So I have found my limit of not wanting to rent a bicycle or moped. We arrived in Phonm Penh on Friday afternoon and took our lives in our hands walking about 1.5km. The pavements are filled with parked cars, stalls and waiting tuk tuks. So mostly you need to walk in the gutter. This is not great when the traffic is chocca and everytime you come to a junction it is likely you’ll meet someone on a moped or tuk tuk cutting the corner coming towards you on the wrong side of the street. Crossing the roads at junctions is particularly hair raising and the Green Man means nothing here, in fact the sparse traffic lights are mostly ignored by all. The same rules (or no rules) applied in Siem Reap but the sheer volume of traffic here makes it nuts. On the way back we saw two crashes (2 mopeds and then 2 cars). Phew – no one was hurt and we survived and got back to the safety of our little hotel!!!
It is unusual but in this city I think it is actually safer to travel by tuk tuk – at least you have a bit of a cage to protect you!
So as you can tell Phnom Penh is booming, very large with a big population. It is amazing how quickly it has bounced back after the awful atrocities the people suffered under the Khmer Rouge between 17 April 1975 and 7 January 1979. We visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S21), a previous High school that was used by the Khmer Rouge to detain and torture more than twenty thousand people including Monks, anyone educated, teachers, those with soft hands, people who wore glasses, women and children. It was gruesome and shocking that it happened during our lifetime.
Then today we visited the mass graves in the Cheoung Ek killing fields. After the end of the Pol Pot regime they found 126 mass graves with thousands of bodies. Many of these were brought from S21 once they had signed false confessions. What a sombre place as you could see fragments of bones, teeth and scraps of clothing in the ground. In the museum and audio tour there were some gruesome details that were chilling and a memorial stupa built and filled with 20 layers of skulls, and human bones. Again it is shocking that so little is know about these atrocities and yet they estimate 1.7million people died (1 in every 4) during this regime.
I had just finished reading “First they killed my father” and then “After the killed my father” by Luong Ung which told the story of the Ung family during this awful time – Pete got quite used to me crying my eyes out while clinging onto my Kindle.
I remember visiting Auswitz and people signing the visitor’s book saying “we must never let this happen again” and yet here is a more recent example. And it is still happening today in other countries right now, even close by in Myanmar. Will we never learn or find better ways to prevent this occurring ever again?
