The markets in Cambodia are suppose to be the best in South East Asia and with a big list of winter clothes I needed for China, I was excited to be actually shopping! I came away with a purse full of cash and I was very disheartened, the shopping was actually worse than what I had seen in Thailand and everything seemed more money, so I had the hump but there was still Vietnam to go so I had my fingers crossed.
I didn’t know an awful lot about Pol Pot who lead the Khmer Rouge but I was about to find out the whole gory story. We first stopped off at a museum (S21) which was one of his prisons, it use to be used as a primary school before Pol Pot turned it into a torture prison. As we walked about the buildings into the many rooms, they still had the torture beds inside and graphic pictures on the walls of people after they had been tortured. They had posters up on the wall asking you not to smile as you went around the museum but there was not danger of that, as you saw hundreds of mug shot photos of the people that where imprisoned here. Pol pot would imprison anyone that had an academic background, even people with glasses where imprisoned, as they were seen to look intelligent.
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From the museum we took a tuk tuk ride about 40 minutes out of town to the famous killing fields. We were given audio headsets that told us the whole story of the horrific happenings in those 3 long years pol pot was in power.
Its hard to believe that an estimated 4 million people died in the 3 years, they say that’s why there are not many old people around as its hard to get your head around that it only happened 30 years ago. As we walked around we could actually see human teeth and parts of bone and fragments of clothes on the ground, the people that worked there collect all this up every two months as items are still coming to the surface to this day. The memorials with the mass graves are all around and it really chokes you up as you hear on the head sets how they where murdered, the worst was how they killed the baby’s but I wont go into that has its just to horrific to put into words. I couldn’t understand why they killed the baby’s but it was explained that if they killed one person in a family then they would all die in case they would want to get revenge on Pol Pot.
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However upsetting it was to learn, I am glad I understand their history and what the people of Cambodia went through.
After a few days in the city we where moving onto Siem reap I was looking forward seeing the happier side to Cambodia like the millions of temples and landscape that Siem reap had to offer, plus It stank to high heaven in the city and my stomach couldn’t take much more.
Only a short 5 hours drive it was like a different country to Phonem phen, while it was still busy it was much more relaxed and had much more personality. Our short stay here was split between bar street where the beer was 30p and Angkor City. We hired a tuk tuk for the day for $20 to take us around Angkor, which is the main attraction for the area. I had looked forward to this day since we first booked our round the world ticket. I couldn’t wait to see the amazing world of jungle temples that I had seen on TV and magazines…I was not disappointed!
Angkor city is located among forests and farmland with a great lake in the middle. There are over one thousand temples ranging from little piles of brick to the magnificent Angkor Wat, which is suppose to be the largest religious monument in the world.
We only managed to see 7 temples in one day but people can get 3 days or even a week’s pass. My favourite temple was Ta Prohm, set in the jungle and over the years the trees have grown out of the ruins. A strange highlight to the day was seeing Jackie Chan in one of the temples, we where not sure it was him until we found out he was doing some charity work in the area.
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We also had chance to pop into a landmine museum that told an unbelievable story. This guy who ran the mesum Aki Ra, well that’s the name he has given himself as he doesn’t know his real name or when he was born as his parents died when he was about five. He was made to join the Khmer Rouge army when he was 10, then captured by the Vietnamese army and served with them. He told a story when he went to battle when he was in the Vietnamese army he was across a field and had to fight the Khumer rouge, when he spotted his uncle who was a member of the Kumer Rouge, so he shot a warning fire above his head for him to run, to this day the laugh about the story over the dinner table as his uncle now lives and works in the museum.
Once the war was over he decided to clear land mines himself with just a stick and knife. He has cleared more than 50,000 land mines to this day and was voted CNN hero of the year in 2010. The shocking thing is though there are still 5 million mines undiscovered in Cambodia so they have a long way to go.
Our time in Cambodia was defiantly an eye opener and we could of done with a little more time but onwards we must go and Vietnam next!.
To see all my Cambodia photos -
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