Part 10: Cambodia - Days 61- 66
This is another long one, but I think it's interesting.
DAY 61: my last day in Thailand. Craig left first thing this morning, so I am alone from now on. Today was a lazy day as I had to change hotels and meet my tour group in the afternoon.
I went to the mall for lunch, before going to the new hotel; my joining point for my 18 day tour though Cambodia and Vietnam. The hotel was ok, but really the $10 per night hostel I stayed at with Craig was much nicer and newer.
Anyway, I met my group for the next 18 days. There are 12 of us; 10 going all the way to Northern Vietnam and 2 leaving us after HCMC. We may be getting a few new people in HCMC- we are definitely getting a new guide.
My group is a very strange mix. Other than myself, there are 3 other girls traveling alone; another Canadian, an Aussie and a Scot. The four of us get along, so that's nice. My roommate is the Scot and she has a similar sarcastic sense of humour as I do, so that's good.
Otherwise there are two older couples, two Swiss guys, and two middle aged Brits. One of the Brits is a good guy, the other one I can't stand. Thankfully he is one of the two leaving us half way through. He is so bizarre. He talks constantly, smokes like a chimney, is always late, and is just generally awkward to talk to. He says "god bless you" about everything. The waitress can say "here is your rice" and he would say "god bless you."
I'm finding I'm having a hard time keeping up with the level of enthusiasm displayed by some members of the group; and they seem to think Im a grump or that i not enjoying myself because Im not quite as excitable about little things. They get excited about mediocre meals and very average sights. I guess I've just been traveling for so long and have seen and done so much that the little things aren't so great anymore. It does bug me though that they pester me a bit about not being super enthusiastic.
An example of an actual conversation....we had stopped in front of an unexciting big tree to take photos (for about 15 bloody minutes) and I was getting a bit restless:
Fellow tour member: "what's wrong? Are you ok? Do you not like the big tree?"
Me: "I'm from British Columbia, I have a tree larger than that in my front yard...."
Anyway, group dinner number one was in Bangkok. It was fine. At least everyone on the tour is very nice and has good Intentions.
DAY 62: we were up early to leave for Cambodia. It was a long day of travel; we left at 7:30am and arrived in Siem Reap around 4pm. It wasn't as bad as expected though. The bus we were in was pretty plush and we stopped numerous times for the "happy house" (what the our guide likes to call the bathroom) as well as for lunch and to walk across the boarder.
Cambodia is unexpectedly flat. Like pancake flat. All you can see in every direction is rice fields and palm trees. It's very green and very pretty. Our guide was quick to point out a "mountain" we passed on the way.....I would describe it more as a small hill.
I've done a bit of reading about Cambodia now and we've heard numerous facts and statistics along the way. Cambodia has a horrible history and the country really still hasn't recovered from the war 30 years ago.
I didn't know much about this country before I came here, so here are some (mostly awful) facts about Cambodia:
- The Genocide from 1975-1979 claimed the lives of 3 million Khmer; between 1/3 and 1/2 of the country's population at the time.
- people who were intelligent, well educated or who spoke more than one language were tortured and murdered during this period. As a result, there is still a lack of teachers, professors and educators for the new generation.
- Today, 40% of the 14 million Khmer are under 15 years old
- The Country's first election was in 1993
- Members of the Khmer Rouge sat in Cambodia's United Nations seat until 1992; they killed half their country and were still allowed to be the Country's representative
- Cambodia has only had peace since 1998.
- there are estimated to be between 3 and 6 million active land mines in Cambodia left over from the war. Every year hundreds of people (mostly children) die or lose limbs by accidentally stepping on them; 30 years later.
- the median average pay is $65 USD per month, or $800 per year.
I had no idea how rough a history this country really has had, until I came here. What is remarkable is how nice the people are. Everyone is always smiling.
