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From Siem Reap I travelled down to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The city is a manic hub of activity, with an enormous number of children working and begging, poverty staring you in the eye every time you open them and illegal activity taking place pretty much everywhere you rest them.
Spending time in Phnom Penh is like stepping back a couple of centuries in Europe. Hundreds (and that is no exaggeration) sleep on the filth-strewn streets every night and you can't sit for a minute without being approached by a child and asked to buy a book, a flower or a trinket. A dutch girl I met broke her arm one evening and needed to see a doctor, at the main hospital in the country she was told that there would be no doctor available until the next day. She was fine, she could afford to fly to Bangkok to get treatment, but a local involved in a landmine accident wouldn't be so lucky.
Cambodia is rife with sex tourists and its by no means easy to miss. Older western men are everywhere with very young local girls, and although hostels and guest houses have numerous
signs from well-meaning charities advising guests that that they will be punished if caught, the accommodation owners seemed more than happy to assist anyone wishing to bring local girls back to their room.
The picture I am painting is realist, but it didn't stop me falling for this city. It is dirty, busy, poor and heartbreaking, but it has a raw charm as well, both in the form of the now nearly destroyed French colonial architecture and in the ways of the Cambodian people.
It is strange to think that this hectic little city was completely deserted in 1975 when it was evacuated overnight by the Khmer Rouge.
Today its still clear to see the impact of the Khmer Rouge regime on Cambodian people. Its estimated that 1 in 7 people in Cambodia were killed during the four years in which the regime held power. Today there are many people living in extreme poverty and with debilitating injuries caused by torture, malnutrition and landmines.
I visited the notorious S21 Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The site is a former high school which was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge regime. I also
visited the nearby Choeung Ek killing fields. The whole day really upset me and it upsets me again to write about it now. The museum was bad enough with the torture rooms and prison cells exactly as they were found in the 80's and mug-shot style photos of all the victims, but the fields were devastating. There were so many people killed here that although there has been extensive excavation of the mass graves there are still bones and clothes rising out of the ground under your feet. There is a tree against which Khmer Rouge people smashed babies to kill them. I can't really come to terms with the idea that any human can inflict so much pain on another.
After visiting the museum and the killing fields I saw the people in Phnom Penh in a very different light. Everyone of my age and older will have known someone lost during the regime's rule, and I am not really sure how a nation overcomes that and continues to live. The strength of the Cambodian people is remarkable.
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