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Published: April 22nd 2012
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We put Vietnam behind us and headed to the capital of Cambodia Phnom Penh. When we arrived we were surprised that all of the prices and menus were in US dollars and that Riel is rarely used. We looked around the market, squeezing through narrow alley ways to fit through and also had a walk around the outside of the Palace grounds taking some pictures. We hired a tuk tuk driver for the day and headed to Tuel Sleng Museum which used to be a high school until it was turned into a security prison named S-21 by the Khmer Rouge. This was the largest of its kind in the country and used as a detention and torture prison. As we walked around building A,B,C and D you could see how torture had taken place with photo's of the last 14 people that were abandoned still chained to their beds, it is said that during the first part of 1977, S-21 claimed 100 victims a day, photo's of which can be seen inside one of the buildings. Block C still has the original barbed wire across the front of the building now and after entering and visiting the upper floors of
the block you feel trapped even now. Almost all prisoners who didn't die during torture at S-21 were later killed at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek which is where we headed after the museum.
The Killing Fields contains 129 mass graves and it is said that more than 17,000 men, women and children had their lives stolen from them here. A white monument in the center was built as a memorial and to house the bones from some of the mass graves, more than 9000 skulls are encased inside. An audio tour around the killing fields takes you through step by step what happened here between 1975-78. Bullets were to expensive to waste so victims were battered to death with different weapons. During heavy rains, groundsman still find bones that surface even today and you can see the pieces of material from clothes in the soil around the mass graves. One of the graves contained almost 100 women and children, most of the women were naked and the children's skulls had been crushed by a near by tree. The whole day left us thinking a lot about how such terrible things could happen and only 30 years ago.
We headed to Siem Reap next where we hired another tuk tuk for the day to enjoy the Temples of Angkor Wat. We couldn't have been more shocked and surprised by what we seen. Angkor Wat, the main temple is the largest religious building in the world and we enjoyed watching sunrise here with the thousands of other tourists all trying to get the picture to show friends and family back home, it made us giggle. We were very impressed until we arrived at Bayon Temple which has 216 faces watching you as you walk around, this was our favourite and made us both say wow when we were inside. The day held some great surprises including finding a Geo-Cache at Ta Nei Temple where we had to climb over fallen rocks to get inside and also Ta Prohm Temple where they've let nature take its couse so you can see trees growing through the buildings with their roots taking every direction they can, it's a great sight. We hadn't quite had enough of temples so decided to hire a bike the following day and ride to Bakong Temple to find another Cache. what we didn't realise was that
it was a 13km ride there and we got lost twice. When we arrived at the temple we didn't find the cache but had loads of fun on the bikes for the day. Needless to say we had sore bums after the 26km round trip.
Well that's it for Cambodia and we loved it. It's the first place in South-east Asia where we think we'll be returning. Now Happy New Year in Bangkok, hello Songkran.
Sending Love
Matt and Kerry
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Mammy
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Muggles!!
Hope there were no Muggles around when u were looking for that cache Matthew !!! Haha... Great photos as usual, lots of memories for me at Angkor Wat - I loved it there and would also like to go back one day! Love yous x