We went out for a group dinner again in the old market area, which is a tourist quarter. Lots of restaurants and bars. We went to a place with Cambodian dancing.....the difference between that and the Balinese dancing i saw was negligible.
My biggest complaint about the tour so far is that our guide is holding our hands too much. I don't want to eat every meal with the 11 people that I spent all day with. I want to break off with a few people and do my own thing. But he insists on group dinners all the time, and it's just easier to go than to protest because, as I said, some people already think I'm a grump.
I went to bed early because we had to be up very early the next morning.
DAY 63: we were up at 5am to go see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Unfortunately I was disappointed; we didn't get very lucky with the sunrise as it was kinda cloudy. It was unfortunate because as a result of getting up early, I was so tired all day.
We spent the day at Angkor visiting Angkor Wat (which is the largest temple in the world) and Ta Prohm. I really liked Ta Prohm (also known as the jungle temple). It was used in the Angelina Jolie film "tomb raider". There was mention of her all over Siem Reap; for example one of the bars had an "Angelina Jolie tomb raider" cocktail on its menu. It seems as though she came to Cambodia, made a movie, had cocktails named after her, stole a child, and went home.
Anyway, back to the temple. It was very Indiana jones, which i love. I was hoping to see indy come running out trying to escape a boulder. No dice though. Lots of vines, greenery, old rocks, instead.
After that we went to Angkor Wat. Unfortunately the front had scaffolding on it because it's under restoration. We were able to go in it and up it though, and the views at the top were lovely.
It was a good experience, but compared to some other sights I've seen, such as the great wall and the pyramids, it wasn't as good. It was very similar to Chichen Itza, only Chichen itza was much better restored and the grounds much more manicured, making it a more pleasant experience. Angkor was pretty rough in places; huge piles of rocks and rubble.
I napped in the afternoon. In the evening I went with my roommate, Kelly, for drinks and then we met the other girls for dinner. We had a very nice Mexican meal. I'm so done with Asian food.....I cant handle any more rice.
After dinner we went for drinks at a few different places, and sampled the tomb raider cocktail. It was a good night.
DAY 64: we finally got to sleep in! Although when my alarm went off at 9am, it was still much too early. We went to a temple outside of the city a bit that was very well restored. It was interested, but nothing to spectacular compared to the previous day's temples.
After we stopped at a land mine museum, which I thought was great. Very interesting. It is a not for profit run by a former child solider of the Khmer Rouge. He had a very interesting story. He did not know his birth date or year, he has only a guess. His parents died when he was very young and was recruited to the Khmer Rouge child army before he was 10. The museum explained that he was given his first gun, an AK47, at the age of 10. There were some horrible stories about some of his young friends who indadvertedly killed themselves because they didn't know how to use a gun.
Anyway, one of his main jobs in the army was to lay land mines. As a child, he didn't understand the consequences of the thousands and thousands of mines he lay. When he got older he defected from the Khmer Rouge. As he had significant experience with land mines, he began to work to undo what he had done as a child. He started an organization which finds and deactivated live mines. Local communities can call him and his team will come clear fields. He estimates that he has deactivated more than 50,000 mines....many of which were on display in the museum, along with this information and other notes. Really interesting I thought.
Additionally, he runs a school and housing community for children who have been injured by land mines, and for some underprivileged. These kids normally would not have the opportunity to go to school, but this program brings them to live in the community and receive a full education (which they would not otherwise get). The living conditions, food and medical treatment are much better than what they would have at at home, so it sounds like a good program.
After that we went on a boat ride on ton sap lake, which is one of the largest fresh water lakes in Asia. This may have been one of the strangest experiences on my trip to date. We got in a boat and rode out in the lake. Along the way there is a large community of people living in very rickety houseboat things on the lake. These people were very poor. It was interesting enough to get a view of how these people lived, but then we got into open water and stopped to watch the sun set and things got strange.
