Travelling on all planes: Phnon Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia (Dec.5-8)

Phnon Penh Impressions: Written by Caleb Cohen
This was not one of the most pleasant days on this trip. In fact probably one of the most depressing. We started out with a nice banana pancake at the blue dolphin café. Then we all squished into our tuk-tuk and headed to the prison of the Khmer Rouge for the movie at 10:00. We step into the insane heat and head toward the third floor for the movie. (Which has already started.) We walk in and find some seats. The T.V. was showing an old woman crying. Her daughter had died and she was telling her story.

On a peaceful day in Phnom Pen during the Vietnam War, a group of ravenous men starving for murder came in and told everyone to leave. The said to pack up all things they could carry on their backs and bring it with them. The people obliged knowing that if they didn’t they would be tortured and killed. They where brought to rice fields where all the families where separated. Husband to wife. Sister to brother. Even mothers to there little babies where torn apart. People where put into cottages with complete strangers. They weren’t allowed to talk, sing, whisper basically no making noise AT ALL. People from the Khmer rouge would hide under the cottages listening to see if people talked. The old woman said that one night a girl sang a song quietly and that night they took her away and killed her. The next day they came back with her clothes soaked in blood and held a meeting to show everyone the consequences.

The peasants here forced to produce extraordinary amounts of rice. When they didn’t grow enough (which was always) then the rice they did grow went to china, Japan, Korea and other foreign countries and it also went to feeding the army. So the villagers didn’t have much for themselves. The villagers quickly starved. Those who did survive where sent off to the prison where they where tortured and killed. Out of all the people in the prison (about 10,000) 7 of them survived.

Portion of the Prison - as it was

One man who survived was a painter who was sent to a special jail room and was told to paint. And paint he did. He painted some of the ways they tortured people (to vile to describe.)

There was also a man from the Khmer rouge who explained how they killed people:
1. Blindfold and handcuff 15-40 people.
2. Put them in a truck.
3. Drive them to the killing fields.
4. Bring them all out of the truck (still blindfolded) and take the attendance.
5. Line them all up and tell them to get on there knees.
6. One by one hit them hard on the back of the neck with a metal pole and then slice there thoughts.
7. Throw the dead bodies in a pit.
8. Let them rot.

Fortunately this mans job was just to take the attendance. I walked out of the room a little flustered from all these new ideas in my head. We walked around the building a bit looking at all the cells and rooms. The whole place was letting off an extremely bad vibe and none of us felt very good.

We lost Mark so we went and sat down for a while to soak everything up. Artemis wasn’t feeling very good (we thought it was from the BLT she had this morning. Who the hell eats bacon in Cambodia? We finally found Mark after waiting around for a while, turns out he was on the top floor of another building and that’s where all the information was. We read it and bought a few waters and hopped into a tuk tuk towards our next destination: The killing fields.

The Killing Fields

I thought it would be a mass of barren wasteland plastered with huge pits piled p with bones. Boy, was I wrong. We got there and first got inside and headed towards a huge monument which inside was about 10 stories pilled high with skulls. That was quite fascinating.

We continued on to a nice field about 30 by 50m covered in grass. The holes where nicely shaped and it was surprisingly lush. Behind the trees on one side was a nice river. We walked one massive tree and read the sign:

“This tree was used to hit little kids and babies against.”
*shiver*
We had a nice stroll along the river and then hopped into our tuk tuk to head to the shooting range. Unfortunately the tuk tuk driver told us it was 40$ us for one magazine (a magazine is about 100 bullets). So we decided to skip that and head over to the Russian market.

It was a nice market with a wide array of beautiful scarves, dodgy DVDs and delicious food. We quickly found the eating area and sat down to a steaming bowl of noodle soup and a nice cold fresh sugarcane juice. It was without a doubt, hands down the best meal in Cambodia.

Soup shop in the Russian market

After lunch we looked around a bit and I bought some computer games.
Once I had finished my buying mark had already sat down in a nice café and Artemis and mom where getting a mani-pedi.