It is now Cambodia New Year for the next 3-5 days and so many local businesses are not open. Headed to buffet breakfast. We decided to split the tour we had planned over 2 days as it is just too hot to be out and about after lunch. So we planned to do the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum. Sam our Tuk Tuk driver picked us up and off we went. We started at Choeung Ek – Killing Fields. Between 1975 and 1978 about 17,000 men, women, children and infants who had been detained and tortured at S-21 were transported to the extermination camp of Choeung Ek. They were often bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting precious bullets. The remains of 8985 people, many of whom were bound and blindfolded, were exhumed in 1980 from mass graves in this one-time longan orchard; 43 of the 129 communal graves here have been left untouched. Fragments of human bone and bits of cloth are scattered around the disinterred pits. More than 8000 skulls, arranged by sex and age, are visible behind the clear glass panels of the Memorial Stupa, which was erected in 1988. It is a peaceful place today, masking the horrors that unfolded here several decades ago. From here we headed to the Genocide Museum, the infamous Tuol Sleng High School, which was turned into the S-21 prison camp. It was here, at this unassuming high school in the heart of the city, that the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime unfolded. It was a detention centre for prisoners of the regime, where detainees were tortured and executed on a regular basis. The school is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and as you tour the museum, you discover the brutality of the Khmer Rouge documented in the photos and memorabilia, including torture instruments. It was quite a moving and disturbing day, listening to survivors recount their stories. We headed back for lunch at the Skybar and then a lazy afternoon. Headed out for dinner to Fish&Chip where we had a salad and a pasta dish. No fish of course.