Within seconds 3 or 4 little paddle boats, all filled with women and their children, appeared and grabbed onto the boat. "One dollar, one dollar, one dollar", was the phrase of choice and was said non stop by everyone (including the kids) in all the boats. There were probably 10 people grabbing onto the side of our boat saying "one dollar" at the same time. Meanwhile the children all had huge water snakes wrapped around their necks and were are trying to either get us to take a picture of them (and then give them money) or get us to buy the snake for $1 and hold it ourselves. They would come so close with the snakes and try to put them on us. It was some of the most aggressive begging I have ever encountered and was extremely unpleasant. The presence of snakes made things worse.
On the way back we stopped again (much to my dismay) to see crocodiles. One boat had a croc farm. Like a fish farm, but with crocs. No idea what they were used for.... Meat I guess? Of course this was an invitation for more boats of women and children to harass us. At one point a women aggressively begged me for money while breast feeding a new born. The problem is you can't give any of them money, because A) it encourages that horrible behavior and B) if the others see you give one person money, then you're screwed and you suddenly have 100 people in front of you begging.
Anyway, we did dinner with the group. I managed to sit away from the Brit I don't like, which is a good thing because I don't think I can handle another meal next to him. I'm getting pretty tired of eating as a group.
DAY 65: this day was a long travel day to Phnom Phen. Even though it's not that far a distance, we made a number of stops, there was traffic and the roads were not the best in places.
One stop we made was at a silk farm run by an american and his Cambodian wife. We had an excellent lunch there (home made cambodian food!) before learning about the farm; once again, another great story of someone doing something good in the community.
The American was a Vietnam war vet, and in the 90s he went back to Cambodia with a company who provided prosthetic limbs for land mine victims. He thought he was helping until he saw some people he had previous given limbs to, begging on the street without the prosthetics. Turns out they had sold them. So he wanted to find another way to help. He had no knowledge in silk farming or weaving but found that it was a great activity for those missing an arm or a leg. So he got some training and started a small farm, weaving silk and selling the products. A few years later he had to mix able bodied people as well as disabled, because he heard stories of parents intentionally disabling their children for better opportunities such as that (can you imagine?)
In 2002 he lost his funding from the US, but was able to find good jobs for all his employees at a similar farm. A few years ago he and his wife restarted the farm themselves and they have been very successful. All the employees are women and are paid a very good wage in comparison to what they would be making elsewhere. They are able to work close to home (and don't have to go to Phnom penh and woe in a factory), go home for lunch, and they receive 3 months maternity leave (a real novelty in Cambodia).
We got to meet the women and watch them work and also learned all about how silk is produced and made. It was pretty interesting. At the end I purchased a beautiful handwoven silk scarf (very cheap) as did many other people in the group. He asked us to go show the women which scarves we had purchased so they can identify themselves as the one who made it. He says they get very excited when someone buys one of their scarves and we could see that. The woman who made the one I bought had a huge smile on her face when I held mine up. Overall a really enjoyable stop.
After a few more hours on the road we stopped at "spider town," and area which has lots of very large spiders. I kept thinking of my sister and how much she would have hated it. It was similar to the snake experience. Children everywhere with giant spiders begging aggressively for money. These kids were particularly awful. They would threaten to put spiders on you if you didn't buy fruit from them! And one or two of the older ones yelled at some of the members of my group. I didn't give them a dime, it was a very unpleasant experience. Had they been nicer, I would have been way more interesting in helping. Anyway, I did taste deep fried spider; I ate a leg. It wasn't that bad, but the fact that I knew I was eating spider grossed me out. Overall the children at spider town were worse than the spiders.
We got into Phnom Penh around dinner time and had dinner on the river front. It's a dirty city, but it's apparently gotten a lot better recently. It was an early night; I was exhausted.
DAY 66: this was a tough day. We went to the killing fields and S-21 (a prison). I didn't think I would find the killing fields as hard as I did. There were 129 mass graves at the site we were at, with an estimated 17,000 people killed and buried there.
