The Darker Side of Cambodia

Today we learnt more about Cambodia's recent history and the Khmer Rouge. After a quick bakery stop for breakfast we walked to the Tuol Sleng museum. This was a former high school which was turned into the infamous S-21 prison during Pol Pot's regime to hold, interrogate and force false confessions from its detainees. It was one of over 150 detention centres set up between 1975-79. We had an audio guide which explained how the old classrooms had been changed; buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison cells and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapees. A suspected 20,000 people had been held here, the majority of whom were taken by the truckload to the nearby killing site of Choeung Ek, aka "The Killing Fields".
We continued our education of the awful atrocities by getting a tuk tuk to Choeung Ek where there is a memorial centre dedicated to those that were killed and evidence of the multiple mass graves that thousands of bodies had been dumped into after brutal executions (they found other ways to kill to save on bullets). There are still more clothing rags and bones surfacing after each rainy season which are kept as a testament to the victims. We took some time to process what we had learnt and seen at both sites before heading back into the city, and had a quiet afternoon/evening.

We did not want to head back over to the tourist area of Phnom Penh for dinner so walked around the area outside our hotel. We weren't too sure of some of the very street food places so stopped at a proper restaurant that looked busy. We were shown upstairs and to a menu with no English and no pictures in it. We tried to order some chicken with rice and beef noodles to stay safe, with the help of the manager (the only one who could speak any English). We ended up with chicken "bits" with a lot of bone and very little meat surrounded what we concluded with shredded lemongrass in the shape of a bird's nest, and some beef noodles. As David was still hungry after the scraps of chicken we went on a food hunt and ended up avoiding a Chinese place which had eel, frog and pig intestines on the menu and settling at the first street restaurant we had walked past earlier. Here we ordered fried rice, which actually turned out to be a nice beef rice with a side of weak tea and soup. We were unsure if the water they were collecting from the nearby hose was used in the meal. I guess we will find out...Read more