Chilling History, Pagodas and Food for a Cause in Phnom Pehn

So we were trying to squeeze as much as possible into one day so that we could go on a safari the entire next (and last) day in Phnom Pehn.

We got up early and set out to S21, the prison genocide museum that existed during the Khmer Rouge Regime. It was a school that the Pol Pot reign turned into a place to capture and torture revolutionists and intellects. Of the 20,000 imprisoned there, seven survived. This all occured in the 70s - almost in our lifetime. The museum was basically untouched from when the Vietnamese came in and ended the imprisonment. There were 14 people in the prison then and they left the rooms untouched for the museum. There is blood on the floors still. There are 14 tombstones at the museum where the last prisoners were buried. There were children murdered and tortured. Babies. There was a picture of a mother with her child in her arms about to be killed in front of her. The Khmer Rouge prison camp took pictures of each prisoner and the museum has every single picture up on the walls. An interesting part of the museum was a photographer went there and saw that the pictures all looked like mugshots and he wanted to depict them as humans. So he took pictures of the pictures in different lights and with different reflections. It was amazing to see the pictures change and depict the people so differently - people with "dreams and lives" as he put it.

Another interesting area was the part of the museum that depicted the stories of the Khmer Rogue Regime killers. They had no choice either. They were forced to kill and they tell their stories of what it was like and where they are now.

We then went onto the killing fields, which is where they took the prisoners to be killed and then thrown into mass graves. It is about 15 minutes outside of the main city. 1/8th of the fields have been excavated and they have 8,000 skulls in a stupa that climbs two stories high. As we walked around the excavated fields, I saw things sticking out of the dirt, and when I bent down, I saw that it was pieces of fabric from clothing. I also saw bones sticking out of the dirt. It was unbelievable. I can't believe that people's actual clothing is still there it was so recent.

We left there feeling depressed as we knew we would. We headed to lunch at the Foreign Correspondence Club, or the FCC, on the river. No time to spare on this super tourism day; we then headed to the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda before the rain started. After that we went home to change and found a place to eat in the Lonely Planet Guide.

We found a true gem called Friends. It is run by a nonprofit in Cambodia and it is amazing. It's a a local organization working with Cambodian street children, their families and the community to develop creative projects that effecitively support the children to become in dependent and productive members of the community. So the Friends restaurant is a third level training site that allows the children (students) to be mentored and followed by someone (teacher) while they wait on tables, if that is the trade they chose to focus on. The kids have a home, have a trade to focus on, and when they make their way all the way up to the third level, they are helped to find a job in the city. They are then followed up with for a year and they come back and tell the new kids how their profession and Friends has changed their life. It was absolutely amazing food (a mix of Khmer and Western food) and a great cause. It was so tasty that Shannon bought a cookbook there and the proceeds go directly to the children's tips.

We headed home early so that we could get up early for our day with the animals at a wildlife refuge!