I took a bus from Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Penh...it took 7 hours?
Compared to Vietnam, Cambodia is more laid-back and people are less reserved. It's nice to just drink or eat in one of the many pubs and restaurants by the river, or take a walk around. I met this lady from England very randomly on the street one day and we had dinner together. She's in her 60's, retired and widowed. "You want to see the world? You got to travel," she said. She proves that the highest walls are only in our minds and it's never too late to explore a world that is bigger than we know.
This is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It's a former school that turned into a torture centre for the Khmer Rouge. There's an unsettling feeling as you walk through the many classrooms converted into prison cells. That victim wouldn't have thought that there would be people visiting this place 30 years later...
Very graphic pictures of the corpse to prove that these people are in fact dead...
This is one of the mass grave at the Cheung Ek Memorial. We can see some pieces of bones on the ground. It's an upsetting place to see, but it helps to understand Cambodian's mindset...Bouna said that the older generation are very content with the life they are living now, because there is no one running around with guns anymore. The younger generation, however, are not content of what they have. They have ambition to make their country better and richer.
Sometimes it's hard to believe that restaurants are built on top of killing fields...but these killing fields are everywhere, and people need places to live...
A stupa made up of some 8000 human skulls. It's something very uncomfortable to see...especially because many Cambodians who lost their family during that period do not want these skulls on display. Sokhom lost his mother and brother during the Khmer Rouge period. He was later sent into the Vietnamese army in Cambodia and ended up in a prison and later released but stayed in a camp for nearly 4 years. He doesn't know in which killing field his family members are. You would think that this is history but for others, it's not just history. Even now, everything in Cambodia remains a myth...people don't have the truth...
