Month: February 2015

Tuol Sleng , the name of the prison in Central Phnom Penh where some 15,000 inmates were tortured to death.

Occupying a square kilometer located close to the Russian Market, Tol Sleng is another memento of the failed Khmer Rouge regime. It’s many rooms document the pointless existence of the inmates before they were tortured or executed.

Out of 17,000 prisoners, there are only 12 known survivors.

Timings

It takes roughly 2 hours to get around the museum.

There are some interesting confessions from the many prisoners, and from the guards and staff.

Many of the top cadres and officiaries were tried for international war crimes, with limited success, due to their age and difficulty in gathering evidence.

 

 

Related articles

• Cambodia court upholds convictions for land rights activists
• 12,000 skulls exhumed at Khmer Rouge prison
• Past and present collide in Cambodia

Hired a motorbike and made the 12km journey to Phnom Pehn’s most famous attraction, the killing fields, or Cheung Ek, as the village is known.

They give you an audio guide when you arrive, which takes you around 22 sites.

It’s made by a survivor of the regime, who was imprisoned on the camp and witnessed many of the atrocities first hand.

Without the guide, it’s just a dusty, bumpy field, with a few sheds.

 

Pol Pot

Like all good dictators, Pol Pot had his fair share of little phrases, or mantras to inspire his followers.

“Better to risk killing an innocent, than risk an enemy living.”

“To destroy you is no loss, to preserve you is no gain.”

Wandering the fields gave you a taste how this was inspired, followed by the reality of fear and shock, if you dared to cross the regime.

It’s difficult to see where the lines where drawn between innocence and guilt, keeping the populace in a state of general fear and confusion.

Something which Pol Pot seems to have achieved fairly well, and Cambodia still seems to be recovering from

This tree is where they smashed the heads of babies. (Men and women were kept separately, only babies were left with their mothers).

Victims

17,000 Civilians were killed here to ensure the rise and stability of the dictatorship. 8,000 of the bodies remain on site.

In 1979, the Pol Pot government collapsed after the Cambodia-Vietnam war, and Pol Pot fled to the border of Thailand. Spending the remains of his life under house arrest.

Stupa

The stupa in the center of the complex has 17 floors to commemorate the victims.

So.

Have arrived and had a look round.

There have been a few things to sort out, such as unloading the unwanted items from my luggage. Sorting Credit cards and phones out, and getting my haircut.

Yesterday was the first day I really did any touristy things.

Girlie bars

There are so many of these in Phnom Pehn. Yesterday was a national holiday, and many of them were very quite.

An ideal time to look around.

I’m not really into girlie bars, I find them a little gratuitous and disingenuous, and generally, difficult places to relax.

Shanghai Bar

One of the better ones is Shanghai Bar. It’s got 3 floors. Of course you are approached by ladies straight away, you can buy them a drink if you want to chat with them.

It seems the women in here made me feel more relaxed. I told them I was a tourist, rather than a sex-tourist. It was just a chat with a drink, but obviously the offer of more, if you wanted to do that.

The other bars I went to were more hardcore. Probably the most being the Walkabout. The fact the bar-woman tried to short change me for drinks and other stuff gave it a more business-like feel.

After some wandering round, I had some sushi and decided to try out the,

Pontoon club.

This is just of the strip near to the heart of darkness, which is probably THE most famous bar/pub/club in the whole of Phnom Pehn.

There were various nationalities in various states or repair wandering round. Bit’s and pieces going on here and there.

Good music, fairly modern.

Felt like a different vibe entirely, cosy and fun

Not needed

I ended up not using any of the girlie phrases included in my previous post.

But that’s there just for reference, in case you ever need to use it.