Horrific past, bright present

* Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday

On Friday, Ame got up and went to work and I sadly had a very dodgy tummy and had to skip it so I'd be good for the afternoon.  They were leaving early that day so it was no biggie really.  Ame spent the morning putting up the other frame for Project 9 with some of the new-this-week lads and playing badminton with the kids. She also took a lot of pictures of the kids. Here's one of them looking very thoughtful.

After a blocker pill (if you don't know, don't ask!) I was all set for our 14:00 taxi to PP.  We decided on a taxi because the bus was at 13:30 (too early) or 15:30 (too late) and with four of us, it was only $5 more per person than the bus.  And a little bit of luxury with AC!

It was a good ride down, some good chats and before you knew it we were rolling into PP just as the sun set around 18:30.  It was all a bit manic as we piled out of the taxi and up the stairs of our guest house.  Our guest house was a bit manic too.  But fortunately, it was clean and nice, $10 for our room per night with air con and a TV.  Not bad really. 

A quick change, and we were down having a little drinkie in Capitol Guesthouse bar with Claire.  she is one week into her new job here as a pre-school teacher, and was living just down the road form our guest house now.  Then we went off down the river front and had a good first night exploring the bars, restaurants and even went to a rock bar with a live band playing ACDC and Dire Straits. Me, Ame and Sarah sloped off at 01:30 so that we were ready and rested for our day of tourist depression at the tragic sights of Phnom Pehn the next day.

Saturday, began with a quick breakfast, a quick negotiation with a tuk-tuk driver about fees for the day and we were off in our leopard skin, pink curtained tuk-tuk (quite unexpected!) to our first stop of the day:  the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.  I had read a few things about the Khmer Rouge and understood a little of what went on.  I knew the detail was going to be horrific but some of it even exceeded that.

For those who don't know, the Khmer Rouge took control of Phnom Penh in 1975 via military force.  Their main manifesto (if you could call it that) was to return the country to Year Zero.  This meant remove all Western influences, abolish class and make the whole population go and work on the rice fields.  They began the evacuation of PP on the day after they took control.  Anyone who disobeyed was killed immediately.  Families were split up and sent to the other sides of country.  Any political enemies, intellectuals, lawyers, monks and many more were sent to S-21 (we'll get onto that horribleness later) for torture and "re-education" (along with their families) and then a few days later they were sent 30 mins outside to Choeung Ek for execution.  The executions were most brutal as the regime did not "waste bullets" on these people so they were bludgeoned to death with axes and hammers amongst other things.  Some were made to dig their own graves before they we beaten to death. 

The site itself now has a massive beautiful Buddhist stupa commemorating the thousands that we murdered here.  In the 1980's, some of the mass graves were exhumed and now 8000 skulls of the victims are in the stupa on different levels along with other bones and clothing that was found in the ground.  Many mass graves remain untouched, one with more than 450 bodies in.

It is a very solemn place and contains a lot of information.  Here is a plaque at the main site.  If you have time, read it.  It conveys what the people of the country have to say on the matter.

The most shocking things we learnt was that whole families were killed including babies.  Some were killed by being held by the feet and beaten against trees.  This was so they could not grow up and seek revenge in the future.  I have no idea how people are capable of this.  Guards at the Choeung Ek would have murdered many many people, went home from "work", slept and then gone back to commit the same the next day.  It is sick to the extreme and it is scary to think this sort of thing happened 35 years ago. 

The head of the S-21known as "Duch" is now in custody and has confessed many more horrors to the world about what went on at Killing Fields.  Other members of the Khmer Rouge are also finally on trial after decades of the country trying to set up the trials.  The Khmer Rouge regime fell in 1979 after Vietnam invaded.  It is estimated they killed a quarter of the population in those 4 years.  But just to be clear, the party's influence did not end then.  There was many thousands more killed right up to the end of 1990's.  Some people in our village had relatives murdered by viking-like rampages from the Khmer Rouge in the late 90's.  The Khmer Rouge has now officially fallen apart brought on by Pol Pot's death (or murder) in 1998.  So realistically speaking, Cambodia has only had just over 10 years to really start rebuilding.

