After having got back to the mainland and in search of money (as Don Det has no ATM's) we managed to find the only ATM around and surprise surprise it didn't work. Great.. Slightly panicky now and wondering how we were going to be able to pay for our visa into Cambodia we ran around asking people. Turns out it was all fine and they could drop us off to an ATM on the way... for an extra $5 of course...
We crossed the border without a problem, and waited for about 2 hours for our visas to be sorted, finally as the rain came down we were piled back onto the bus for our 15 hour bus journey.. eurgh! (It was only meant to be about 10/11 but it was 4 hours late)
First impressions of Cambodia were not what I expected, I didn't imagine the city to be so full of life and appear to have as much wealth as it did. Everything was in dollars and seemed so expensive in contrast to Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, again another shock as I expected Cambodia to be dirt cheap. We arrived really late so went straight to a hostel (literally a 'point at that one' and off we go kind of thing) BEDTIME.
The Tuk Tuk driver from the previous night was hanging around outside our hostel in the morning and sat down with us for breakfast to negotiate a price for the day as we wanted to go to the killing fields and the genocide museum. We managed to get a reasonable price given the distance and off we went. (Before you go any further i just want to say that most of the photo's and story's of Phonm Penh are a bit haunting and quite disturbing)
We arrived at the killing fields not really knowing what to expect, I'd briefly heard of PolPot and the history in Cambodia but not to the extent I was about to. We arrived and paid a little extra to have a head-set to explain everything we were seeing as we were walking around.
To fill you in Pol Pot was an fascist 'revolutionary' leading the Khmer rouge with a communist regime forcing millions of Cambodians out of there home and away from there families to work 15 hour days slaving in fields etc. He would kill anyone who was educated, had a skilled trade or wore glasses. He brutally murdered over 2 million of his own people as well as leading a million or so into situations where they had poor malnutrition and no medical care, he was a monster. This all went on until 1979 when the Vietnamese liberated the country, he even held a seat in the UN and was funded by the American government. Some of the stories bought me to tears it was so recent and so upsetting, I can't believe one man could have such hatred in his heart.
This is just one killing field, there were thousands all over the country, people would be taken here blindfolded to be beaten, tortured or shot.
This was the worst part, a tree where they had actually found the remnants of babies brains and skulls, they would hold them by the legs and violently bash them against this tree amongst other horrible things.
The genocide museum, once a high school in the heart of the city converted into a place for torture after the city was abandoned. Again some of the pictures and stories here were chilling.
In the evening we went out to get some food and drinks, this is a photo I took of a woman's stall, she's selling all sorts. I think you can just about make out the snake on a stick, haha. She wasn't happy with me taking this photo and tried to charge me a $1.
We found a group of children on the way home who were so cute, we ended up playing with them and swinging them around for a good half an hour. As you do...
To the bar for a few more beers...
The following day we just sorted out laundry and what not, not much to report about. Booked a bus to Soukanville in the south.
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