Haunting History in Phnom Penh

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Me and Sibs tried to get today off to a flying start by visiting the city's Royal Palace good and early. So we got a tuc tuc up to the riverbank, had an overpriced breakfast and headed for the palace grounds. What a waste of a lie in. Apparently we were dressed "inappropriately", (is a mini skirt and a vest top in 35 degree REALLY inappropriate????) and we didn't even get inside the doors!!! I bet Angelina didn't have to put up with this messing.....
So feeling generally annoyed with the world we headed back to dodgy lodgings, met Claud and decided we'd all head together to the Killing Fields of Choeuk Ek. The lands there weren't the only place used as detention/execution centres under the Khmer Rouge regime, but it is the one that is now the most widely visited. It's about 15 minutes down a very bumpy road (they're all bumpy in Cambodia) from the centre of Phnom Penh. The complex itself is smaller that you would expect, but it is instantly shocking and distrubing, as just inside the main entrance there is a huge stupa filled with shelves and shelves of human skulls. Each of the skulls belonged to a victim of the regime, and they are divided into sections according to their age and sex. You can step inside the stupa and walk along a narrow passage way that separates the outside wall and the glass panes that enclose the remains. Many of the skulls have been pieced together, and it is clear how savagely the people were killed, with fractures running from end to end and hachet marks easy to identify. All pretty horrific. The rest of the grounds consist of mass graves, most of which are marked by wooden signs indicating how many victims are buried within.
It all very upsetting, but not content that we had depressed ourselves sufficiently, we decided to go back to the city and go to the S21 prison, which was also used during the Khmer Rouge era. It was horrible, stomach churning and completely inexplicable. However what shocked me most was the fact that it first opened to visitors in 1980 - just one year after Pol Pot was ousted. Still haven't got my head around that one.
We rounded off the afternoon with a trip back to the palace (we changed in the meantime), and would ya believe it, it was worth the extra effort! It's a much smaller complex than Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok, although in a very similar style, but I thought it was a lot more tasteful and unstated.......well obviously not unstated; temple, unstated, bit of an oxymoron, but it was lovely anyway! They tried to make us either pay two dollars extra or hand over our cameras on the way in, we didn't in a typically Irish "I'm NOT doin dat" kinda way. So in we walked, and out the cameras came, and snap snappyed snap we did. I kept waiting for one of the little men in brown uniforms to cart us off for our hands to be permanently removed, but NADA! Cheeky feckers just trying to wrangle another few quid out of us.
Now, another BAD traveller confession coming up....we liked the place we had dinner in on the first night so much that.....WE WENT BACK FOR THE SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW!! Sinful I know, but it gets worse. I had the good decency to get something that resembled a local dish (Thai red curry, which just for the record, was the nicest I have ever had. I'm still dreaming about it), but the other two young wans got chicken cordon bleu!! Sure we're shockin cheats altogether. Tomorrow we have the joys of a 6 hours bus trip to Siem Reap to look forward to. On Cambodian roads. And I think the bus home from DUBLIN is too long. Oh the joys, the joys.

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Comments

[UnaRocks]

wow
that's tough stuff dude. Really interesting.