Woke up quite early in our amazing Bayon room, showered in the rainforest shower and headed up for a 3 course breakfast of eggs/toast/fruit/fruit juice and pastries, discovered that unknown white fruit with black pips was a dragon fruit. At 10 went out and met driver from yesterday for trip to the killing fields and S21 museum. The 17km trip out of the city provides us with views of some interesting goings on, including petrol being sold in coke bottles, steel girders being transported on mopeds, and a maxium of 5 people also using 1 moped at once, plus many other ridiculous loads on the backs of bikes. Traffic seems to have no rules apart from point in the direction you want to go and drive without stopping, although you may need to slow down on occasion (amazingly this seems to work).
The Killing Fields were pretty mcarbre (this was one of many such places used by the Khmer Rouge), with bones and teeth poking out from the ground (and this is after most of the unmarked graves have been exhumed, with the bones placed in a sort of glass tower shrine at the entrance). The evidence of numerous mass graves exists all around, plus evidence of the brutal methods used to kill people - bullets were too expensive so people were killed by being beaten around the head with bamboo sticks etc (2 million people are estimated to ave died in this way in the 4 year reign of the Khmer Rouge, the population of Cambodia is 10 million). The guide we hired was very good.
Next we headed to the S21 museum, much of the same (this is an old school that the Khmer Rouge used to torture people who they believed were the enemies of the state, these included teachers, people who wore glasses, before they were sent to the Killing Fields in the early hours of the morning for execution). At the front of the museum there were 14 graves of high ranking Khmer Rouge officials who were killed before they could defect. The rooms were left as they were found, blood on the floor and ceiling, shackles etc attached to beds, pictures of the prisoners who had had alcohol etc poured up their noses. We had a woman guide who was quite good, but talked so rapidly that we didn't understand everything.
It's very hot so we head back to the room for the benefit of the aircon. Louise tries to instruct Ieuan to go shopping for birthday items to no avail. Enjoy drinks at the bar, watch life go by in the street below (an elephant walks by with it's owner) and the river opposite (there are a number of barge like boats going up the river that seem to be partially submerged, we agree with a fellow drinker that this seems totally implausible) eating delicious hot roasted peanuts.
Submit to Laundry, and head out by tuk tuk to Baan Thai for tea, but despite having apparently being there the week before, now shut down (in fact it's a building site), we resist offers to be taken to restaurants of the driver's recommendation and head for nice tapas around the corner from the FCC.
The Killing Fields were pretty mcarbre (this was one of many such places used by the Khmer Rouge), with bones and teeth poking out from the ground (and this is after most of the unmarked graves have been exhumed, with the bones placed in a sort of glass tower shrine at the entrance). The evidence of numerous mass graves exists all around, plus evidence of the brutal methods used to kill people - bullets were too expensive so people were killed by being beaten around the head with bamboo sticks etc (2 million people are estimated to ave died in this way in the 4 year reign of the Khmer Rouge, the population of Cambodia is 10 million). The guide we hired was very good.
Next we headed to the S21 museum, much of the same (this is an old school that the Khmer Rouge used to torture people who they believed were the enemies of the state, these included teachers, people who wore glasses, before they were sent to the Killing Fields in the early hours of the morning for execution). At the front of the museum there were 14 graves of high ranking Khmer Rouge officials who were killed before they could defect. The rooms were left as they were found, blood on the floor and ceiling, shackles etc attached to beds, pictures of the prisoners who had had alcohol etc poured up their noses. We had a woman guide who was quite good, but talked so rapidly that we didn't understand everything.
It's very hot so we head back to the room for the benefit of the aircon. Louise tries to instruct Ieuan to go shopping for birthday items to no avail. Enjoy drinks at the bar, watch life go by in the street below (an elephant walks by with it's owner) and the river opposite (there are a number of barge like boats going up the river that seem to be partially submerged, we agree with a fellow drinker that this seems totally implausible) eating delicious hot roasted peanuts.
Submit to Laundry, and head out by tuk tuk to Baan Thai for tea, but despite having apparently being there the week before, now shut down (in fact it's a building site), we resist offers to be taken to restaurants of the driver's recommendation and head for nice tapas around the corner from the FCC.
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