Alright, folks, here´s the next update! And it´s a big one...

Last friday we, along with fellow volunteers Camilla (from Uppsala :P) and Bernadette, planned and undertook a major field trip, seeing some of the major sights in and around Phnom Penh.

In a Tuk Tuk we'd hired for the entire day we started the day by going just outside of town to visit the so-called Killing Fields, the 'Cheung Ek Genocidal Center'. This entire place is a museum, memorial and monument to the grotesqueris that were committed by the Khmer Rogue. The area is at once beautiful and macabre. It is filled with wonderful plantlife and beautiful butterflies flitter through the skies, but it is hard to enjoy while trying not to step in the mass graves that are all over the place and at the same time listen to the terrible history of the site. Cambodians killing cambodians in the most gruesome ways. Bullets were too expensive to "waste" on the enemies (read: innocents) of the Khmer Rogue. People had their heads severed with machetes, children were beat against trees until dead and women were raped and killed. There were signs everywhere ushering us not to laugh, be silent and be respectful. It was not hard...

After Cheung Ek we went to the Teul Sleng torture museum in the middle of the city. This place is actually an old school repurposed into a torture/interrogation-center during the Khmer Rogue regime, and it broke our hearts to see the pictures of the victims, the classrooms made prison cells and the paintings of all the horrible things the prisoners had to endure while imprisoned in this awful place.

After Toul Sleng our moods were at an all-time low, and we decided we needed food and something a little less terrible, so we hit the Russian market, had some great food and tried fresh coconuts off the street.

Refreshed by the food and the shopping, we then went to Cambodias National Museum in Phnom Penh. It is a huge, beauuutiful red building lined with lush asian vegetation containing artefacts from Cambodias entire history, not least statues and items from the great Angkorian Era of the 800s-1400s. Unfortunately cameras weren't allowed inside the museum, so you'll have to settle for the outside :P

We ended the day by visiting the Wat Phnom, Phnom Penhs highest point. It is a hill on top of which lies a beautiful monastery!

It was a long day and the impressions were many. Cambodia has a terrible history, and yet the people are so friendly and generous... And there is so much left to see!

Be sure to check out the album from the trip. Individual comments WILL be up, eventually, sporadically. Doing these albums and entries takes time, something we don't have too much of. Please be patient :)

Until next time

T&L

Oh, and also...We have updated some other albums as well :)