As a bit of background: during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, millions of civilians were murdered by Pol Pot and his communist army. Their goal was to create a "year zero" society, where everyone went back to being farmers. As such, any educated person, or anyone believed to be an intellectual was killed (and often tortured first). Children were also killed if they were in the way. The people were taken to these sights and murdered, often by bludgeoning in order to save bullets.
Today the graves have filled with grass, however there is still horrific evidence of what occurred there. Pieces of clothing, bone and teeth litter the ground; brought up from the graves over time and erosion. Furthermore, about 10,000 skulls (many bludgeoned) sit in a memorial on the site. It was not easy, but important to see I think. There have been over 19,000 mass graves found to date around the country.
After that we went to S-21, the most notorious prison operated by the Khmer Rouge. Here, intellectuals, accused spies, teachers, etc, were brought and tortured for information. The prison saw thousands of visitors; only 7 were spared. Every other person, was executed at the killing fields, after months or years of torture. The 7 survivors survived because they had artistic ability. They were kept alive to paint picture and create busts and artwork of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. One of the most famous images of Pol Pot today, is a drawing, done by one of the survivors there (http://saminthailand.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/polpot1.jpg) the artist is still alive today.
The torture methods were horrific and I will not repeat them. The cells were shoeboxes, with no beds, toilets, etc. Once again, it was an interested and important stop, but was very hard to take in.
Our guide for the day was fantastic. His father was killed by the Khmer Rouge when he was 6 months old. His father was an educated police man. I don't know how he can spend every day giving these tours, knowing that his father may be among the skulls in the memorial. But he did a fantastic job. Today was a happy day for him though; his wife gave birth last night, so he rushed off right when we were done. I don't know how he was working today, but we all tipped him very well.
We split up this afternoon (yay!!!) and we went to the national palace. It was ok. We've been back at the hotel for a few hours and I've done photos and written this. Tomorrow we head off to Vietnam!
Leah Huay.
Siobhan
- Siobhan
DAY 61: my last day in Thailand. Craig left first thing this morning, so I am alone from now on. Today was a lazy day as I had to change hotels and meet my tour group in the afternoon.
I went to the mall for lunch, before going to the new hotel; my joining point for my 18 day tour though Cambodia and Vietnam. The hotel was ok, but really the $10 per night hostel I stayed at with Craig was much nicer and newer.
Anyway, I met my group for the next 18 days. There are 12 of us; 10 going all the way to Northern Vietnam and 2 leaving us after HCMC. We may be getting a few new people in HCMC- we are definitely getting a new guide.
My group is a very strange mix. Other than myself, there are 3 other girls traveling alone; another Canadian, an Aussie and a Scot. The four of us get along, so that's nice. My roommate is the Scot and she has a similar sarcastic sense of humour as I do, so that's good.
Otherwise there are two older couples, two Swiss guys, and two middle aged Brits. One of the Brits is a good guy, the other one I can't stand. Thankfully he is one of the two leaving us half way through. He is so bizarre. He talks constantly, smokes like a chimney, is always late, and is just generally awkward to talk to. He says "god bless you" about everything. The waitress can say "here is your rice" and he would say "god bless you."
I'm finding I'm having a hard time keeping up with the level of enthusiasm displayed by some members of the group; and they seem to think Im a grump or that i not enjoying myself because Im not quite as excitable about little things. They get excited about mediocre meals and very average sights. I guess I've just been traveling for so long and have seen and done so much that the little things aren't so great anymore. It does bug me though that they pester me a bit about not being super enthusiastic.
An example of an actual conversation....we had stopped in front of an unexciting big tree to take photos (for about 15 bloody minutes) and I was getting a bit restless:
Fellow tour member: "what's wrong? Are you ok? Do you not like the big tree?"
Me: "I'm from British Columbia, I have a tree larger than that in my front yard...."
Anyway, group dinner number one was in Bangkok. It was fine. At least everyone on the tour is very nice and has good Intentions.
