The Trip - Part III

After the spiders, the rest of our time in Phnom Penh was sobering. 

We toured S21, the Tuol Sleng prison, now a genocide museum, which contains hundreds of photos of  inmates, all staring directly into the camera and giving you the sense that they're holding your gaze as you try to imagine what was going through their mind at that moment. The Khmer Rouge was nothing if not thorough with their documentation and the journalists who captured the images of the horror after the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia from the terrifying regime, brave and determined the world should have the evidence that this did happen. Of the 16,000 people who entered the prison and were brutally tortured, in some instances for crimes as benign as being labelled an intellect for wearing glasses, a mere 14 survived. We were privileged to meet two of them at the prison – and naturally I had to buy their relatively expensive books, but they were a worthwhile personal and moving account.

Then on to The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and the glass tower erected in 1988 that contains over 8,000 skulls found in the surrounding mass graves. I’ll spare you the stories they share but I will say that for a tourist destination, it is a very, very quiet place.

We steady ourselves with a drink at the Foreign Correspondents Club, overlooking the Tonle Sap river before a stroll along the foreshore among the elderly European men negotiating deals and slipping into taxis with aging Cambodian hookers. Maybe they’re on the early bird special as it wasn’t even 7pm.

It’s Christmas day and we’re on a boat to Siem Reap. It sounded like such an adventure – it turns out to be like a long bus ride. We arrive later than expected so our guide here suggests a reshuffle in the itinerary, and a visit to a local orphanage after a late lunch.

The kids are gorgeous – I just want to take them home! – but instead we blow up the inflatable balls we’ve brought for them and our kids join in the games while we chat to the supervisors about their support, the kids schooling etc. It was a good reminder that Christmas is about joy - not a heap of landfill disguised as presents. We make a donation and round up the kids (just ours!) before heading back to the hotel.