Monday, August 17, 2009

Cambodia






On Saturday we visited the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum. It is really hard to describe how emotionally draining it was. From 1975 to 1979 Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge troops to murder almost 20, 000 men, women and children. They tortured them in horrendous ways before they killed them. They built a a monument with 17 stories of skulls. There were many places on the ground where bits of bones and clothes were still visible from the mass graves.

The Genocide Museum was a former high school where they held the prisoners, torturing them for some times months at a time before they were taken to the killing fields to be finished off and buried in large shallow mass graves. Interestingly enough one of the methods they used for torture was a type of water boarding. They had all these pictures of just the faces of these poor people and it truly brought you to tears. So many of them were very young. They also wanted to virtually do away with the educated people so they would have more control over the masses.

After we left there we went to the Russian Market but it was so hot and we were drained from the morning's experience. The market is under cover but all different vendors. You could by every thing form a chicken to the pot to cook it in. They had motorcycle parts and clothes. Just about anything you could want.




A really strange thing here is women wear pajamas as clothes. It is so common to see them walking in around in what looks like flannel pajamas.





Another thing I got a kick out of was this lady "multi talking"


Saturday, August 15, 2009

we are here

Having some problems copying the blog I wrote in a word processing program to this so will keep trying but we arrived safely.