DAY 62: we were up early to leave for Cambodia. It was a long day of travel; we left at 7:30am and arrived in Siem Reap around 4pm. It wasn't as bad as expected though. The bus we were in was pretty plush and we stopped numerous times for the "happy house" (what the our guide likes to call the bathroom) as well as for lunch and to walk across the boarder.
Cambodia is unexpectedly flat. Like pancake flat. All you can see in every direction is rice fields and palm trees. It's very green and very pretty. Our guide was quick to point out a "mountain" we passed on the way.....I would describe it more as a small hill.
I've done a bit of reading about Cambodia now and we've heard numerous facts and statistics along the way. Cambodia has a horrible history and the country really still hasn't recovered from the war 30 years ago.
I didn't know much about this country before I came here, so here are some (mostly awful) facts about Cambodia:
- The Genocide from 1975-1979 claimed the lives of 3 million Khmer; between 1/3 and 1/2 of the country's population at the time.
- people who were intelligent, well educated or who spoke more than one language were tortured and murdered during this period. As a result, there is still a lack of teachers, professors and educators for the new generation.
- Today, 40% of the 14 million Khmer are under 15 years old
- The Country's first election was in 1993
- Members of the Khmer Rouge sat in Cambodia's United Nations seat until 1992; they killed half their country and were still allowed to be the Country's representative
- Cambodia has only had peace since 1998.
- there are estimated to be between 3 and 6 million active land mines in Cambodia left over from the war. Every year hundreds of people (mostly children) die or lose limbs by accidentally stepping on them; 30 years later.
- the median average pay is $65 USD per month, or $800 per year.
I had no idea how rough a history this country really has had, until I came here. What is remarkable is how nice the people are. Everyone is always smiling.
We went out for a group dinner again in the old market area, which is a tourist quarter. Lots of restaurants and bars. We went to a place with Cambodian dancing.....the difference between that and the Balinese dancing i saw was negligible.
My biggest complaint about the tour so far is that our guide is holding our hands too much. I don't want to eat every meal with the 11 people that I spent all day with. I want to break off with a few people and do my own thing. But he insists on group dinners all the time, and it's just easier to go than to protest because, as I said, some people already think I'm a grump.
I went to bed early because we had to be up very early the next morning.
DAY 63: we were up at 5am to go see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Unfortunately I was disappointed; we didn't get very lucky with the sunrise as it was kinda cloudy. It was unfortunate because as a result of getting up early, I was so tired all day.
We spent the day at Angkor visiting Angkor Wat (which is the largest temple in the world) and Ta Prohm. I really liked Ta Prohm (also known as the jungle temple). It was used in the Angelina Jolie film "tomb raider". There was mention of her all over Siem Reap; for example one of the bars had an "Angelina Jolie tomb raider" cocktail on its menu. It seems as though she came to Cambodia, made a movie, had cocktails named after her, stole a child, and went home.
Anyway, back to the temple. It was very Indiana jones, which i love. I was hoping to see indy come running out trying to escape a boulder. No dice though. Lots of vines, greenery, old rocks, instead.
After that we went to Angkor Wat. Unfortunately the front had scaffolding on it because it's under restoration. We were able to go in it and up it though, and the views at the top were lovely.
It was a good experience, but compared to some other sights I've seen, such as the great wall and the pyramids, it wasn't as good. It was very similar to Chichen Itza, only Chichen itza was much better restored and the grounds much more manicured, making it a more pleasant experience. Angkor was pretty rough in places; huge piles of rocks and rubble.
I napped in the afternoon. In the evening I went with my roommate, Kelly, for drinks and then we met the other girls for dinner. We had a very nice Mexican meal. I'm so done with Asian food.....I cant handle any more rice.
After dinner we went for drinks at a few different places, and sampled the tomb raider cocktail. It was a good night.
