Cambodia as Tourists

Warning:  Some graphic pictures

On our last full day in Cambodia, we went to some of the tourist sites around Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia and the only city we visited in Cambodia. In the morning we went to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It used to be a high school, but it was taken over as a prison and interrogation area for "enemies of the state" during the time of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979.   Approximately 2 million Cambodian people were killed during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Many people we talked to were directly impacted by the reign of the Khmer Rouge with some of them having family members killed during that time. Many of the people were eventually killed and buried in the Killing Fields - Choeng Ek - which is at a different location.  About 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng and it is reported that only 7 people survived their time there.  Some of their stories were chonicled around the walls of the museum including one story about how a man was able to escape death because he knew how to fix typewriters, and another story about a prisoner who was an artist and could draw how the leaders of the camp approved and survived because of it.  There were rooms and rooms of the pictures of the people that died there, sometimes mug shots for when the people arrived at the camp including very small children, and some more graphic photographs of people after they had been killed.  It was very important for us to show our daughters this site, to help them see some of the evil things that have happened in this world.  It was a very powerful, sombre and moving experience.

Looks like a typical school from a distance with lots of classrooms

Rules for the prisoners

Pictures of some of the prisoners with a Cambodian school girl taking notes

One of the larger pictures in the museum showing prisoners, and in the background a sideview to show how they took pictures of the prisoners (with a special chair with a head piece to have the head in the right position)

You see this sign a lot throughout the site reminding people not to smile in this museum

Classrooms were divided up with brick walls for cells for prisoners

Another picture of the school with the gallows in the foreground. The gallows were originally used for physical education but later converted as torture instruments by the Khmer Rouge.  People where strung up by their feet or with their hands behind their back head down and then their heads were dunked into the pots below that were filled with water.  This was a way to get oftentimes innocent people to "confess" to their crimes against the Khmer Rouge.  In the background (white boxes) is the small cemetary where the last people killed were buried.

Illustration on how the gallows were used

Remains of some of the people killed at the prison

Barbed wire around the inside perimeter of the prison

More information about Tuol Sleng

The second site we went to was the National Museum. This was a big disappointment for most of us; Hannah enjoyed it though because she discovered she really liked learning about an older time in history. The museum did not talk much about the more modern history of Cambodia, from the past 100 years or so. The museum had many very old god and goddess statues and artifacts from about 150 years ago.  Perhaps it is still difficult to talk about their more recent history, especially with the Khmer Rouge regime, but there was very little detail about that in the museum.

We walked by the King's Palace but did not go in.

King's Palace

Standing with the guard at the Royal Palace

We took a break to have blizzards at Dairy Queen, the first DQ we have seen (except for Garth) in a year!  (He saw one in an airport when he went to a conference last year.)  We enjoyed it tremendously but found that most of us could not finish the usual size portions of ice cream that we would have had in Canada.

We finished off the day by walking along the Sisowath Quay, across a little ways from the Royal Palace. It was a great place to people-watch, buy snacks or balloons, and see many people playing soccer on the boardwalk (with bare feet) or playing a popular game like Jianzi on the Quay (which is like Hackisack in Canada but the toy is like the shape of a long toilet paper roll and it makes a sound when you kick it up in the air.)

Found the Canadian flag at the Quay‎