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Our Fantabulous Trip Around the Globe
We left Siem Reap on Tuesday for Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The trip, supposed to take 6 hours, took the mandatory +2 hours (8 in total) that we are used to with travelling in the developing world. It was an interesting ride as we got two rides within Siem Reap just to catch the bus to leave for PP. We even got to watch an American guy flip out and make an absolute ass of himself. Priceless.
We got into PP around midday and returned to the hotel where we stayed previously. We were in PP for about 18 hours to catch a flight back in December. We had left some art we had bought in Vietnam at the hotel and to our surprise they still had it! For the rest of the day, we set out to find a place for cheap and cold beer. We managed to find a place where a 2l jug is 2$, not as cheap as the bia hoi (draft) in Saigon, but it did the trick at rehydrating us and cooling us down. Now we are complaining, it is too hot here! We are looking forward to Japan's reasonable 10 degree weather now.
Our first full day in PP, we set out to get me tailored long-sleeved shirts. Back home, I can not get a proper fitting dress shirt so I decided to take advantage of the low wages and low cost of material here. I'm getting 3 tailored dress shirts for new tailored pin-stripped suit and faux-lex (aka fake rolex) watch. So styling! After getting measured for my shirts, we visited a local market where we went on a shopping spree (not our style, we know) where I got my faux-lex, some hammocks and Cambodia water-paintings (in support for people with disabilities here).
Our next stop wasn't nearly as cheery. We visited the S-21 Prison-the site of many atrocities during the Khmer Rouge regime. The prison was a converted high school where they detained and tortured prisoners of all types (political, ethnic or for any insane reason that the Khmer Rouge had). To demonstrate how insane the Khmer Rouge were, they considered anybody who wore glasses, spoke a foreign language or owned a business in the city as a threat to them. Sadly, millions were massacred in the most atrocious and barbaric of fashions. S-21 saw over 20000 prisoners in its time; only 7 of them survived. The prisoners were not killed at S-21, they were sent to the Choueng Ek killing fields 15 km from Phnom Penh. In the museum, they had photos of most of the prisoners; the Khmer Rouge documented all the prisoners before they killed them. The look of terror in their faces was haunting. The saddest thing is that very few (and hardly any of the leaders) of the Khmer Rouge were brought to justice for their crimes.
In with the genocide theme, Thursday we went out to the Choueng Ek killing fields. Initially, we walked around the site trying to grasp what it meant but in the end we took a guided tour. We saw 80 of the 140 mass graves that were exhumed in the 1980s. In the middle of the site, there was a 30m tall wat housing the skulls and femurs of the exhumed victims. Hauntingly, throughout the site, bones and clothes keep coming to the surface showing that people were buried everywhere. It's such a tragedy that atrocities like this still occur today.
After the killing fields, we returned to the city and took time to reflect upon what we had seen. We're just winding down our time here overseas. We've only 19 days before we return to Canada and to reality.
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