DAY 64: we finally got to sleep in! Although when my alarm went off at 9am, it was still much too early. We went to a temple outside of the city a bit that was very well restored. It was interested, but nothing to spectacular compared to the previous day's temples.
After we stopped at a land mine museum, which I thought was great. Very interesting. It is a not for profit run by a former child solider of the Khmer Rouge. He had a very interesting story. He did not know his birth date or year, he has only a guess. His parents died when he was very young and was recruited to the Khmer Rouge child army before he was 10. The museum explained that he was given his first gun, an AK47, at the age of 10. There were some horrible stories about some of his young friends who indadvertedly killed themselves because they didn't know how to use a gun.
Anyway, one of his main jobs in the army was to lay land mines. As a child, he didn't understand the consequences of the thousands and thousands of mines he lay. When he got older he defected from the Khmer Rouge. As he had significant experience with land mines, he began to work to undo what he had done as a child. He started an organization which finds and deactivated live mines. Local communities can call him and his team will come clear fields. He estimates that he has deactivated more than 50,000 mines....many of which were on display in the museum, along with this information and other notes. Really interesting I thought.
Additionally, he runs a school and housing community for children who have been injured by land mines, and for some underprivileged. These kids normally would not have the opportunity to go to school, but this program brings them to live in the community and receive a full education (which they would not otherwise get). The living conditions, food and medical treatment are much better than what they would have at at home, so it sounds like a good program.
After that we went on a boat ride on ton sap lake, which is one of the largest fresh water lakes in Asia. This may have been one of the strangest experiences on my trip to date. We got in a boat and rode out in the lake. Along the way there is a large community of people living in very rickety houseboat things on the lake. These people were very poor. It was interesting enough to get a view of how these people lived, but then we got into open water and stopped to watch the sun set and things got strange.
Within seconds 3 or 4 little paddle boats, all filled with women and their children, appeared and grabbed onto the boat. "One dollar, one dollar, one dollar", was the phrase of choice and was said non stop by everyone (including the kids) in all the boats. There were probably 10 people grabbing onto the side of our boat saying "one dollar" at the same time. Meanwhile the children all had huge water snakes wrapped around their necks and were are trying to either get us to take a picture of them (and then give them money) or get us to buy the snake for $1 and hold it ourselves. They would come so close with the snakes and try to put them on us. It was some of the most aggressive begging I have ever encountered and was extremely unpleasant. The presence of snakes made things worse.
On the way back we stopped again (much to my dismay) to see crocodiles. One boat had a croc farm. Like a fish farm, but with crocs. No idea what they were used for.... Meat I guess? Of course this was an invitation for more boats of women and children to harass us. At one point a women aggressively begged me for money while breast feeding a new born. The problem is you can't give any of them money, because A) it encourages that horrible behavior and B) if the others see you give one person money, then you're screwed and you suddenly have 100 people in front of you begging.
Anyway, we did dinner with the group. I managed to sit away from the Brit I don't like, which is a good thing because I don't think I can handle another meal next to him. I'm getting pretty tired of eating as a group.
DAY 65: this day was a long travel day to Phnom Phen. Even though it's not that far a distance, we made a number of stops, there was traffic and the roads were not the best in places.
One stop we made was at a silk farm run by an american and his Cambodian wife. We had an excellent lunch there (home made cambodian food!) before learning about the farm; once again, another great story of someone doing something good in the community.
The American was a Vietnam war vet, and in the 90s he went back to Cambodia with a company who provided prosthetic limbs for land mine victims. He thought he was helping until he saw some people he had previous given limbs to, begging on the street without the prosthetics. Turns out they had sold them. So he wanted to find another way to help. He had no knowledge in silk farming or weaving but found that it was a great activity for those missing an arm or a leg. So he got some training and started a small farm, weaving silk and selling the products. A few years later he had to mix able bodied people as well as disabled, because he heard stories of parents intentionally disabling their children for better opportunities such as that (can you imagine?)
