Day 9

This weekend, we decided to do some touristy things as a group. In the morning, we went to the University to take a bus to the killing fields. This is the place where around 20,000 people died under the Pol Pot regime. More disturbing is the fact that this is only one of 343 killing field that have been discovered. Most of the victims were innocent civilians and children, but also Khmer Rouge soldiers were accused of being enemies and killed at the killing fields. The definition of the enemy was pretty much everybody who could question the government: teachers, lawyers, people who could read, people with classes, etc. The accusation was often that the accused was a CIA agent and confessions under torture were taken as evidence. Under the Khmer Rouge regime every 4th citizen died. The killing field is now a peaceful meadow, with chickens running around. It seems unreal that we were walking around mass graves that contained around 20,000 dead bodies.

After we returned to University and had lunch, we joined the martial arts class of the University. It was fun to learn some of the traditional Cambodian martial arts and we learned some cool moves in the process.

In the evening, we went for a sunset boat cruise on the Tonle Sap, the river in Phnom Penh. The Tonle Sap merges with the Mekong River at some point. The captain of our ship was very nice and even let me steer the ship for a bit as we were going down the Mekong River.

The Memorial Stupa in the middle of the killing field. It consisted of 17 levels. 10 levels contained sculls of victims, the other clothes and bones.

The Killing tree.

Some of the skulls of victims displayed in the Memorial Stupa.

One of the mass graves. 280 bodies a burried here.

Our teacher showing us some techniques.

In action picture of the matial arts class.

Max and OJ having a Titanic moment.

All of us together on the boat.

Phnom Penh sunset.