Khmer Rouge

We spent our morning in Phnom Penh trying to arrange what we would do, which is more difficult with 5 people, 2 of which are staying in another part of town and then also getting our laos visas in order. After we had that set, we tuk tuked over to the S-21 (Tual Sleng)prison camp. It was a school turned prison camp during the Khmer Rouge era (the late 70's) that was used as a prison, torture area, and just killing area. It's been turned into a museum now. A very sobering one in that. It's a terrible story in which the khmer rouge an aggerian communist group took over, kicked everyone out of phnom penh, and killed all educated people. At least 2 million of the 8 million population (1/4 of it) were killed during the khmer rouge. And it was only 30 years ago, so it still has its affects here psychologically. I think the people are less trusting, less friendly than other places. I mean, anyone over 30 living here, lived through the khmer rouge (and lots through the american bombing of the vietnam war), so they witnessed all the killing. And lots of times no khmer rouge cambodians turned to killing their fellow countrymen just so they could survive themselves. So even 30 years afterwards, it's a real mess, and you can still kind of feel it. And even to this day, there are about 700 reported deaths a year due to unexploded ordinance and land mines from the khmer rouge. In cambodia, you definitely don't go off the trodden trail for fear of landmines. So when it's time to pee, whitney goes one way on the road to pee and conrad and I to the other. After visiting S-21 we decided we didn't need to visit the killing fields which are basically fields filled with 1000's of skulls all piled up that have been dug up from the times of the khmer rouge. In Phnom Penh you can also shoot ak-47 machine guns and rocket launchers (probably one of the only places in the world to do this an not be in the millitary), which you sickeningly shoot at cows, goats, or another animal of your choice. But we of course found this quite in poor taste after the museum we visited and had no intentions of doing that. So we instead decided to catch a bus to Sihounikville, a beach resort. It was in the opposite direction of the way that the franks and I were going, but we wanted to spend the last few days with the sales before they headed to angkor wat and phnom penh was not a good place to do this.