Westies Go East: Mekong Day 4

Today we met our Cambodian guide Su Pau, who would now be with us for the rest of the journey. He was a lovely man, whose history was worked into the experiences we now had in Phnom Penh. More later.

We thought long and hard whether we wanted to do the trip today which started at the Killing Fields and then Prison 21. We had both seen the film years ago and knew some of the history, did we really want to see it first hand. But we decided that we were in Cambodia and that to understand being there was also about the recent history.

So we went. The first stop was the killing field. This is of about 138 that they have discovered so far. And we understand that over ten thousand people were slaughtered in the most barbaric and inhuman way possible on this one site. Men, women and children for no other reason than that they were educated, or not farmers. Over two years Pot Pol killed a third of his own people, about two million, and was only stopped when the Thais invaded to stop it.

This is the only photo I took here. Why would you want images of burial pits with bones sticking up through the mud. or toys of the children killed there or clothing of the dead dug up. It was heartbreaking, the barbarity and cruelty that happened here.

This was the shrine built afterward which contain the famous image of the skulls piled up. We did not go inside.

Next it was to Prison 21, right inside the city. It was truly awful what happened here, and there were graphic images everywhere. Whay is horrific was to find out that the majority of the torturers and killers were between 13 and 18 and had been brainwashed to do the killings by Pol Pot.

There were photos of whole families from 85 Year old grandmother's down to a six weeks old baby. If one member of your family was arrested they killed the whole family.

Again this is the memorial to the people who died here. You would not want to see any other images.

Later on Su Pau told us some of his family history. He lost twenty members of his family. He was eight and his sister was two when they were taken away and put into a forced slave labour camp on a farm. Six weeks later he had to watch his sister being beaten to death with wooden sticks as a lesson to the other children because the guard thought she was lazy. She was two... How do you ever come to terms with life after that.

Sue Pau, we got to know a lovely, gentle man.

Enough of that part of their history. Everyone felt they needed to move away from that time

Did you know that Cambodia is a democracy with an elected government and a constitutional monarchy! No I didn't! But then it isn't really true! Yes they have a King, but the government is a one party state, there is no freedom of speech or any other freedom at all. The government is totally corrupt and as greedy as anywhere else. The people are not particularly happy, and we will wait to see what happens there in the future.

Now onto more positive things. The people.

The one big change we saw from Vietnam was fewer scooters and a lot more cars on the roads. And big 4x4s at that, Mercedes, Audi and Lexus everywhere. Somebody has got money.

Central Phnom Penh

Our next trip was to the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda. It was a stunning site and frankly you could have spent all day there. It's apparent that we have simply not enough time here.