Borneo and Indochina Adventure

Dear travel journal,
Today was long, sad and the best day ever all rolled into one. Up early to pack and check out, a quick breaky and run down the road to the pharmacy for a quick restock (stupid bloody cold). Then we all got onto a minibus (except dana) and headed down to the genacide museum.

WARNING - HARD, SAD BUT IMPORTANT TO KNOW ABOUT STUFF. THE SECOND HALF OF TODAY IS IN A SEPERATE POST. IF YOU WANT TO SKIP THIS ENTRY I UNDERSTAND XOXO

The genocide musceum, like all of the prisonsers camp was an old converted building, in this case a school that had been surrounded and covered with barb wire and modified to split class rooms into different types of cells. The old office building became the photography room when prisoners would be photographed with a number pinned to their shirt before they were taken to the concentration camps and killed. The building in the middle of the main sqaure was the torture and interigation rooms. One classroom block was used for VIP prisoners - who were people who were educated or worked for a government company, schools,officials etc. The cells where quite big, half the class room and had a hospital bed with ankle chains, they had a rice porriage bowl and a container to go to the toilet in that got emptied out once a week. These prisoners where usually in these 1-3 weeks before going to re-education. The next cell block had up to 50 people in a room and they lay on the floor next to each other with ankle bars running the length of the room. The third block had brick walls built into the rooms to make 12 cells in each. The doors on the cells were open and they were chained to the floor so some movement was available. They again had a small rice bowl where they were fed rice porrage (water mostly) once per day. And a toilet tin, which they had to be mindful of, as if they spilt they had to clean it up with their tongues. Interigation was always the same. "Who are you? Where are you from? Are you working for the cia and for how long?". They were usually blindfolded and taken to this room twice a day, with little to no medical treatment. You can still see blood stains on the floors of some of the cells. The comaroes where running the entire place and there were many camps set up the same. This one and their associated reeducation camp (mass grave) holds an estimated 15000 people. The biggest one in the region is 35000 people who had been murdered. This site isnt talked about or allowed to be seen especially by tourists, as current members of parliment are previous comaru members. If they had decided to kill someone because they decided they knew too much or had stepped over bounds then they killed the entire family "from the roots up" they would say - babies and all, leaving no one who would want revenge for dead parents in future years. The longest prisoner was in that camp for 2 years! I met him today. There were two survivers sitting there in front of the old interigstion building, where they would have undergone some horrific things, selling books they have written and wanting to meet and talk to people, to share their stories. The first (who had been there two years) lost his wife and family in the prison and was kept alive because of his amazing skills as an artist. He can draw portraits that look like photographs. So he got slightly better living conditions and was used for work. The other in a similar situation was used to fixed the typewriters used by the camero to completely all of the documents. His skills as a mechanic saved his life. These guys and a handful of other 'worker prisons' where able to hide and escape when the vietnamese army came through town and they fled. The reason the camp was found by vietnamese soldiers was because the cameru took most of the prisoners to the killing fields and tried to burn a pile of documents and evidence. Before finally leaving the VIP prisoners still in their cells where killed where they were chained and left there. The vietnamese soldiers smelt them while walking past the compound. Took photo evidence and buried the remaining 14 people on site and found the documentation, saving a descent chunk to all for soo much evidence and documentation to be recorded. They also found 4 children still alive. 2 which have now passed and 2 who have dissapeared and no one knows to where.

Vietnam has 25 provences and roughly 15 million people. Today the main religion is buddhim (roughly 95%), then christains and a couple of other minorities. The time of the camerus (1973-1979) showed a great suppresion and control over the people. From what i understand. With lots of rifts and shofts in power the government at the time decided to take complete control of the people and they used the momentum and threat of the american bombs from the vietnam war (which some people had already suffered too) and mass killings to get people to move away from their homes, conform and do pretty much, what ever the hell people wanted them too. Everyone and everything became property. You got fed once a day, and ate what you where goven (which was never enough), if you "stole" insects or fruit from trees you were killed. You wore what you were given. You got up at dawn and worked on the farms - usually rice fields - and finished at dusk, 365 days a year (and you just kept working, if you got sick and couldnt work, they would be killed and replaced with another worker) there was no socialig, laughing, religion or hope left or allowed in anyone. People were moved from cities to forests or put in prisons. Children between the ages of 3 and 12 where taken from their families and sent to concentration camps where they were brainwashed to believe in the comarus cause and taught to use guns. They thought the comarus to be their 'real parents' and knew that they would be fed, cleaned and clothed should they follow the rules. It was these kids often used to supervise workers in the fields, with workers being to weak and tired to revoult or run should they even have will enough to try. They would also be used as vietnamese spys at times. They would also "refresh their recuits" every couple of years. They believed their soldiers to know too much, they would get the next lots of soliders to kill them all and take their place. It was a time were people tried to flee and live in the depths of the jungle or cross the border to stay in refugee camps.

The tour leader himself was a child at the time and remembers running through the forests from the camerus. His dad and uncle both being killed at different times at mass graves. He said his mother was sent from her village and went west, while his sister went east (reunited a few years later down the tract). He was born somewhere in the jungle, while his mum moved across the state and fled into southern thailand. So he actually doesnt have a birthday that he knows, just a rough guestimate. He remembers spending 10 years in a thailand refugee came and later as a teenager comings back to live in cambodia.

There is soo much history. So much to learn. Even today some of these people are around. Cambodia is such a young country, and all of this was still happening up until 30 years ago, well even to some degree. It still is the country is still recovering.

From the museum we went to the killing fields. Now covered with grass and done up for tourists, you can see the remains of thw different areas of camp, the grave sites and reminents of bone and objects in the grounds. Sections of dirt - still with nothing growning with signs telling you about the 20-100 people found at each spot, with broken bones, heads missing (still not found), babies, pregnant women and men of all ages. All killed in different ways, usually by knives or beatings of various forms, and objects. Each site then being covered with ddt to help hide the smell or kill anyone who was buried alive with the bodies. There is a building in the middle of the site where lots of skulls, bones, cloths and weapons have been arranged in display cabnets by age, gender and form of death. You can really see on the skulls especially the differet weapons used and the trauma that was caused. It maybe weird for me to say but i found it upsetting and interesting, and important, all at the same time.Read more