Our plan was to take the bus to PHenom Penh from Siem Reap but the day started off badly! We were supposed to be picked up at 7:30, never happened so the hotel gave us a ride to the bus station. We were supposed to leave at 8:30, never happened. Finally at 9:30 we left on a really old bus that stopped everywhere and 7.5 hours of mostly bumpy roads we arrived in PP.
Here was a sign on the bus...
We were happy to get to PP and check into our hotel which was centrally located on a quiet street...
We relaxed the rest of the day around the pool and had one of the best suppers for awhile at a wine bar. I had very tasty pasta and Don had cordon blue, ( not a great picture as my injured camera has no flash)
We started out to walk the next morning to the Russian Market, difficult to walk...
As the sidewalks are gone, vehicles are parked on the sidewalk and motorcycles trying to get around the traffic ride on the sidewalk. We felt like we were in a video game trying to avoid the obstacles and that's not counting trying to cross wide streets where no one has regard for pedestrians. The traffic here is totally chaotic, the worse traffic we have seen since our visit to Vietnam years ago.
While we were walking we passed a street with rows of shops with wicker furniture. We stopped to talk to one owner about his products and he knew that in Nortn Ametica his product sells for many times the price people pay here. So coming soon to Wicker Emporium...
Who is easier to spot Don or the monks?
Finally made it to the Market as Don was still trying to chase down some Columbia clothes but again no luck...
It was so hot that we decided to take a tuk tuk to the Genocide Museum, a testament to the Pol Pot regime that the Cambodians had to endure in the mid 1970s, that was after being bombed by the American during the Secret War as was Laos, years of civil war and then the Khmer Rouge. How this country has survived and moved on is unbelieveable!
A little history lesson as to how Pol Pot took power before talking about his regime of terror...
By 1962, Pol Pot had become leader of the Cambodian Communist Party and was forced to flee into the jungle to escape the wrath of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia. In the jungle, Pol Pot formed an armed resistance movement that became known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) and waged a guerrilla war against Sihanouk's government.
In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was ousted, not by Pol Pot, but due to a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup. An embittered Sihanouk retaliated by joining with Pol Pot, his former enemy, in opposing Cambodia's new military government. That same year, the U.S. invaded Cambodia to expel the North Vietnamese from their border encampments, but instead drove them deeper into Cambodia where they allied themselves with the Khmer Rouge.
From 1969 until 1973, the U.S. intermittently bombed North Vietnamese sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, killing up to 150,000 Cambodian peasants. As a result, peasants fled the countryside by the hundreds of thousands and settled in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh.
All of these events resulted in economic and military destabilization in Cambodia and a surge of popular support for Pol Pot.
By 1975, the U.S. had withdrawn its troops from Vietnam. Cambodia's government, plagued by corruption and incompetence, also lost its American military support. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, consisting of teenage peasant guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh and on April 17 effectively seized control of Cambodia.
On that day in Phenom Penh and all other cities in Cambodia people were forced at gunpoint to relocate to the countryside and the cities were empty. Pol Pot quickly worked to establish a rural agricultural society where everyone farmed to provide food for the state. No one could own possessions, people were given numbers instead of names and their life was very difficult especially the city people who had no idea about farming but had to work to produce an unreasonable amount of rice decreed by Pol Pot. Many people died in this process.
Anyone with education, soft hands or glasses were seen to be enemies of the state and were imprisoned, many of them here at Toul Sleng, a former school turned into a prison and interrogation headquarters. More than 20000 were tortured here..men, women and children. They were constantly interrogated in order for them to tell the government who the traitors were and what they had done, in most cases there was nothing to tell but the prisoners had to write fake confessions.
They were brought into former classrooms chained to these beds and tortured...
Here is a picture of one of the prisoners found when the school was liberated...
The place is left much as it was found to provide a reminder of what happened here. The guards put up barbed wire so that prisoners couldn't jump to their deaths....
The regime made meticulous records for their files, photographing and taking biographies...
Homemade leg shackles of different sizes for the inmates as they were often shackled together for weeks...
The Khmer Rouge also forced marriages of many couples so they could populate the new Cambodia and there was a very moving exhibit of women's stories of the abuse they suffered during this time and after...
Another exhibit of messages left for the Cambodian people from people around the world...
On December 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks. On January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed. The Vietnamese then installed a puppet government consisting of Khmer Rouge defectors.
Shortly after that the invaders found this Center and the 17 prisoners who were killed when the Khmer Rouge was retreating. In the middle of the courtyard they are buried...
There is also a monument to the over 20000 people who died here with their names inscribed in gold on the black slabs around it...
We spent a couple of hours here looking at the exhibits and listening to the stories of people who lived during this time as the audio tour was really well done. It was so sad and terrible what human beings can do to each other and even to their own people. We left feeling somewhat shaken.
The next day we visited " The Killing Fields", the largest being about 15km south of the city. Here is where they would taken the prisoners to be executed and buried in mass graves. They killed them by hitting them in the head, cutting their throats and other methods that didn't require bullets.
There were a series of story boards indicating what happened at each stage of the process, this one shows the prisoners blindfolded being unloaded of trucks before they were executed...
Here is where after the regime fell, the invaders found thousands of people buried in mass graves, some of which have been excavated and others still not...
Here you can see the holes in the ground that were the mass graves.
Markers on the unexcavated graves.
This grave had 450 victims.
Some of the graves still have bone fragments and clothes left in them as they tend to come out in the rainy season...
This tree was near a mass grave of children and mothers. The soldiers smashed the young children to death on the tree and then threw them into the graves. They did this in the front of the mothers before they killed them.
Bracelets left as memorials to the victims...
This was only one of many killing fields across Cambodia, many which have not been found. In all over 2 million people died in this Genocide, by killing, starving or dying of such a hard life. To put it in perspective 1 in every 4 Cambodias did not survive the Khmer Rouge and those that did were scarred for life. Again we listened to many stories of victims and what they endured as well as stories from the soldiers. They were basically brainwashed to believe the peasant class were the " New People" and everyone else was a traitor to the state. They were often poor, illiterate young men that Pol Pot promises a better life so they did as they were told. Hard to believe isn't it?
The government has erected a memorial here with 17 stories holding bones and skulls gathered from around the property. Every year there is a Memorial Day held to remember what happened and hope that history does not repeat itself.
Pol Pot retreated into Thailand with the remnants of his Khmer Rouge army and began a guerrilla war against a succession of Cambodian governments lasting over the next 17 years. After a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, he finally lost control of the Khmer Rouge. In April 1998, 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79.
Again we were very upset by the visit the thought of what these people went through, there were times I could not view all of the exhibits as they were too disturbing! I just hope that Cambodia goes forward in Peace and Prosperity.
Phenom Penh is a city of 2 million people in the midst of a booming economy, everywhere there were construction signs indicating they were funded by the Chinese...
There are wide boulevards...
Beautiful parks...
French influenced buildings...
We dropped in for a drink and a snack at the FCC, the Foreign Correpondents Club where all the journalists hung out and reported from during the many years of conflict in Cambodia...
There are many temples around but being templed out we did not visit them...
Tried to get into the Royal Palace but again nothing covering my arms so not allowed, just in past the gate...
The city is located at a convergence of three rivers,the largest being the Tonle Sap which flows out of the lake we visited to the floating village...
There is a 3km walkway along the river which as the evening came on was crowded with people, it seems the best part of the day to avoid the heat...
Lots of fortune tellers...
Worshippers..
Sellers, these ladies were on the way to the market to sell their food which was sticky rice cooked in bamboo...
As we were walking we also saw the Independence Monumnet which takes up a prominent place in the Center of the city...
The gardens in front of the monumnet...
After a long walk we got back just as the sun was setting over the city...
Then on our last night here in the city we finally connected with Helen and Jim Stuckless who have been travelling around the same area since January. And the funny thing was they were staying in a hotel on the same street, so we got together for a few drinks and a chance to share some travel stories! It was nice to see someone from home and we had a great evening together!
We enjoyed Phenom Penh as there was lots to see and do, great restaurants and a good vibe to the city...now on to the BEACH for our last week in SE Asia!
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