Hill of Penh

Pnomh Penh May 27-29
Pnomh Penh made us feel awesome one day and depressed the next. It's a strange mix of trendy cafes, bars and boutiques and begging children on the pavements outside. There are millions of cyclo's (Motorbikes with a carriage attached) hovering to take you places, but not enough tourists to fill them. In fairness it is the low season due to it being stinking -not-even-moving-but-tshirt-drenched-hot, with like a 100% humidity.
We liked Pnomh Penh, and it would have been cool to have a few more days to hang out and really see the city. As I said though what we did see was uplifting even if there was a depressing undercurrent from learning Cambodia's recent history.
The fist day we decided to walk around... we went to the palace where the king lives(photo above) which was shut for lunch, so we went to the museum which was in the most gorgeous building. We wandered around all the recovered statues from Cambodia's ancient Khmer empire, looking at the mix of Hindu and Buddhist statues. Some of which we both thought looked similar to Ancient Egyptian statues, or what we think Egyptian statues look like, since we haven't been there yet.
You couldn't take photos there, but it was the most amazing, tranquil place, and definitely recommended if the heat, traffic, city are getting you down outside.

After eating some Cambodian cookies we headed to Pnomh Penh- the hill of Penh which the city is named for. A lady named Penh buried Buddha figures on the hill, and that's how the city got its name. We went into the temple at the top of the (quite small) hill and then wandered around the gardens. It was an awesome people watching place, with lots of Khmers out walking with friends and family. We spent ages watching the resident monkeys, who were very plump (like little monkey buddhas!) from everyone buying and feeding them lotus seeds. There were heaps of monkey mums with bubs, and it was hysterical to see how much a like all mothers are.. the little toddler monkeys would always want to scamper off and play and the mum not even looking, eating a lotus seed or nitpicking another monkeys hair, would grab hold of one of the babies limbs and drag it back to safety, this happened everytime it tried it's luck.
That night we drank happy hour beers and watched men of all ages in a park kicking a shuttlecock up in the air using only their feet. It was incredibly impressive how long they kept the shuttlecock in play- longer then any tennis match point.
The next day our guesthouse owner took us on a motorbike tour of the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng the main torture jail. I've never prayed so hard for my life riding that bike, no one wears helmets and we saw two moto accidents on the way. In the hierarchy of the Khmer road, motorcycles are nearly at the bottom, there are many more cars then in Vietnam, and they don't feel the need to indicate or check whose in the next lane. When we got to Toul Sleng we told him we'd walk home afterwards.

First off our guesthouse owner was pretty keen to take Jon out to the army barracks to shot a gun. He chose an AK47, he said it was an interesting experience, but not one he would like to repeat anytime soon.
It ended up being a pretty sobering day though.. what the Khmer Rouge did to it's people is appalling and atrocious, how they got to thinking what they were doing was OK and for the good of the Khmer people is beyond us.
The Killing Fields has a stupa built that contains 8000 of the victims skulls that were killed (to the right) and buried there, it's so sad. It was such a beautiful day and the field had been a picnic spot before the killings so was lush and green and walking around the dug out graves was heartbreaking and sickening.. especially when you see signs next to trees saying ''Tree where KR soldiers swung children at to crack skulls and kill'' It's horrible, most of the soldiers we found out had been indoctrinated when they where young children and had been trained to be killing machines.

Afterwards we rode to the the high school that had been turned into the number 1 security jail for the KR, Toul Sleng. Some class rooms just had a metal bedframe in the empty space and a grisly picture on the wall showing what the Vietnamese found on the bed frame when they liberated Pnomh Penh and got into the prison 4 years after the KR took control. They tortured and killed anyone they suspected of betraying the regime or 'Anka'. The rules of the prison are in the photo to the right. People had to hide if they had been smart or wealthy before KR , because only the peasants were true and worthy and pure enough to part of their communist revolution. The prison also showed the photos of everyone who had been through the prison and sent on to the Killing Fields, the soldiers took women, children the elderly, even Australians photos, and kept a file on them with their signed confessions on everyone who went through. Of the 20,000 people that went through the s21 prison only 7 survived. It is estimated over a million people died in the whole country. This in the space of 4 years. And there were other such prisons all around the country.

This is a pretty rushed overview of the Khmer Rouge period in Cambodia, but what we learnt that day, and from the books we read and the movies we watched, this time was horrific, and it happened only 30 years ago, people we saw on the street had been through this, and it made it real.Pnomh Penh had been emptyed of everyone who lived there.. everyone...and they had been made to grow rice and work in the fields for 14 hours a day.

Pnomh Penh and Cambodia has changed alot since those days though and the people are beautiful and friendly. We definately want to go back.