Days 4 through 6, Phnom Penh & Stung Treng

I wake up at 6a.m. on day 4 to get ready for the 7 hour bus trip to Phnom Penh. I've booked a ride on a VIP bus (aircon, wet towel, pick-up from guesthouse) for all of USD$6, and for its low price it turns out to be the best bus ride I encounter in the 10 days -- although the driver does get lost initially, circling around the estate for a good 40 minutes.

It is also on this trip that I realise my 6gig MP3 player, which I spent a week carefully loading songs onto, is jammed on the first folder. Unfortunately, the first folder contains only 2 songs. I am now something of an expert on Right As Rain and Cold Shoulder by Adele.

I arrive at my Phnom Penh guesthouse at 2p.m. and head out immediately for the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a good 20 minutes away on foot.

The first thing I notice is the barbed wire surrounding the compound, a stark contrast to the cheery houses around. For the unaware, Tuol Sleng was a high school that was converted by the Khmer Rouge into a torture center. In its 4 years of existence it's thought that 20,000 prisoners were incarcerated there, with only 12 ever making it out alive.

Around the gates, landmine victims skilfully weave their way around tourists, not so much begging as pestering everyone for money. Tuktuk drivers and motorcyclists alike try to get you to hop onto their vehicles, seeming not to notice that you've only just arrived and are trying to enter the museum.

The first thing you see after the ticket counter is 14 identical, featureless graves. According to the sign beside them, they contain the corpses of the last victims of the Khmer Rouge.


Turning the corner, you are faced with a huge sign proclaiming the rules of S-21 (as Tuol Sleng is otherwise known).

Click to enlarge

Visitors crowd the first room, snapping pictures and craning their necks to see the exhibit. But then we gradually come to realise that there are rooms upon rooms upon rooms that are exactly the same, all sparse and chilling and almost ghostly, and for me at least, that's when the magnitude of the situation hit home.

Leg irons

Ammunition box used to store prisoners' waste

As if anyone will think of smiling!

The next building, B, focuses more on the prisoners. Mug shots are displayed, alongside pictures that document both horrific and humiliating moments.

The one thought that runs constantly through my mind is -- for an institution that demands respect and sobriety from visitors (sometimes in the form of donations), surely it's a sacrilege of the highest order to put up such photos? What if surviving family members were to see them? Worst, what about the skulls on display? It all seems very contradictory and mercenary to me.

(Of course, I'm not in a position to say much about it, being that the sole purpose of me visiting Phnom Penh is to see these genocide museums; the very fact that I'm taking pictures already trivialises the situation. This is a mental struggle that I never quite quash.)

The cabinet at the end holds prisoners' clothes

Room after room of pictures demonstrate the sheer number of prisoners that entered the compound. Interestingly enough, if I may be so callous as to use that word, most expressions are blank, some even happy; I only spot 1 photograph that captured a look of worry.

Children employed by the Khmer Rouge to fight

Prisoners were chained to the ground

At one point of time, I look down from the placards on the wall and notice I am standing in a splash of dried blood.

Picture of mass grave

Someone left flowers in little cracks and on exhibits -- a very touching gesture

Barbed wire along the building to prevent prisoners from escaping/committing suicide

Row of 11 rooms, each with about 20 tiny cells

(The doors keep creaking shut as I film this.)

Picture of a Khmer Rouge member -- I think it particularly gratifying that someone had scratched out his eyes

All in all, I spend a good 3 hours there. I suppose I got desensitised a little by the end of the day -- from the perspective of an outsider, no amount of re-creation can bring to life the horror of S21, really.

But a quick calculation shows that you have to be only 34 years old at least to have been through the Khmer Rouge reign. Every time I see a tour guide, or even a random passerby, I subconsciously make a guess at their age, and more often than not it amazes me how easily they talk about the horrors in their past. How can they be desensitised as well?

The next day, day 5, I head out to Choeung Ek (also known as The Killing Fields) by motorbike. It's my first time ever on a motorbike, which I hope explains my death grip on the driver.

The first thing you see upon entering the compound is a stupa, a structure whose sedate outlook belies its macabre display.

Donation box on bottom shelf

Behind the stupa, green fields dotted with shallow pits stretch in all directions. These are the famed mass graves of Choeung Ek.

Tree from which loudspeakers were hung; music was played to drown out the screams of those being executed

After some minutes of wandering, I happen to see a guide ahead of me point to the ground. Moments later a blonde boy kneels down, pokes a finger into some loose soil and pulls out something white. "A tooth," he says in a hushed whisper.

From then on I become painfully aware of the exposed fragments of bones, teeth and cloth in the ground.

Old clothes left against a tree

Nearby, a little hall that's beautifully done up on the outside turns out to have only 3 exhibits in it.

Uniforms that people had to wear under the Khmer Rouge reign

A typical prisoner's profile

After a quick stop at my guesthouse for lunch, I walk the length of the city in the name of exploration.

Streets of Phnom Penh

I am far too lazy to bargain and shop, and so leave Russian Market, O'Russy Market and Central Market with nothing more than a bag of assorted fried insects.

They don't taste anything like chicken.







But then, I'm sure they taste better than whatever this dentist has to offer.


Day 6 is taken up primarily by a 10 hour bus ride to the border down of Stung Treng. The driver is a massive lump of a man who makes pit stops every few hours for food.

No one speaks English save for one man beside me, and he takes such an interest in me that I start getting paranoid. I ignore him for the majority of the trip, selfishly turning to him only when I need help in translation, and am thoroughly ashamed and guilty when he alights halfway through the journey -- obviously couldn't possibly have meant to kidnap me.

Stung Treng is a tiny, muddy town that takes me 10 minutes to circle on foot. Nothing to report from here -- there is a flying cockroach in my room though. I sleep curled up under the blanket the whole night.