So next it was onto S-21.  This area was a normal secondary school before 1975 and looks similar to schools in UK.  Without knowing, you'd have never of guessed what things happened here.  The Khmer Rouge turned it into a detention and torture facility for their time in power.  People would be tortured to near death within the class rooms and temporary cells in the complex of buildings.

Victims would be hung to near death, electrocuted and beaten within an inch of their life until they "confessed" to what ever the hell they we meant to be confessing about.  Like utter sick b*stards, the regime kept meticulous records of each prisoner and took many photos before and after torture.  And this was happening all over the country but this was the worse and scaled up area.

Believe me, there are some VERY VERY explicit photos of torture here.  I would strongly recommend not taking kids under 16 to this place.  But again, it was worth going to because as it says in the information at the buildings, the more people who know about the horrors that happened in Pol Pot's regime, could prevent this happening somewhere else in world in the future.  It will be interesting asking our parents about all this when we get back to understand what the UK (and the world) knew at the time.  It seems so recent and affected every Cambodian family.  Only in the past 10 years has the country started to recover from that tragic period.

So, safe to say, we had had our fill of heaviness for the day when our driver met us again at 14:00.  For a change of tempo we headed for lunch at a very positive place: Friends Cafe. This is by an organisation called Friends that trains street kids and orphans how to run a cafes, restaurants and other businesses. The food was fantastic and all the profits go to the charity.  

After this, I headed back for a sleep whilst Ame and Sarah went off to Russian Market; she bought a nice little pure silver anklet for $4. 

We met the others at the Foreign Correspondence Club (FCC) for happy hour.  This is a lovely French Colonial building on the river front and is a very popular ex-pat haunt along with tourists.  It's nice a chilled out, a little pricey but worth it for the atmosphere.  Then we had a few more jars around the river and a few chuckles.  Off to bed at 00:00.

Sunday, we kept it super easy and unemotional.  We got up fairly early and went to the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, after a really good breakfast on the riverside.  It was very serene in there and the architecture was absolutely brilliant.  We had a bloody good walk about and it was very enjoyable.  The King of Cambodia lives in this complex but you can't go anywhere near his dwellings.  The public stuff is good enough though.  This is the throne hall that is still used for special occasions.

Part of the Palace ground (about 500m squared) contains the Silver Pagoda.  This is tiled with Silver tiles, a lot of which were plundered by the Khmer Rouge and so part of it is covered and some have crude restoration applied (looked like cellotape on the edges).  Inside, it also contains an Emerald Buddha (again not blooming Emerald just like in Bangkok) and also a live size gold Buddha containing 2000 diamonds, some 25 carat.  It was nice enough.

The surrounding area outside the pagoda had lots of gardens and trimmed bushes:  some in interesting animal shapes.

After leaving the Palace we went to the Friends clothes shop and had a look at all the clothing the street kids had produced. It was all very trendy and well made. Sarah bought a t-shirt which was good. Next it was off to Tamarind, a Morrocan Khmer fusion restaurant where we had some great tapas.

We next moved on back to the river side and said goodbye to Sarah and Bill who were getting the bus that afternoon. Me and Ame hung around all afternoon around there. Having a little explore and drinking coffee whilst playing cards in a few cafes.

We got into FCC for happy hour again, but this time managed to get a really good balcony table which then spent the next 30 hanging off taking pictures of the streets below. It was great for people spotting. We saw Monks...

... an elephant (poor little thing - I hope he's treated nicely)...

... and even some familiar friends!

Me, Ame, Aaron and Clare went off for a few more happy hour drinks else where including a posh 5 star hotel and had dinner with Robin, our volunteering co-ordinator in PP.

On Monday, we caught our bus back to Siem Reap at 09:00. It was a bit of a boring 5 hour ride other than our brief stop at at a road side for a loo stop where one second we were being offered corn, the next deep fried spiders! And there were live ones too. I got back in the bus. I'm not dealing with 6 inch spiders.

It was great to get back to good old sleepy, calm Siem Reap. Me and Ame took some time to sort out of visa extension for Cambodia and also our Vietnam visa. So all round it had been a very eventful weekend. We learnt a lot and also had a lot of fun! But most of all we are so glad that we are not just traveling around, but also putting a bit back into the community, which has suffered so much more than we can imagine in the past 35 years.