Tobias travels to South-East Asia and beyond!

Because the ticking you hear is your life passing you by!

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Location: London, United Kingdom

In my thirty's and slowly loosing my misanthropic streak!

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Killing Fields and Phnom Pen



I took an early morning bus from Krati and as we stopped halfway on a bus stop I met Andrew and Sarah who were on another bus coming down from Siem Reap. It was a funny coincidence but I was really happy to see them both again. They had decided to go for Okay Guesthouse and we arranged to meet there later. Two hours later the bus rolled into Phnom Pen, the capital of Cambodia and I jumped onto the back of moped and had the most terrifying trip on the back on the back of a moped ever. Even when I asked the guy to slow down we still went so fast that I almost got tears in my eyes and even if I'm not a very religious person I know the only reason why I'm still alive today is because man up north thought it would be good for me to see another day.
Got to the hotel and asked for Andrew and Sarah since their bus had left much earlier from where we stopped earlier but they were not there yet. Sat down, had a drink wondering where they were and then see them coming trough the door. Turns out their bus had indeed been much earlier than mine but due to the lightning hyper super sonic speed of my bike driver I had got there before them.
Sat down and had some food and decided that we should head out for to the "Killing fields" then next day and also go and check out the S21 prison in the center of town. Had some drinks, chatting away before heading for bed and some sleep.
Woke up and headed for the S21 prison which was one of many during the Khmer Rouge regime. The building had initially been a school but after the Pol Pot got to power it was converted into a prison. The whole place was a really grim affair. The Khmer Rouge were very precise in keeping records and taking photographs and for each room I walked into there were big pictures of some of the people being tortured there. The cells that people stayed in were minute and I can even imagine the horrors that must have happened there.
It was time for some even more depressing stuff, the killing fields. The place itself is pretty much just a big burial ground that the Khmer Rouge used for the execution of anyone who didn't fit the political description of a Khmer Rouge party member. The whole story about how Pol Pot came to power is a pretty weird. The party came to power after a revolution and soon afterwards started killing all intellectuals and anyone who thought differently. A couple of years afterwards paranoia spread and anyone including party members was executed. In total they believe that up to two million people were killed during the span of ten years. The "Killing Fields" contains up to 20 thousand people all found in mass graves. Some of them came from the S21 prison; others were from other parts outside Phnom Pen. It was pretty surreal place though. In the center of it there's a big pagoda filled with skulls and clothes from the victims and around it there's still bones and clothes lying around as you walk around.
I'll never understand how the people alive during and after have managed to go on after everything that has happened but I was very impressed by the fact that they do. Sure, the country itself is as corrupt as anything with top politicians living well while a lot of people are struggling to get by in the midst of all the chaos that is Cambodia there's something special. Yes, people will try to get your money but they do it because they are trying to get by, not because they are trying to get rich.
I went back to the hotel that night and thought a lot of what I had seen. It was pretty weird sitting in a hotel chatting away while knowing what had been going on a few years earlier.

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