Pan-Asian Gallivanting

Cambodia is poor. Cambodia is corrupt. Cambodia is littered with land mines.

Cambodia is friendly. Cambodia is resilient. Cambodia is beautiful!

My first experience of Cambodia was the bustling capital of Phnom Penh. Before I go into detail on the sites that I visited I think it’s important for you to know a little about the genocide that occurred in Cambodia during the 1970s at the hands of Cambodia’s communist leader Pol Pot.

No religion. No education. No freedom of speach. No food. No money. These are just a few of the circumstances that developed during Pol Pot’s regime. During the beginning of his campaign he ordered the evacuation of all cities, moving educated and prosperous members of society into the countryside to work the rice fields. Anyone who wore glasses, spoke another language besides Khmer, or showed any opposition to the government were jailed and most likely murdered. By the end of Pol Pot’s regime 1/4, 1/3 by some estimates, of the Cambodian population was killed; roughly three million people. Yet no one really knows about this genocide…including myself. Maybe it was because the Vietnam War was preoccupying everyone during the time.

One of the sites where Pol Pot’s regime interrogated, tortured, and murdered their prisoners was at Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh. A former school, the cluster of buildings forming Tuol Sleng Prison house the pictures of those murdered as well as prison cells in their original state. To be honest it was quite erie and moving walking the grounds and into numerous cells knowing that thousands upon thousands of innocent Cambodians were brutally tortured and murdered exactly where I stood. Even though it was quite disturbing, I’m glad that I did see it. This trip is not only about experiences and seeing new places, but it’s also a sort of education. Cambodia….now I know.