Phnom Penh

Let your memory be your travel bag." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn-

A six hour boat ride took us to the capital, Phnom Penh. We got a bus from the harbour in to the city. And for a moment I thought they were trying to beat the Guinness record in how many people they could fit in van. We were eighteen people, plus the driver in a bus with nine seats.

My seat was in the lap of a German girl. A very intimate bus ride.

And if we didn't beat the record, we can't have been far off!

We walked around for hours trying to find a place to stay. And my backpack was heavier than ever. We finally found a nice little hostel just by a beautiful lake, and for only 2 € per night!

***

Less then thirty-five years ago one of the most brutal massacre in the worlds history took place.

This time in Cambodia.

A man named Pol Pot, the leader of the military group The Khmer Rouge, wiped out more than 1.8 million people. The Khmer Rouge killed anyone who looked intelligent. Anyone wearing glasses, those who knew how to read, or even those who had any form of contact with the western world.

He wanted to create a country with no religion, no money and no education.

We visited the two most historical places in Cambodia.

The Killing Fields, and the S-21 prison.

In S-21 prison, they brought men, women and children, most of them never saw the outside of the prison again. The regime became paranoid, and tortured the prisoners for days, suspecting them to be working with the CIA. Pulling out their finger nails, beating them with wires, hanging them from their arms until they lost conciseness and sticking needles under their nails to make them talk.

The prison was once used as a school, which is hard to believe when you see it.

They turned it in to hell on earth.

One of the most disturbing sights was a big tree in the middle of the fields. This is were they killed infants, beating them to death. It was strange to walk around through old mass graves and sculls, it was hard to get your head around the fact that this has really happened.

More than 15 000 people were held prisoners at the S-21, about 12 survived!

It was a day we will remember for a long, long time.

A day that brought many emotions.

Our taxi driver told us, with the little English he knew, that he lost most of his family during the years of Pol Pot's regime. He said he was one of the “lucky” ones.

He survived. His wife and two of his children did not.

It is hard to believe that something so inhuman took place only about thirty years ago. And with so little attention from the western world.

I find it hard to understand that we don't even learn about this in school. Not once did we hear his name. Even after spending a day in these surroundings, I don't think we will ever understand how much Cambodia suffered.

We didn't stay for long in the capital. We didn't really like it there.

It was too big, too many people, and we felt pretty lost.

I will post a video of one of the few survivors from the prison, and some photos I took when I was there.