Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s Capital City

#Day 4 # Central Market #Killing Feilds #S21

We arrived at Phnom Penh and headed to the Central Market for our first street food experience of the trip. We played it safe and ordered vegetable noodles with a fried egg on top for $1.

Rice noodles with vegetables and fried egg delicately rested on top

As we walk to the Central Market we saw a bit of the city:

If your electricity goes down… good luck!

For dessert, we tried a couple of local muffins and headed to the ‘Cheung Ek’ killing fields in a tuk tuk. It was 15km away so we got to see more of the city and it was striking how much it was growing. There were thousands of constructions sites all over the city and the suburbs. This was because the city was destroyed under the Pol Pot regime. Pol Pot’s barbaric vision was to create a self sufficient society by focusing on farming. He closed down schools, libraries, hospitals… and killed most intellectuals, doctors, lawyers. He was killing anyone educated or that he felt would threaten the undertaking of his grand vision for the Cambodian society.

Prior to visiting the ‘Cheung Ek’ (aka The Killing Fields), I knew very little about the massacres during the Pol Pot era. Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge were in power from 17 April 1975, a date that gets repeated a lot during the audio tour at ‘Cheung Ek’. Pol Pot was in power for over 4 years and they were 4 very long years for the majority of Cambodians.

I won’t go into too much details but atrocities happened! Sources say that between 1.7 to over 3 million people died during his regime. At the ‘Cheung Ek’ site, over 45,000 people died alone and this was one of many areas used by the Khmer Rouge. It is estimated there were over 280 other killing fields spread throughout Cambodia.

Buddhist Stupa: as you walk in to ‘Cheung Ek’ killing fields is the religious remembrance monument. It is is filled with over 5,000 human skulls and other bones found at the site. You can kind of make them out if you look closely through the glass door

Cambodians were mass murdered and thrown into collective graves.

Then covered the bodies, dead or alive, with chemicals!

As you walk around ‘Cheung Ek’, there are still bones and cloth that surface when it rains.

The narrator in the audio headset provided at ‘Cheung Ek’ was one of the survivors of the regime who then went on to become a UN representative. He told the story of the Pol Pot era and the mass genocide, with true authenticity. It is very emotional and hard to think that the western world let it happen and even supported it at one point or another because they were fooled by Pol Pot. When government officials visited the country he was very devious in his ways to cover the real story. Only now have some of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge been sentenced. The only assumption we can make as to why the US or UK etc didn’t help is due to the involvement of the Americans in the Vietnam war.

A photo taken where the graves were discovered and bones carefully removed to assess the damage done by forensics at ‘Cheung Ek’ to help gain a deeper understanding of the Khmer Rouge.

Our next stop was Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum known as S21 (short for Security Prison 21). Formerly a high school, it was turned in to a jail during Pol Pot’s regime, where over 20,000 were held captive, tortured and ultimately killed.

There were only 7 survivors from the prison, we had the pleasure of meeting one who is based at the site to meet visitors.

At night we walked along the river front which is full of lively bars before hitting the cities night market for more street food. This time spring rolls on the menu and a bubble tea for dessert.