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Hi we travelled from Siem Reap to Phom Penh. We ended up staying in quite a nice hotel after checking out a few 10 dollar rooms & them being not nice at all! So we had a lovely bathroom, a kettle & a nice flat screen tv for paying a bit more. We were in Phnom Penh for 2 nights.
The first night we went to a restaurant called Friends. Which is staffed by ex street kids & their mentors. The profits go back into the charity providing food & healthcare to homeless kids. It was a cool place with loads of pictures on the wall & I was really excited as we had pancakes & ice-cream for dessert! A real dessert yay!
We hired a tuk tuk driver for the day, the following day & headed out to the killing fields. We walked around the museum, the fields & the stoopa with 8950 corpses in it. It was very sad to learn what happened there.
It said that they estimate 3 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge in the prisons, at the killing fields & through forced labour. Which was 1/3 of the Cambodian population in just 3 years.
At the killing fields you could see the mass graves that they have excavated & there are still rags of clothes from the victims coming up in the soil. It was horrible. They killed nearly all the children so they wouldn't get revenge in later life. Brutally as well, they would grab babies by their ankles & smash their heads against trees. Awful.
We then went to S21 which was the biggest prison of the Khmer Rouge. It was a school but they forcibly shut all schools, churches & seized all private property as it wasn't contributing to communism.
At S21 they held professions such as engineers, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, business men & any sort of intellect as they would be traitors to communism.
The Khmer Rouge took a photo of every prisoner they held & they were displayed to see. Some of which you see the others chained in background. The prison was horrible & the beds were still there in the cells. It was really eerie & unbelievable that this all happened recently. It has only been 35 years!
We went out to a few bars that night to lighten the mood. Phnom Penh has the most mental traffic ever! We went out in the quay at the river front which is where there are a lot of bars & restaurants are.
At one point some guy walked an elephant down the road! Just holding on to it's tail! It would be like walking an elephant through London there is so much traffic! I think the elephant was advertising beer too! As it had a little anchor beer hat on! Madness!
See you soon
Mr & Mrs Dando xxx
- comments
Collettey Anchor beer on an elephant... excellent happy maker :)