We weren’t particularly looking forward to today as we were going to visit the Killing fields and Genocide museum, which is one of the things that you must do but really don’t want to.

I touched on the history of Cambodia and Pol Pot’s genocide a couple of days ago, but I didn’t mention the Killing Fields. You may have seen the movie but actually being there is both terrible and moving.

When the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s communist army took power, their directive was to wipe out all those who weren’t ‘pure’. The idea was to transform Cambodia into a rural, classless society.

They abolished money, markets, schooling, private property, foreign clothing styles, public transportation, religion, and all culture.

They killed all the intellectuals, teachers, soldiers, civil servants and, for some reason, farmers, basically everyone who has had an education and might be a threat to them.

When they killed a family, they also killed all the children so that they couldn’t take revenge on them later.

Their method was to transport all the people they didn’t want to be part of their pure society, in trucks, to a large area of land and murder them, usually by pickaxe or beating with farm implements, because bullets were expensive. They also did much worse and I won’t go into the detail but it wasn’t a quick death for most.

They then dug mass graves and buried them all. Some, believed to have been the opposing soldiers, had their heads removed and put in a different pit.

These areas became known as the Killing Fields and there have been 343 found so far. Seventy seven have been preserved and, in the one we visited, Choeung Ek, which was a former orchard they found 8,895 bodies.

In Cambodia, rather than a headstone they build ornate monuments on top of individual graves which can contain one person or a family and they are called a Stupa.

Here, they have have built one large monumental Stupa to honour those killed.

This stupa contains the skulls of the 8,985 murdered here. As you stand inside it’s chilling when you think about what you’re actually looking at.

I’m going to stop the story here. We left the Killing Field but we didn’t go into the Genocide museum. I can never get past the first room at Holocaust museums, it’s the same story every time and just too painful.

These museums are there so humanity remembers, and doesn’t make the same mistake again.

Unfortunately they don’t seem to work.

To lighten the mood…..

The funniest moment of our trip (for me at least) happened at the Genocide museum toilets.

We both had to ‘go’, and we used adjacent cubicles.

After a moment I heard Brigitte give a surprised yelp, and she shouted “Zere’s a big Frog in ze toilet!” – I know she’ll dispute her accent, but that is how she sounds 😀

I couldn’t help thinking that at the exact same time, the Frog was shouting exactly the same thing to its mates!

Sorry, I realise it’s a racist joke but I haven’t stopped giggling all day!

After that, we spent the afternoon in the Russian market, so called because at one point there was a large influx of Russians and this market catered to them. Now, its just a typical, huge market, so we spent a few hours both here and at central market down the road buying things we didn’t really need, but they were a bargain, and then you could barter another 50% off so I couldn’t resist.

There’s incredibly cheap branded goods here and, while most are obviously cheap copies, some are such good quality that I suspect that they are genuine and found their way out of the rear door of the factory.

Birthday No.6

Tonight was Brigitte’s final birthday celebration

Don’t you love the way she acts genuinely surprised every time!

Five out of six of the restaurants that I booked went the extra mile and were kind enough to remember that we were celebrating.

Only one didn’t bother, even after confirming our celebration meal back to us in writing.

I know that I can’t complain as we’re getting free cake by nefarious means, but the cynic in me can justify free cake when they demand so much unnecessary information from you to populate their databases which they probably share and sell on.

Fruit Quiz

Yesterdays answer was Orange. It couldn’t get any easier. I know they’re green but if you’d been paying attention in previous posts you’d have known that that’s the colour of oranges here.

Today is another really easy one as you all seem to be struggling. In my opinion it has the most exciting name of any fruit but it’s probably the most boring…

Tomorrow will be sad as we pack up and leave Cambodia 😞

Phnom Pehn, 30th November 2024