Getting There
We took a bus from Ho Chi Minh City, which we booked from the Sinh Cafe in HCMC. It cost us 165,000 VND and then we had to give our passports and $35 to our driver who helped whisk us through the border as quickly as possible. the journey was pretty easy and took 7 hours.
We arrived to a very warm Phnom Penh, it was 40°C during the day, and didn't cool off too much in the evenings, by the time we arrived in our hotel it was around 6 pm and we took a stroll too the night market. We were very excited as this is a great way to try local cuisine, but SHOCK, there was none of the local cuisine that we had read about, we ended up eating Thai green Curry. the night market is right next to the river front, so we took a leisurely stroll back to the guesthouse for the night.
The National Museum
We woke up not having a plan on this day, so we looked at the city map, and decided to take a look at the National Museum, thinking it would give us some good information before heading to S21 and the Killing Fields the following day.
We paid our entry $5, and went inside, To which we found it to be one of the worst museums we had visited, there was no information on the recent history, only artefacts found at the temples of Angkor in Siem Reap. The museum was poorly laid out, and contained very little information. After an hour of looking at carvings of statues with barely any info of what we were looking at we left.
S21 and the Killing Fields
Phnom Penh is famous for this dark tourism attractions. It is the history of the Khmer Rouge era of Cambodia. The party ruled the country for 4 years in which time they killed nearly 3 million people in a population of 8 million. It was interesting to learn about this dark period of Cambodian rule, and gave us an
insight as to why Cambodia seemed a bit less developed than its neighbours Vietnam and Thailand.
After a bit of reading it was suggested that we could see both sights in around 6 hours by Tuk Tuk, This turned out to be if you sped through the attractions. We first went to the killing fields where it is estimated 20,000 people were killed in mass graves in a very small area. There are killing fields all over Cambodia, but this one is the most famous. People were killed here for various reasons, they were new people from the city,, they spoke more than one language they had studied to a high level, or they just wore glasses. SO 20,000 people were killed here and the sadness continues when you find out that bullets were too valuable to waste on killing these people so they soldiers doing the killing had to do it in very primitive ways. (I will spare you the details, you can find it on Google if your interested) There is a memorial on the site which from a distance looks like an ornamental Stupa, then on closer inspection it contains some of the skulls they have excavated from the mass graves. They still have not excavated all the graves, and with that one of the things you can see as you walk around is fragments of bone and clothing in the soil which has risen over the years, and there are plenty of signs asking you to avoid standing on the bones.
After a few hours hear listening to a very informative audio guide we headed back to our Tuk Tuk for the drive back to the centre of Phnom Penh where the S21 prison is based. The prison is in a former school, and this is adds to the horrors. the place was full of death and torture, people were tortured here up to 3 times a day, and were chained up the rest of the day. although there appears no official number they estimate around 12,000 people went into the prison and there are only 7 known survivors. The prisoners here were repeatedly tortured until they would sign a confession, that was completely fictional. Once the Khmer rouge had this signed confession the victim was sent to the Killing Fields to be executed. Many people died at the prison, and its exhibits are full of pictures of the victims faces. This place was in the centre of Phnom Penh, and now it seems impossible that this could occur in such a busy city. However in the first few days of the Khmer Rouge rule, Phnom Penh was evacuated and the people that lived there were forced to go to the "labour camps".
Both of these places were very interesting, and visiting the two took us the whole day to listen to both audio guides fully as well as read all the information available.
The following morning this our hotel sorted us a bus to Siem Reap to go and Celebrate the Khmer New Year.
We took a bus from Ho Chi Minh City, which we booked from the Sinh Cafe in HCMC. It cost us 165,000 VND and then we had to give our passports and $35 to our driver who helped whisk us through the border as quickly as possible. the journey was pretty easy and took 7 hours.
We arrived to a very warm Phnom Penh, it was 40°C during the day, and didn't cool off too much in the evenings, by the time we arrived in our hotel it was around 6 pm and we took a stroll too the night market. We were very excited as this is a great way to try local cuisine, but SHOCK, there was none of the local cuisine that we had read about, we ended up eating Thai green Curry. the night market is right next to the river front, so we took a leisurely stroll back to the guesthouse for the night.
The National Museum
We woke up not having a plan on this day, so we looked at the city map, and decided to take a look at the National Museum, thinking it would give us some good information before heading to S21 and the Killing Fields the following day.
We paid our entry $5, and went inside, To which we found it to be one of the worst museums we had visited, there was no information on the recent history, only artefacts found at the temples of Angkor in Siem Reap. The museum was poorly laid out, and contained very little information. After an hour of looking at carvings of statues with barely any info of what we were looking at we left.
S21 and the Killing Fields
Phnom Penh is famous for this dark tourism attractions. It is the history of the Khmer Rouge era of Cambodia. The party ruled the country for 4 years in which time they killed nearly 3 million people in a population of 8 million. It was interesting to learn about this dark period of Cambodian rule, and gave us an
insight as to why Cambodia seemed a bit less developed than its neighbours Vietnam and Thailand.
After a bit of reading it was suggested that we could see both sights in around 6 hours by Tuk Tuk, This turned out to be if you sped through the attractions. We first went to the killing fields where it is estimated 20,000 people were killed in mass graves in a very small area. There are killing fields all over Cambodia, but this one is the most famous. People were killed here for various reasons, they were new people from the city,, they spoke more than one language they had studied to a high level, or they just wore glasses. SO 20,000 people were killed here and the sadness continues when you find out that bullets were too valuable to waste on killing these people so they soldiers doing the killing had to do it in very primitive ways. (I will spare you the details, you can find it on Google if your interested) There is a memorial on the site which from a distance looks like an ornamental Stupa, then on closer inspection it contains some of the skulls they have excavated from the mass graves. They still have not excavated all the graves, and with that one of the things you can see as you walk around is fragments of bone and clothing in the soil which has risen over the years, and there are plenty of signs asking you to avoid standing on the bones.
After a few hours hear listening to a very informative audio guide we headed back to our Tuk Tuk for the drive back to the centre of Phnom Penh where the S21 prison is based. The prison is in a former school, and this is adds to the horrors. the place was full of death and torture, people were tortured here up to 3 times a day, and were chained up the rest of the day. although there appears no official number they estimate around 12,000 people went into the prison and there are only 7 known survivors. The prisoners here were repeatedly tortured until they would sign a confession, that was completely fictional. Once the Khmer rouge had this signed confession the victim was sent to the Killing Fields to be executed. Many people died at the prison, and its exhibits are full of pictures of the victims faces. This place was in the centre of Phnom Penh, and now it seems impossible that this could occur in such a busy city. However in the first few days of the Khmer Rouge rule, Phnom Penh was evacuated and the people that lived there were forced to go to the "labour camps".
Both of these places were very interesting, and visiting the two took us the whole day to listen to both audio guides fully as well as read all the information available.
The following morning this our hotel sorted us a bus to Siem Reap to go and Celebrate the Khmer New Year.
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| Mass Grave of 450 Victims at the Killing Fields |
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| The Stupa containing the skulls of the excavated victims |
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| The School block turned S21 torture prison |
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| Some of the prisoners who "passed through" |
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| The Cells where the prisoners were locked up individually. |
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