Cambodia Part 3

I'm back home in Australia now, so I am transcribing from my travel diary that I kept during the trip.  Up to day 9 I think!

Day 9: Phnom Penh
Today we visited a NGO (Non Government Organisation) on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, run by a gentleman from the US.  Here they make clay water filters that are distributed in local communities to improve the quality of drinking water with local people.

Water borne illnesses and bacteria are a huge killer for people (especially children) so these $10 filters are sold to try and combat, or at least reduce this problem.

This organisation also makes their own educational puppet TV shows in their own custom built TV studio. Episodes are made in Khmer, and little LPG fuelled Daewoo vans travel around the countryside with a TV in the back showing these progams.  A TV station in Cambodia also cottoned onto this and broadcast all 13 episodes.  Although the TV run is now complete, the TV station are asking for more episodes.  This will happen when possible.

The water filters are being tested in a tank of water to ensure that the water flows though them at a certain rate.

This NGO group also tests the quality of the water across Cambodian wells.  Because Cambodia has a large amount of naturally occurring Arsenic in the ground, many people are being poisoned by their wells and ground water.

So from here, we had lunch at one of those soup kitchen places.  You get a massive soup pan with the broth in it and you add all of your own ingredients from a tray of meat and vegetables in front of you.  The trick is making sure that you add the ingredients in a way that some are not raw and some are not cooked at the same time!  After lunch I wandered off on my own to find an internet place where I could print off my boarding pass for the following week.  I ended up finding an place that charged me 700 Riel to search the net, confirm and print out my boarding pass.  That's about 20 cents!

One of my observations about Phnom Penh is that in quite a few places, MAJOR roads are ripped up and are an absolute mess of potholes and gravel.  People just continue 'business as normal' driving their cars, motorbikes and bicycles through these messy roads though going along them is like bush bashing in outback Australia!  Our Tuk Tuk ride was so bumpy, it must really be hard on vehicles.  We had dinner at a Khmer BBQ restaurant which was pretty special.  I love how the soups (like Tom Yum!) come out in a special dish with a flame in the middle to keep them piping hot, delicious!


Day 10:
Today was reserved to witness a darker side of Cambodian history, the effects of the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979).  Although actual figures are unknown, approximately 2 million Cambodians were tortured, executed, worked or starved to death. 

We visited two specific locations, Tuol Sleng genocide museum, also known as S21, and Choeung Ek, otherwise known as The Killing Fields. Cambodia has many killing fields or places of execution, however, Choeung Ek is known as one of the best examples of what happened.  Some 17,000 people passed through Tuol Sleng Centre (also known as S-21) before they were taken to sites (also known as The Killing Fields), outside Phnom Penh such as Choeung Ek where most were executed (mainly by pickaxes to save bullets) and buried in mass graves. Of the thousands who entered Tuol Sleng only seven are known to have survived that I heard about. These prisoners had skills that were useful to the prison, such as photography (photos were taken of each prisoner as they were admitted and also of their dead bodies if they died during torture) and were kept alive for this purpose.

Although in tears, I tried hard to stop myself from bawling my eyes out which was really hard considering what I saw (some photos are quite graphic so be warned and were not published on Facebook because I believe that is not the place for them):

One of the beds that prisoners were strapped to used in their interrogation and torture.  The photo on the wall was of the man's body that was discovered there by the Vietnamese forces in January 1979.

Photos in the museum of victims exhumed from the Killing Fields in 1980.  Many victims are still wearing their blindfolds.

The sign really explains what the building was used for.  The balconies were covered with barbed wire.

This is the building that contained the iron bed frame shown earlier.

All victims that died during torture required a photographic record so that the Prison Governor (Duch) had proof that they were dead. These are copies of the original photos.

Each prisoner had to be photograhed upon admission to the prison.   I did not see one smiling face :-(

The memorial stupa at the killing fields.  This is used to store the bones of the exhumed victims.

 

Finally, the skulls of victims stored at the memorial stupa of Choeung Ek.  These skulls belong to young women aged between 15 - 20, very sad.

The thing that struck me the most was the Khmer Rouge policy of killing children and babies.  The idea was if they were not killed, then they might seek revenge against the Khmer Rouge when they were grown adults.  There was absolutely no heart in this regime.


I was saddened by what I saw, but was still grateful that I had the opportunity to see what I saw, because it opened my eyes and made me more aware of the world around me and as well as happiness, there is sadness that will be with us and that is our legacy and hopefully...we might just learn from past mistakes.