Tuesday
It’s a bit of a gruesome blog post today, not only because we ate a tarantula, but there are some awful stories from Cambodia’s history.
Anyway, we left Saigon in the morning for our 6 hour trip across the Vietnam border into our next country, Cambodia. The journey was ok and border crossing was fairly painless.
As we entered Cambodia’s capital city Phnom Penh, I noticed the wide boulevards and streets that were so different to the countries we had recently visited. The reason for these wide streets are the French actually planned the city when they colonised Cambodia.
Once we had checked into our hotel, we had a bit of a different type of orientation of the city. Instead of walking, we had an army of what looked like wheelchairs for a cyclo tour of the city. These special bikes had a seat at the front and the cyclists that did the hard work were all being helped by a charity. It was great fun lying bck and taking in the city as we all overtook one another on the busy motorbike filled streets.
Riding along in our cyclones.
My cyclist started off quite young but this is what he looked like after we finished!
Heidi with her driver.
Our cyclists were excellent!
We stopped off at this round about with this cool building in the middle.
We got dropped off by the river which was a really nice area. All these tourist orientated areas have only been developed in the last few years. Dinner was at a local restaurant where we ate some nice Cambodian food including crispy rice with a yummy coconut curry sauce. It was strange but very very tasty. We also watched a documentary in a small cinema room all about the genocide that took place just over 30 years ago. It was a good introduction to what we would learn about the next day.
Down by the river. It was ligned with loads of flags representing all the different embassies in the city.
Wednesday
Today we learnt a lot about Cambodia’s tragic past. It was fascinating but distressing at the same time. As well as covering much of the last century, the focus was mainly on the Khmer Rouge regime in the late 70s. A man called Pol Pot became the leader of the country and imposed a lot of his really strange communist ideas. He wanted Cambodia to start from scratch and become a classless society so he created the “year zero”. Phnom Penh was evacuated with everyone being made to move to the country side where they would be forced into slave labour.
Anybody that resisted Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge was killed. Anybody that was educated or skilled was wiped out in an attempt to start the country from new. Soon, thousands of people were being murdered across the country. It was clear that Pol Pot’s regime was not working and he started to blame innocent people for his failure. The Khmer Rouge started to imprison people and iterrogate them accusing them of being spys or coming up with false statements about them. People were being tortured and murdered in their thousands. After 4 years or so of Pol Pot’s reign, over 3 million people had been cruely murdered. This was nearly half the population of Cambodia at the time! This is a short summary, it’s a bit more complicated and disturbing than this.
After meeting our local guide we first set off to S-21. This was one of the prisons in Phnom Penh where tortures took place. There were 167 of these around the country.
S-21
It was horrific. The guide told us about all the things that went on as we visited the prison cells. The torture that went on was horrendous. Not much has changed in this prison which used to be a school before the regime. Although its now a museum siteits been pretty much untouched. There are splatters of blood across the ceilings and walls. Even the electric cables where electrocutions took place are still attached to the walls. It was very hard being there and hearing the stories. There are also black and white mug shots that were taken by the prison guards of all the prisoners that were tortured and executed.
One of the VIP cells where a senior official would be kept and tortured. Prisoners were shakled to this bed and had only a petrol can as a toilet.
Prisoners would be hung upside down and interrogated until they fell unconsious. Their heads would then be dipped in the pots full of excrement so they would regain consiousness. Yikes!
Barbed wire prevented the desperate prisoners from jumping and commiting suicide.
Many people died at the prison and there was soon little room to keep the dead bodies. Eventually they started transporting prisoners out into the country side where they were killed and buried in mass pits. This is where we visited next.
Now known as the killing fields, they were used by the Khmer Rouge as a mass genocide centre. Thousands of bodies were found here. We walked along side the mass graves hearing some terrible stories of how men, women and children were killed. I will not go into detail because its too horrible to describe. Clothes and bones of those murdered still rise to the surface during the wet season and are fully visible. It really is a depressing place.
Just some of the pits which are mass graves.
Victim’s clothes rise up to the surface during the rainy seasons.
As well as this tooth there are many bones that rise to the surface. It really is shocking.
During big excavations it was decided that all the bones would be collected, studied (to find out how people were killed) and placed in a memorial at the center. The building is tall and contains a sealed glass enclosure where all the bones are kept. Seeing all those skulls was quite shocking!
The memorial housing the remains of the murdered.
Just one of the platforms that held the remains of those killed. There were several more of these rising up the building.
That was the end of an eye opening morning. You really have to come here to experience it and appreciate what these people went through. We learnt a lot and we appreciate even more what we have today in terms of our family, friends, material possesions and peaceful lives.
The afternoon’s sight seeing was much more light hearted. After a little shopping and an amazing lunch at the Russian Market we visited the beautiful Royal Palace with its grand buildings and gold and emerald buddha statues. It was quite similar to the palace in Bangkok but very nice nonetheless.
Part of the huge complex that is the ROyal Palace.
A closeup view of one of the temples.
A turtle looks over the fish in one of the fountains at the palace.
In the evening we went to eat some street food at the local market. I had some amazing marinated squid that was chopped up and had along side some rice and salad. Delicious!
Barbecued Squid!!
Next we went to Chivas. A bar which serves bugs!!
Our late night snack beer and bugs! Crickets and Tarantulas were on the menu.
Heidi and I were the most brave out of everyone. Most of the group managed to eat a cricket but Heidi, Rhonda and I were the only three to eat a whole tarantula!! That’s right! The spider along with the crickets was actually quite tasty and it was all a good laugh. I’ll let the pictures and videos do the talking…
I was the first to put the tarantula in my mouth as all the girls gasped in horror.
Heidi and I tuck in. Both the spiders and crickets were quite tasty for me although a little bit crunchy.
Some special messages this week. Happy Birthday to Heidi’s Mum Jan!! She turned 63 on Sunday! (He he, not really!!) 
Also, congratulations to Heidi’s cousin Stuart who’s wife Jo has had baby number 2, a girl called Maya Josie. Congrats!
Yes, it was a real tragedy in Cambodia – I remember seing film of a deserted Pnom Pen capital all overgrown with plants. If you want to get a good idea of the events and atmosphere that reigned at that time see the film ‘The Killing fields’ which is the true story of the Cambodian journalist who managed to escape Pol Pot.
I was interested to see you were in training for ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’! But does this now mean that you will not jump out of your skin when you see a live spider in Crawley?
Love Dad
Ewwww you used the word congrats!!!
x x x x
Hehe did they offer you your favourite meals as an alternative to the spider and then give you stars as a reward??
Really moving this week, hard to put into words.
Second part of this week very funny, seemed like it took a long time to swallow it all, Heidi!!
Thanks for birthday message I think!! 63 – how very dare you!! Also, Christian how many times it’s STEWART not Stuart!! Thought the same as your Dad, looking forward to you sorting all the spiders out when you get back!!
Love you both.
Mums and Dad xxx