THURSDAY, 8 MAY 2014

ONWARD TO ANOTHER SOBERING PLACE 

One nice thing about the hotel we are staying at is it provides 24 hour free shuttle service. Jim decided to get up early this morning and return to Angkor Wat in hopes of seeing the sunrise. He wasn't disappointed.

Phnom Penh is the destination today. It is really interesting to travel to cities that are recognizable from the Viet Nam War. We got to the hotel by noon, and arranged for the hotel to find us a guide and let us use their van.

Our guide, Vishna, took us one of the ??? killing fields in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, managed to murder over 2 million Cambodian people between 17 April 1976 and 1978. Vishna’s father was one of the victims. Vishna was only 2 ½ years old and his mother was left a young widow. I won’t go into any of the morbid details. You can read the signs to learn of some of the atrocities that were committed.

Displayed inside are hundreds of skulls that were recovered during some excavations

After visiting the killing field we went to the Genocide Museum. This is where they brought the prisoners and tortured them to get information from them before taking them to the killing field.

It was originally a school

This man survived (despite being tortured) because of his artistic talents.
His wife & children (ages 4 & 6) were not so lucky.

For dinner we rode a tuk tuk to the riverside and ate at a restaurant recommended by Vishna. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a Dairy Queen and got some blizzards for dessert.