We booked our bus via our hostel in Siem Reap. It took around 5hours to reach the huge and very busy capital city. My first impression wasn’t great when I groggily exited the bus and was immediately confronted by a very pushy tuktuk driver who was determined that Luke and I would be getting a lift with him. Haggling is an absolute must to agree on a sensible price because you can guarantee as a tourist you are told a much inflated price. Pushy tuktuk drivers became a running joke when staying in Phnom Penh, as you literally cannot walk 5meters down the street before one is calling at you or pulling over beside you to offer a lift. No one seems to just walk anywhere in these countries.
Whilst staying in the capital we visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields. Unfortunately Cambodia is a country with a very devastating and destructive history. I knew only a little of the extreme brutality that ravaged this country. For that reason I am mostly going to write about what I learnt about this deeply troubling time. Between the years of 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge claimed the lives of almost 2million lives. To put this into perspective, at that time this was around a fifth of the country’s population that was murdered. The Khmer Rouge was an extremist party formed as a branch of communism. Their leader was an evil man called Pol Pot, who believed he could cleanse the country of western influence and boost the economy by pushing people from the cities back into rural areas to work. This regime carried out at S21 – a secret facility in Phnom Penh city – was enforced by a man called Duch, who oversaw the terror and torture inflicted there. Originally a secondary school, S21 became a place of the most cruel torture imaginable, as well as a jail for thousands of innocent people, who were deemed guilty by the Khmer Rouge. Their believed crimes were fraternising with either the CIA or the Cambodian resistance. These poor prisoners were men, women and children, not all Cambodian and definitely not deserving of the disgusting and deeply disturbing treatment inflicted in this place. Now, S21 is a tourist site which sounds completely absurd and inappropriate considering what I’ve just said. However, the site is recognised by the UN as a place of great sadness and is open for public display with the interest of educating and preventing of any such event ever occurring again. We purchased an audio guide and made our way through the site, entering some of the rooms used for torture and mass detention. Other rooms were filled with records and photographs of the victims and perpetrators. I am sad to say there are also graphic photographs of some of the grievous crimes committed here, featuring deceased victims whose bodies were abandoned. The guards could find themselves prisoners if they accidentally killed someone, as this was not the purpose of this place according to their leader. I can’t comprehend the purposeful rational of S21 however it is stated that confessions were sought after. How they got a confession didn’t matter, it didn’t even need to be true, but they did this to disillusion people and justify their actions. From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, however the real number is actually still unknown due to destruction of records.
After our tour ended at S21, we went for a drink to cool down and reflect on what we had read and seen. We decided to go to the Killing Fields the same day, as honestly I didn’t want to drag out the experience any longer than I had to. We did feel it was a necessity to visit these horrid places, as a mark of respect for those who were affected and to gain a deeper understanding the country we had travelled to. The Killing Fields site is a 30minute tuktuk ride out of the city. Along with another audio guide, we walked around what now appears as a tranquil and peaceful site. This could not be further from the truth of what actually transpired here. Mass graves take up majority of the site. Although many have been cleared and those found reburied with dignity elsewhere, you are told to always stay on the marked path as human remains are still coming to the surface despite the many years that have passed. Victims were brought here in truckloads and told lies that they were being relocated to a new home. What actually happened was that they were brutally murdered by the Khmer Rouge. Trucks with initially turned up every 2-3weeks, by the end of the 1970’s, would arrive daily unloading up to 300 prisoners delivered for mass slaughter. The central monument features hundreds of human skulls and other bones. You can see pieces of material amongst the earth, presumably bits of clothes still preserved.
It is probably one of the most horrifying and tragic places I have ever been and ever will be. Both Luke and myself have visited Auschwitz in Poland and can only compare the feeling provoked by this place as similar to that. It is hard to imagine a reality where such evil, gruesome and inhumane treatment of people was a daily occurrence. This kind of experience does demand self-reflection and how we treat others. I will never go back there and can only hope I will never have to visit such a place in the future.
By the end of the 5days spent in Phnom Penh we were very ready to move on. We arranged passage to Phu Quoc, a Vietnamese island, as our next destination. Not all of the places we visited whilst in the city were dark and depressing, as we did visit a very cute cat cafe one morning. Therefore to end this blog post I’m just going to put in some cute kitty pics. Hope this lightens the mood slightly after reading the above.
Gone Travelling 
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