today i went around and saw all the sites of phnom phen. a lot of them were really depressing. mot of you probably already know this, but in case you slept thru world history class (like i did), cambodia is the site of one of the bloodiest revolutions in history. from 1975 to 1978, communist forces called the khmer rouge took over the government and then tortured and killed around 2 million people. they said they wanted to start a society led by the working class, but really what they did was kill everyone who was educated. a lot of this happened in phnom phen and because of that there are several sites around town that are a tribute to the victims of the genocide.<\/p>\n
the main one one in town was the tuol sleng museum. this is a highschool within the city that the khmer rouge took over and turned into a prison\/torture center called S-21. they surrounded the whole city w\/ corrugated iron fences and barbed wire, turned the classrooms into prison cells, and began the long task of tagging people and torturing them. most of the people detained here were eventually taken to choeung ek to be killed (more on that later), but about 100 people per day died at s-21 from the torture.<\/p>\n
walking around thru the halls of this place was really really unsettling. so odd… how on one hand it looked like a highschool w\/ long halls, chin-up bars, etc… but on the other hand it was surrounded by snarls of barbed wire. you could walk into the little cells and inside they had pictures of the different methods of torture that were used here. truly horrific. and then… there were the photos. the mugshots taken by the Khmer Rouge of everyone before they were executed. there were rooms full of these photos… tons of them on every wall… each face looking lost and mournful while holding up their prisoner number. it was so devastating to look at this sea of faces while knowing that none of them were alive anymore. how could people do something like this?? it was all just so *so* sickening.<\/p>\n
inside one of the rooms, you could watch a documentary about s-21. they interviewed some people who had survived,and others who had been guards here. at one point, they were interviewing one of the guards and he was explaining how he would go about killing the prioners… AND THE BASTARD WAS SMILING THE WHOLE TIME. UGH!!<\/p>\n
the other place i saw today was choeung ek, the infamous Cambodian Killing Fields. this is where most of the people were taken to be killed. the whole places is surrounded by huge pits used as mass graves. you can still see bits of rags that used to be prisoners clothes floating about and bits of bone in the pits. did i mention that since bullets where expensive, pretty much all of these people were bludgeoned to death? sheez. walking around here was really eerie and horrible. the place was filled with lots of green grassy fields, with *tons* of butterflies peacefully floating by… it was hard to imagine what kind of heinous atrocities happened here. at least it was hard to imagine until i saw the memorial stuppa in the center of the field. it’s a huge golden monument that’s several stories tall dedicated to the victims that died here… and as you approach it and come closer… you realize that the whole thing is filled w\/ skulls. yes, over 8000 skulls in row upon row and shelf upon shelf. it really gives you a sense of just how many people fell victim to this place.<\/p>\n
anyways, the last place i saw today was the silver pagoda by the royal palace… but somehow i think that writing about beautiful temples would be out of place in this entry. so i’ll skip that.<\/p>\n
tomorrow is my last day here and i fly back to thailand in the afternoon, but not before trying out some crazy illegal shit that my moto-driver is taking me to… more on that later.<\/p>\n
-v<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
today i went around and saw all the sites of phnom phen. a lot of them were really depressing. mot of you probably already know this, but in case you slept thru world history class (like i did), cambodia is the site of one of the bloodiest revolutions in history. from 1975 to 1978, communist … Continue reading “history lessons”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thailand-trip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}