Phnom Penh

On the 17th, I left behind the beauty of the Angkor temples and took a 6 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. I met Yuval, an Israeli and avid traveller, on the bus and this time tagged along with him to find somewhere to stay. If I had thought Daniel was good at bargaining, Yuval was amazing! He actually likes bargaining with tuk tuk drivers or people selling water, or pretty much anyone. It was quite entertaining to watch and I learned that basically everything should cost about 1/4 of what they ask you for initially.
My time in Phnom Penh was not what you'd call a "vacation." It centered around the mass genocide that took place in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge in the 70s. Although, I knew vaguely what had happened here, visiting the killing field and the genocide museum put it in a whole new persepective. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh with AK47s and forced everyone out to the countryside in a mass exodus. Under Pol Pot's rule, anyone who was educated had absolutely no human rights and were either forced into years of hard labour and starvation or were just instantly executed. He abolished literacy, arts, music and religion. It is believed that 1.7 million people died during the 4 years of his tyranny, until January 1979 when the Khmer Rouge were finally forced out by the Vietnamese. So as a warning, this entry won't be all that fun, but hopefully you'll be more appreciative of how lucky we all are and for some of you, like me, a little more aware of what happened.
Our first afternoon there, we decided to go see the killing fields of Choeung Ek. This is the location of the mass graves that were found where thousands of prisoners were taken to be executed. The field is scattered with large holes that were the locations of the mass graves uncovered and many are labelled with signs about the people found there. There are also signs describing the locations of where the truck would unload the prisoners, where they would wait to be executed, where they stored the chemicals to cover the stench, and the tools they used to kill them. In the centre of the field, they have built a memorial that is a huge glass case on all sides and houses around 8000 skulls of victims found at that site, along with a pile of their clothes that they were buried in. This day was just the beginning of my learning about the genocide and it was a strange experience to have with someone I just met.
The next day Yuval and I went to the Tuol Sleng Museum (or Genocide Museum). The museum is located at the former S21 prison, which had initially been a high school but the calss rooms were turned into cells and torture champers under Pol Pot''s regime. It is estimated that around 17,000 people were held here over the years before they were executed, and only 20 prisoners escaped with their lives. Our tour started with a movie that told the story of some of the prisoners and featured an artist who was one of the lucky few to be held at S21 and live to tell about it. In the 80s, he did a series of paintings that depicted either events he experienced, witnessed or was told about during his time in prison. The paintings are graphic portrayals of torture and in the movie he actually walks around with a former guard from the prison and asks him if these things happened. It was such a bizarre thing to see...a former prisoner and former guard having a discussion about the methods of torture used. The rest of the museum is filled with photos of former prisoners, both before and after execution and actual torture devices that were found in the rooms. There are thousands of mug-shot-type photographs, many of them women and children, and as a collective you can almost just walk right past them. But if you stop and look at individual pics you can see the sadness or fear or sometimes just an empty gaze looking back at you, because you know they've already given up hope. It is an experience I will never forget.