There were some lovely parts of today and I will come to them in a minute, but I want to start with the important stuff.
Today we made our way to both the killing fields and the S-21 Prison.
The Khmer Rouge committed atrocities at a level of insanity that I just can't comprehend. During the 4 years they controlled Cambodia, over 3 million people are thought to have died. The majority died of starvation and disease caused by the policy where the cities were emptied and everyone was put into forced labour to turn the country to an agrarian society. As I look around Phnom Penh it is almost impossible to imagine it empty of people.
However hundreds of thousands of people were also executed. They executed the educated, doctors, teachers, government officials. They executed the former military leaders. They executed ordinary people who were informed upon. They even executed their own who had fallen out of favour. And when they executed someone, they didn't just kill that person, they killed their whole family down to babies to ensure there was no one left to exact retribution on them later.
Everyone has heard about the killing fields, and has probably seen the famous photos of piles of skulls. It is one thing to hear about, it is another thing entirely to see the dozens of excavated pits, the tree where babies were smashed against to kill them, the hoes and bamboo poles that were used to kill, and the skulls, carefully categorised by age and sex, piled high. Over 20,000 people are thought to have been murdered at the killing fields outside Phnom Penh - and there are further killing fields across this beautiful country.
The S-21 prison in Phnom Penh was in the pre-war days the Tuol Sleng Primary School and the Tuol Svay High School. Its classrooms, playgrounds and exercise equipment were grotesquely transformed into holding cells, torture chambers and documentation offices. Frangipani and palm trees which were planted for the children, instead stood witness to their play equipment becoming torture implements. The wide shady verandas were fenced with barbed wire and the large classrooms bricked into tiny holding cells with the windows glassed in and ventilation blocked up to hide the screams of torture.
One of the amazing things was that each of the prisoners was photographed and records kept, so now the walls are lined with the faces of those who were tortured to confession there before being taken to the killing fields. Once at S-21 there was no other outcome. No one was ever arrested by mistake - torture was extreme and eventually a confession was found. Walking through rooms lined with row upon row of photos - old, young, men, women, children - it excruciating.
Currently there is an amazing exhibition by Peter Klashorst of paintings based on the photos. It is stunning yet repellent at that same time.
Seeing these things has made for some somber moods, but as our guides tell us, it is important that the world understands what happens here, so that it may never happen again. I wish that this could be the case.
But today hasn't only been about the dark side of Cambodian history. This morning Rob, Megs and Mikey went to a Khmer cooking school! They started early at the local markets, which was an intense experience. They could barley walk through for all the food and people, fresh meat in the open, piles of vegetables etc. From there they moved to the open rooftop cookery school. There they first learnt to make banana flower sausages which tasted incredible, followed by making yellow and red curry pastes. Using the curry paste they made a red chicken curry made with the curry paste they had made which they then got to eat. Everyone should hit them up for a taste of Khmer food when we get back.
In the meantime Petra, Kieran, Jules and I headed out into the countryside for a tour on ATVs (quad bikes) before we visited the killing fields. We were taken out by Tuk Tuk, the local transport which was awesome fun.
The tour was great! We made our way though small villages and along between paddy fields. There were smiling waving kids at every turn and we gave out a bunch of gifts we had brought with us. Our tour guide Sun, was born in France, his parents fled just prior to the Khmer Rouge coming to power. He was fantastically knowledgeable about the area and we had a great time.
After the tour we came back to the hotel to tag team the others out there, and after washing about half of Cambodia off ourselves, we headed to find lunch. A local restaurant looked promising (by which I mean it looked open and like it had air conditioning - it is still really hot) so we headed in and had an absolutely delicious lunch of squid in a black bean sauce, special fish in a hot pot and a spicy chicken dish, all watched over by a large moray eel in a tank.
By then we were just a block away from the place we had massages yesterday so we headed in again. I had the most brilliant foot massage, it was magnificent.
Everyone regrouped at the hotel and we headed off for dinner. We had a fantastic dinner at a place Megs and Oran found yesterday. It was another great meal.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped for icecream then Megs, Oren and Rob accompanied me on a search for wireless that would work with my laptop. We found it in a burger joint where we have been drinking coke as a pretext to using the wireless.
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