Day 4 - Phnom Penh & Tuol Sleng

We woke up to a torrential downpour that may have been a precursor to the oncoming monsoon season that will begin next month in Cambodia.  The rain was coming down quite hard and was partially flooding some lower level areas as we pulled out of Siem Reap.  But as we drove along the five and a half hour journey to Phnom Penh, the rains slowly dissipated and eventually stopped.  It  proved to be a pretty quiet and uneventful trip as the group rested following a busy two days in Siem Reap.

At one point in the trip, we were slowed due to an Angkor beer truck that had rolled over in the ditch at the side of the highway.  The odd thing about this was that exactly two weeks ago, Ms. Potosky and myself were in Cambodia and saw another beer truck rolled over on the same stretch of  highway.  We wondered whether there was a relationship between the location of the roll-overs and the hometown of the delivery drivers as the beer strewn in the ditch certainly made a nice gift to the villagers in the community.

When we stopped  for a break, a number of vendors were selling the typical roadside fare like water and tropical fruit.  But, this stopped offered a little bit more.  A couple of vendors were selling fried crickets, frogs and spiders.  Big Spiders! 

Jamil, Marco, Jack, Z and Cody made a proposition that if I would buy the spiders, they would eat them!  It didn't take me long to pull out my wallet.  With cameras rolling, the guys didn't hesitate to indulge in the Cambodian delicacies.

A few hours later we checked into the Frangipani Villas and immediately departed for Tuol Sleng Prison. Also known as S-21 and now a genocide museum, Tuol Sleng Prison was a converted high school which was used as an interrogation centre during the Khmer Rouge's regime between 1975 and 1979.  It was used to extract confessions, most of which were false,  from prisoners who were routinely tortured and then taken to the killing fields of Choeung Ek to be murdered.

The students had already learned about S-21 through classroom presentations made prior to our departure, but seeing the prison, walking the grounds, and learning from the guides who had all survived the reign of the Khmer Rouge, made it very real. 

We gathered in the courtyard of the prison following our tour, talked about what we had seen and heard and encouraged students to reflect on their experience through a journal entry.

Reflections

Joanna and Deepa said:

After the tour we felt very emotional especially since our tour guides and their families were victimized by the Khmer Rouge. They explained to us about how they lost many of their family members during the revolution and how they managed to escape and survived it. There are many things that happened in this world that many of us are not aware of, like how the prisoners were tortured and killed for information. Overall, we learnt a lot about the history of how Cambodians suffered during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.