From Battambang, we decided to take the cheap bus to Phnom Penh. Bad idea. Here's a quick synopsis: we were the only tourists on the bus. The air conditioning was broken and it was very hot. The bus trip was supposed to be 5 hours and it took 9 hours. The aisle was packed with people and goods so you could not move around. They were blaring some of the worst possible music on old crackling speakers. Suffice to say, we were quite happy to get off the bus in Phnom Penh to say the least.
Valentine's dinner
We ended up spending 4 days in Phnom Penh because we had to wait until Feb 15th to get into Vietnam. One of the days we hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around to various places around the city. Our first stop was at the National Museum where they have a bunch of the original carvings from around Siem Reap (Angkor Wat). They had brought them here originally because people were stealing them to sell on the black market.
****Warning**** The rest of the blog is not for the faint at heart.
Our next 2 stops involved the Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia. In North America, we don't hear very much about the genocide that took place in Cambodia in the 70s, so I'll give you a brief description. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmers) took over the country by force. Their leader's name was Pol Pot. Like many countries around the world, many Cambodians had moved from rural areas to urban areas to try and make a living. But the Khmer Rouge wanted to have a country full of farmers and non-educated people. Anyone who apposed this idea or spoke up was killed on the spot or tortured and killed. Then their whole family was killed, so there wouldn't be anyone who seeked revenge. Schools were shut down and some were turned into prisons. They accused people of fake crimes like being involved with the CIA or KGB and tortured them until they confessed. They forced people to work like slaves for nothing and would only feed them a few kernels of rice, so many people starved. The numbers vary but it is thought that 3 million of the 8 million Cambodians living at the time were killed! Just terrible stuff. No foreign media was allowed and nobody was permitted in or out of the country. The borders were covered in land mines to deter people from fleeing.
The first of the two stops was Tuol Sleng museum. It had been a school before the Khmer Rouge and was turned into a prison. We listened to a guide as we walked through as he described the living conditions, the torture that occurred, and the many executions. Quite a sad place. I can't even imagine how horrible it must have been.
Our next stop was just outside of Phnom Penh at one of the many killing fields that was used by the Khmer Rouge. There was a very informative audio tour with head phones as we walked around that told the story. Almost all people killed did not know that they were going to their death as they had been told that they were going to be moved. Most of the buildings that were there during the operation were ripped down and used by the farmers in the area after the Khmer Rouge were ousted by the Vietnamese army in 1979.
There was mass graves with bones still sticking out of the ground. In the center, there was a memorial to all the people that had been killed that contained over 9000 skulls held in a glass casing.
At the end of the day we were left emotionally drained and wondering how the human race can do these things to each other. The Cambodians themselves were very open about it all and were not afraid to tell their personal accounts of the time. It was very different to what I expected.
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment