Phnom Penh


After a short, early flight, we arrived in Phnom Penh, the Capital and largest city of Cambodia.  We toured a local museum and checked into our hotel.

On Tuesday, we took a cyclo ride to the the Royal Palace, the home if the King of Cambodia.  The king is a figure head with no real power.  The current king is a single, ballet dancer with no children, no girlfriend and no heir. 



The country is controlled by a central, mainly China - influenced, communist party and the leader of the party is a  former follower of Pol Pot (short for POLitical POTential) inwho defected and was protected by Vietnam - a traditional enemy of Cambodia.  Pol Pot was the former leader of the Khmer Rouge (from 1975 - 1979) who was responsible for one of the worst genocide operations in our lifetime.

We visited one of the 160 "Killing Fields" where Pol Pot and his followers murdered approximately three million citizens (25% of the population) in his perverted quest to eliminate all people in the country who might stand in the way of the establishment of an egalitarian, agricultural society. “Killing Fields”. Meant just that - there were fields where people were brought, killed, and buried in mass graves.  We saw one of the killing trees where victums had their heads smashed and were thrown into the mass graves.  The locals who visit this site leave bracelets as a memorial to those who died here.

The killing field we visited - Choeung Ek - contains a memorial, constructed in 1988 that has acrylic glass sides and is filled with more than 5,000 human skulls, on nine floors, all recovered from the mass graves.



Our guides and almost everyone we came in contact with had family members executed. One local guide lost three brothers and his father. The other local guide lost his father. It was difficult to hear all the personal stories of loss. 

In the 1970s teachers, doctors, people who wore glasses or people who had questionable loyalties, were slaughtered and buried in mass graves around the country.  Memorials to the people who died have been erected in many of the "killing fields".
  
After visiting the "killing fields' we went back to Phnom Penh to tour a prison and memorial where inmates were housed and tortured prior to being sent to the “Killing Fields” for execution. This prison (a former school) is known as S21 (S for Security) was one of the most brutal. Out of 20,000 people, only seven survived. The prisoners were photographed before and after being tortured. Many are posted here in the museum. It was a tough day listening to and seeing evidence of these disturbing atrocities. 



On a lighter note, we were able to try deep fried tarantulas at lunch!




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