Phnom Penh Day 1

Wow, what a day. We started out at Toul Sleng, the S21 prison which used to be a school before the Khmer Rouge turned it into a torture and interrogation prison. The classrooms (which were breezy and large originally) were made into cells 2m x0.8m for prisoners to be incarcerated, and barbed wire laced the walls of the buildings so inmates couldn’t throw themselves off the balconies to escape their fate.

Whole buildings were filled with row after row of photographs of those who had been taken to this prison to be tortured and killed, adults and children, men and women. It was a sickening sight, especially when you considered the irony of the setting – a place which should have been filled with children’s laughter but instead heard screams.

Things weren’t completely gloom and doom though. Those of you who’ve been following my blog for a while will know my penchant for candid kitty photos wherever I go. Today obliged by providing me with a teeny weeny black kitty:

Then we moved on to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek. While this memorial didn’t have the same visceral imagery that the previous museum did, it made up for it in emotion. We listened to the audio guide as we walked the paths, going past the Killing Tree where young children were murdered, and pits where hundreds of people were bludgeoned to death and left.

The place is at once beautiful and terrifying, much like the S-21 prison showed two sides of humanity. There were beautiful views across the lake, of fruit trees and paddy fields juxtaposed with this horror.

We were a subdued group returning from our day’s explorations, and spent time debriefing and discussing our thoughts about the day’s discoveries.

Not all was heavy and dark though. On our way to the supermarket in the morning, we had passed a place which advertised massage for $6, and one of the other teachers, H and I wandered back in the afternoon in our free time to see if we could squeeze some pampering in. They were open, even though it is a public holiday in Cambodia today to celebrate Human Rights Day (and I just found out they have a public holiday on my birthday, 7th Jan, for Victory Day to commemorate the end of the Khmer Rouge rule in 1979! Knew it was a great date…) and were very happy to slot us in for a quick half hour of back massage. And the price, I hear you ask? $4.50US! What a bargain!

Then it was out to dinner at a restaurant around the corner which offered a fabulous buffet of traditional Cambodian and South East Asian delicacies… including deep fried bugs! The kids were rapt at the idea of consuming tarantulas, and the bug (heh heh) spread rapidly throughout the group, with the teachers all having a little nibble of at least one hairy leg. It wasn’t that bad, tasting a bit like deep fried soft-shell crab, but the texture was a bit weird, and I don’t think I need to repeat the experience! Other interesting items on the “for the tourists” table included unhatched duck eggs (embryos), crickets, water beetles (which looked a little too close to cockroaches for my comfort!) and silk worm cocoons. I rested on my laurels with Spidey.

It wasn’t all tourist curiosities though – fabulous fresh spring rolls, green papaya salad, Pad Thai, gorgeous little packets of chicken or fish wrapped in leaves, rice paper crepes, lemongrass seafood salad… I wish I could have tried it all!