Phnom Penh

With just two days until we were to enter Vietnam Phnom Penh was to be our last stop in Cambodia and we thought it fitting to finish on a high. That said we obviously came over 'a bit peculiar' and booked a day tour to 'The Killing Fields', the 'S-21 Prison Camp' and the Russian Market. It really was as depressing as it sounds.
The Killing Fields is a monument to the hundreds of Cambodians that the Khmer Rouge murdered. The people sent here were all Cambodian intellectuals, doctors, teachers, politicians etc, all of whom were seen as a threat to the Khmers. When the land was excavated they uncovered huge mass-graves containing the remains of men, women and children in their hundreds. The centre of this area features a tall tower containing the skulls of all those that were discovered, along with piles of clothes and other horrific finds. It's difficult to imagine the horrors that took place here, perhaps because we have more peaceful minds and can't envisage this kind of behaviour, but the sense that something truly terrible took place seemed to hang over us.
S-21 in many ways is even worse. This was once a school, a place of hope, peace and education, but the Khmer Rougeturned it into an internment & death camp. The silence here is deafening and you really do feel heavier as you read piece after piece about the unthinkable things that took place. It's essentially three wings around a courtyard in the centre of which are buried the bodies of the people the army found murdered in their beds when they liberated the place. These people had been hastily shot by the retreating Khmers and were found and photographed in their cells, the photos and objects found in the rooms on display now bring tears to your eyes.
Inside the buildings are hundreds of photos taken by the Khmers of all those imprisoned in the camp. All these faces, young and old just starring out at you with vacant eyes chills you to the bone.
Perhaps the most terrifying part of all this is the presence of some seemingly innocent exercise equipment in the yard. These were originally used for children of various ages to swing and play on or do their routine exercises. When the Khmer Rouge took over they took on a much more sinister purpose. People wre hung here until near death and then submerged in freezing water until they all but drowned. They were also tied here and flogged to literally within an inch of their lives.
We found all of this uterly bewildering, not only because of the unspeakable acts that man can commit but also because many of those executed or sent to camps like S-21 were members of their own party. I wish I could understand this more but then a part of me is glad that I don't. Suffice to say we didn't sleep well that night.
To cheer ourselves up the next day we took a wander around town and stumbled across an expat supermarket. This doesn't sound like fun I grant you but when we entered the deli and found that they stocked ham, cheese and olives we nearly fainted. Beth positively exploded and we lashed out on ham & olives. We ran from the supermarket clutching our bag of goodies like kids with stolen sweets and made for the nearest bench where we wolfed the lot licking our sticky fingers and giggling. That night we found a great restaurant that trains the homeless street kids to be chefs & waiters. The profits from the restaurant goes back into the training so we felt no guilt whatsoever in over-ordering and requesting the most expensive, (and uterly magnificent), juices the menu could offer. When you know you're helping the homeless an apple, lemongrass and ginger juice tastes so very good indeed.