While in Phnom Penh, we also had some time to sight see and be tourists. One afternoon we spent some time exploring the Russian Market. It is a HUGE enclosed market with a variety of goods for sale... of course, all prices are negotiable. The isles are a maze of endless stalls with items displayed from floor to ceiling. You can find anything from traditional Cambodian artwork to suspiciously cheap designer items. I left with 3 wooden carved plaques for the house, a t-shirt for Mike, and a North Face hiking bag all for under $30 total!
Of course, it was fun to see all the goods for sale but you have to get used to harassment from vendors. "Hey lady! You want shirt? Beautiful shirt! I give you good price. Just for you."
We all found some good buys and walked home happy.
We also visited a few key historical locations in Phnom Penh. A sad but influential part of Cambodian history is the genocidal rule of Pol Pot. From 1975-1979 over 2 million people died from starvation, overwork, torture and execution. What is today the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide was once the Tuol Sleng Prison, otherwise known as S-21, the headquarters to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge secret police. Before Pol Pot came along, this place was a school consisting of 4 buildings, each 3 stories of classrooms built around a courtyard.
During Pol Pot's reign, this school was turned into a prison where up to 20,000 were held and tortured until they gave false confessions of offenses against the Khmer Rouge for which they were then executed. The rules of this prison are below.
Three of the four buildings were used to imprison people in small make-shift cells built into the classrooms. Each cell was just large enough to lay flat.
The fourth building had 17 classrooms left untouched. These were the rooms where they tortured prisoners until they confessed false crimes. Many of the rooms still had the metal cots, shackles, and waste buckets in them.
You can tell that the building was originally very beautiful: the checkered tile on the floor, the white washed wooden shutters on the windows, the palm trees in the courtyard. This would have been a great place to learn, grow, and flourish. But this is all now contrasted with the barbed wire and erie silence that hangs in the air.
From S-21, we took a tuk-tuk to a location outside of Phnom Penh called the Killing Fields o Cheung Ek. This is the location where prisoners and their families from Tuol Sleng were sacrificed and buried in mass graves. The women and children were also killed to prevent the revenge or procreation of those who offended the Khmer Rouge. In the middle of this location is a memorial building. They have 17 stories of remains on display to remind us of the casualties of the Pol Pot Regime.
This first level of this memorial was filled with skulls of the nameless victims. The remaining skeletal pieces were displayed on the higher 16 levels. The ground was covered with scraps of clothing left behind as well. It is truly a heart-stopping sight.
From the memorial building, we took a sobering walk around the grounds, weaving between excavated mass graves seen behind the sign below. Well over 100 graves were dug. Eighty have been excavated finding the remains of over 9,000 men, women, and children.
In the middle of the grounds is this tree, the Magic Tree. The sign below says it all, but the feeling of standing in front of it cannot be explained.
Even now, remains of innocent victims continues to resurface. Below is just an example of what we were stepping over on the main trail from mass grave to mass grave, from killing tree to killing tree.
Days spent at places like S-21 and The Killing Fields are not fun, but they are necessary. It is important that we see the remains of the lives lost and hear the stories of the survivors, though there were few. We need to see the power of ignorance, hate, and greed. We need to be shook with the knowledge, shocked by the horror of what people can do to other people. We need to see how these things can impact individuals, a country, a society and history so we never let this bit of history repeat itself. I am not happy to see thing like this, but I do feel like I am a better person for learning of it.
