So where in the capital...huge place so many motor bikes...the trafic is crazy. People truning every which way..there are lanes painted on the street but they for sure don't use them. we rode in the back of a tuk tuk all day. What is a tuk tuk you ask? A passenger trailer pulled by a moped....they drive as crazy as the motor bkies...squeeing in between two big trucks riding on sidewalks....a few near misses. I was white knuckling it the whole trip!!!
We visited some places yesterday a piece of Cabodia's dark recent past. Starting 1975ish through 1978 Cambodia was "liberated" by the Kameher Rouge. The rode in and changed life for the worst. They cleared the capital city forcing everyone to leave everything a take on a rural life. Thier goal was to create a self sustaning society made of loyal workers. That being said all those of power and of any intellecence where tortured and killed.
We started our day at S-21 once a place of childhood glee and learning turned into a tortue and death camp. A chilling place, for the very devices and rooms in which this horrors occured where visited. I'm not going into detail about the torture but it's hard to belive thing like that still wentand goes on so late in our history.
Our next stop was the killing fields outside the city. People where brought in by the truck load with the understanding the were there to work. soon to discover death was just around the corner. No one was spared even children and babies. Thier deaths and beatings where to prevent a uprising in the future. There was a tree specifically set aside for the beating and death of children. Mass graves every where and even in the walk ways( paths) bone and cloths could be seen sticking out of the ground. A chilling place...a huge stupa (shrine) was built to honor and show respect for the many that parised....the stupa was filled top to bottom with bone of only a small portion of those who lost thier lives...
A sad day of reflection......
