The border crossing by coach was a lot smother than expected. We had a comfortable coach that gave you free wifi! And drinking water as a plus the attendant spoke English and did the visa for us. $25 dollars paid for the visa a casual 1 hour wait and away we went. The roads are a bit bumpy in cambodia but the 6 hour journey from siagon to phom pehn was overall good and it only cost $11 (US).
Wow.. first impressions of cambodia are a lot different than how I imagined. I was expecting something similar to laos, no infrastructure or modrrn building. Instead I was greeted with a cleaner Bangkok.
There was a mix up at our hostel and we ended up sleeping in the store room on mattresses. Lol
So following our day trip to the war museum in vietnam, we wanted to visit the appropriately named the killing fields. This is the final resting place of thousands of people, innocent men, women and children were murdered on mass by the Khmer Rouge. The audio track given on arrival details stories of survivors of the khmer rouge and details of how the people were murdered. Most were bludgeoned to death as bullets were expensive and in short supply. It was the uneducated peasants from the countryside carrying out the orders of Pol Pot in the name of revolution and communist support. Pol Pot wanted to make cambodian society completely self sufficient including medicine. This meant the murder of all intellectuals such as teachers, doctors and even people who wore glasses. Millions were murdered in sites such as this all over the country in mass gaves. I will never forget the tree in the middle of the field. It is covered in flowers and gifts of bracelets from visitors. This is the tree used by the guards to hit babies heads against to murder them in front of their mothers. The regime wanted no one to grow up and take revenge. At the entrance there is a memorial to those that died with a powerful display of skulls recovered. Peoples clothes are also on display.
Moving on we visited the notorious S-21 prison. This was a former school transformed into a torture chamber and prison for 12, 000 people. In some of the rooms there is metal beds with chains for prisoners and some rooms even had blood stains on the floor. Like the nazis, they photographed everyone who passed through. The pictures show the frightened looks of the individuals. There was one of a woman crying holding her baby.
The khmer rouge was overturned by the Vietnamese in 1979. In 5 years the khmer rouge killed an estimated 3 million people, 1/3 of the population. Pol Pot was able to die of old age in 1998. What personally angered me was the west still regarded pol pot as the leader of cambodia and even gave him a seat in the UN.
Last week saw the conviction of 2 of the leaders of Khmer Rouge in their 80's for crimes against humanity.
We hired a tuk tuk driver for the day at $20 (us). We shared the tuk tuk with 2 girls from America.