In 2002 he lost his funding from the US, but was able to find good jobs for all his employees at a similar farm. A few years ago he and his wife restarted the farm themselves and they have been very successful. All the employees are women and are paid a very good wage in comparison to what they would be making elsewhere. They are able to work close to home (and don't have to go to Phnom penh and woe in a factory), go home for lunch, and they receive 3 months maternity leave (a real novelty in Cambodia).
We got to meet the women and watch them work and also learned all about how silk is produced and made. It was pretty interesting. At the end I purchased a beautiful handwoven silk scarf (very cheap) as did many other people in the group. He asked us to go show the women which scarves we had purchased so they can identify themselves as the one who made it. He says they get very excited when someone buys one of their scarves and we could see that. The woman who made the one I bought had a huge smile on her face when I held mine up. Overall a really enjoyable stop.
After a few more hours on the road we stopped at "spider town," and area which has lots of very large spiders. I kept thinking of my sister and how much she would have hated it. It was similar to the snake experience. Children everywhere with giant spiders begging aggressively for money. These kids were particularly awful. They would threaten to put spiders on you if you didn't buy fruit from them! And one or two of the older ones yelled at some of the members of my group. I didn't give them a dime, it was a very unpleasant experience. Had they been nicer, I would have been way more interesting in helping. Anyway, I did taste deep fried spider; I ate a leg. It wasn't that bad, but the fact that I knew I was eating spider grossed me out. Overall the children at spider town were worse than the spiders.
We got into Phnom Penh around dinner time and had dinner on the river front. It's a dirty city, but it's apparently gotten a lot better recently. It was an early night; I was exhausted.
DAY 66: this was a tough day. We went to the killing fields and S-21 (a prison). I didn't think I would find the killing fields as hard as I did. There were 129 mass graves at the site we were at, with an estimated 17,000 people killed and buried there.
As a bit of background: during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, millions of civilians were murdered by Pol Pot and his communist army. Their goal was to create a "year zero" society, where everyone went back to being farmers. As such, any educated person, or anyone believed to be an intellectual was killed (and often tortured first). Children were also killed if they were in the way. The people were taken to these sights and murdered, often by bludgeoning in order to save bullets.
Today the graves have filled with grass, however there is still horrific evidence of what occurred there. Pieces of clothing, bone and teeth litter the ground; brought up from the graves over time and erosion. Furthermore, about 10,000 skulls (many bludgeoned) sit in a memorial on the site. It was not easy, but important to see I think. There have been over 19,000 mass graves found to date around the country.
After that we went to S-21, the most notorious prison operated by the Khmer Rouge. Here, intellectuals, accused spies, teachers, etc, were brought and tortured for information. The prison saw thousands of visitors; only 7 were spared. Every other person, was executed at the killing fields, after months or years of torture. The 7 survivors survived because they had artistic ability. They were kept alive to paint picture and create busts and artwork of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. One of the most famous images of Pol Pot today, is a drawing, done by one of the survivors there (http://saminthailand.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/polpot1.jpg) the artist is still alive today.
The torture methods were horrific and I will not repeat them. The cells were shoeboxes, with no beds, toilets, etc. Once again, it was an interested and important stop, but was very hard to take in.
Our guide for the day was fantastic. His father was killed by the Khmer Rouge when he was 6 months old. His father was an educated police man. I don't know how he can spend every day giving these tours, knowing that his father may be among the skulls in the memorial. But he did a fantastic job. Today was a happy day for him though; his wife gave birth last night, so he rushed off right when we were done. I don't know how he was working today, but we all tipped him very well.
We split up this afternoon (yay!!!) and we went to the national palace. It was ok. We've been back at the hotel for a few hours and I've done photos and written this. Tomorrow we head off to Vietnam!
Leah Huay.
Siobhan
- Siobhan
Location:ถนนพระราม 1,Wang Mai,Thailand
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