trying not to step on the bones and rags still protruding from the paths around the mass graves. You can still see the "magic tree" from which a loudspeaker was hung to drown out the victims screams and the "killing tree" used to execute their children. If you want to know more about the history have a look at ... read more

There a few places that really make you question the nature of human beings, that really make you question whether human beings are any different from any other species of animal; I think that some times, this feeling can be good. When I am in the middle of the desert or the mountains or standing on a deserted beach, I feel really insignificant and like I'm only a tiny part of the history of the world; I feel animal in that way. But seeing the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge and the torture devices of S-21 really make me question human nature. It was so hard for me to grasp that the bones in the monument had been actual people, that less than thirty years ago they had been walking and breathing. I actually don't ... read more

14/09/06 Phnom Penh The Cambodian Genocide of the 70's was a harrowing time for the Cambodian people and no doubt any other sentient beings with any inkling as to what was happening within Cambodian borders. Tuol Sleng (http://www.tuolsleng.com/) codenamed S-21 was a school that Pol Pot turned into a prison. It now serves as a museum and is left very much how it was found with original cells left with beds, chains and objects of torture as the fleeing Khmer Rouge fled form the approaching Vietnamese army. Every one of the 17,000 people that passed through the prison had their photograph taken and recorded. Now hundreds and hundreds of these photographs of the innocent men, woman and children are displayed on huge boards in the old school classrooms. Looking closely at their faces, some appear slightly ... read more