05 November
We took a tuktuk out to the Killing Fields. It is important to understand what has made Cambodia and its people what it is today.
We were given audio sets with headphones, spoken in English. I have to admit by the time I got to station 2, I was in tears and really didn’t want to know more, but also wanted to know how it all ended. The speaker on the audio set told his own personal story of how he and his family were in one of the prisons and when they were told they were leaving one night, little did they know things were going to get worse.
The people were transported in lorries, gagged and blindfolded. They were killed soon after arrival. This was either by bludgeoning to death, having their heads chopped off or hanging. To think this was happening in the 1970’s is very hard to believe.
The speaker does not know to this day what happened to his siblings. They were a family of 5 and only his Mother, himself and one sibling came out alive. They are still looking for anything that will tell them if his siblings died there, were taken elsewhere or have survived not knowing they are being looked for.
The thousands of people killed were buried in mass graves dug out. They then had poison poured on them to stop the smell of rotting bodies reaching the local community and to kill off the ones that had been thrown in but were not completely dead.
Today they have exhumed thousands of bodies. There is a tower with hundreds of skulls that have been dug up but cannot be identified, all behind glass displays.
There are glass cabinets of clothes from where some of the mass graves flooded and the clothes floated to the surface. But many of the bodies were buried naked.
As you walk around the site there is a very somber atmosphere and you can see people all having their own thoughts and saying their own prayers. There are open spaces to sit and listen to music on the tape. All very moving.
So a sad morning but it needed to be done. To think there are hundreds of these sights all over the town brings the horror that these poor Cambodians have been through.
Our Tuktuk driver then took us to the Palace. This is where the present King lives and the grounds are full of temples. One houses the Emerald Buddha and a statue that is adorned with hundreds of diamonds that is classed as priceless.
Back to the hotel for drinks on the roof terrace sat around the swimming pool. This is on the 14th floor of the hotel. Dinner followed at a grand cost of 4 dollars each. (Less than a fiver!)