Killing Fields

When you travel in Cambodia everyone tells you that it is best to fly as the roads are so bad…..they are right. A bus journey that should take 6 hours takes 8 and the journey is bumpy to say the least. We knew this ahead of time as we had done it before, but this didn’t keep us from the cheap ($4 per person) locals bus again as we headed south to Phnom Phen. I have to say it again; the countryside is beautiful and dry with basic huts and entertaining scenes of daily life. Like 30 chickens hanging from motorbike handlebars on their way to market, or a straw barrel full of piglets on their way home (again on the back of a motorbike)

Or a cow taxi!


This is a typical petrol station in Cambodia… the two BP geeks had to take one!


Phnom Phen is completely different from Siem Reap and (personally speaking) not as nice. Arriving fairly late in the afternoon and finding a place to stay we headed to the riverside for a bit of sophistication and a few cocktails. Comedy would have it that we had been sitting in the very smart Foreign Correspondence Club, overlooking the river, mojito in hand, for about 5min when I noticed the lovely leather chair I was sitting in had gifted me with hundreds of fleas – back to the simple locals bars from now on!

The two main reasons for visiting Phnom Phen were to better understand the Pol Pot genocide by visiting Toul Sleng Prison and the ‘Killing Fields’. To write that feels so strange, but the terrible recent past for Cambodia (late 70’s) is still very raw. Toul Sleng was a school, but converted to a prison in 1975 and housed many local people before they were either tortured to death or sent to the Killing Fields and massacred. Lets just say that they have left it ‘as it was’ and the images of what happened there are truly shocking. People were rounded up and killed for being educated; speaking more than one language, wearing glasses…I would have been an early victim. Pol Pot’s propaganda and reasoning and regime seem so crazy, but it lasted for years.

After Toul Sleng (S21) people were sent to mass graves by their hundreds (300 killed per day in the height of activity) and walking through the graves and seeing the clothing (and some bones) still sticking out of the ground is quite shocking. Mass graves (129) of which 85 have been excavated to reveal 9000 remains. I found it quite hard to see
- the tree where they threw the babies against to kill them
- the speaker hung from a tree to play music over the screams of execution
...and when the executioners (most child soldiers) had done their duty, they too were killed to prevent them escaping and telling the world what was happening!! You can’t win. Enough of that – very shocking and thought provoking. Highly recommend everyone reads “First they killed my Father – a Cambodian daughter remembers”

Fantastic dinner at a restaurant/school called Friends – some of the best food we had in Cambodia. It is also an example of how many businesses are set up. Getting street children off the streets by educating them and teaching them trades (this case is catering and cooking)

In summary we loved Cambodia – it may not sound like it from the two blogs! It was moving, thought provoking, beautiful, wild and the people are wonderful.

Cool veggie market


Off to Thailand for some beach action, elephants, cookery school and perhaps a trek?