In the afternoon it was The Killing Fields. Cheung Ek Killing Field to be precise. I've got loads of photos, none of which I want to look at.
The display boards at the entrance demand the proper respect is shown and clothing is worn. No laughing signs.
First of all is the newly constructed stupa where those found bones have been deposited. 8000 skulls. It says 'sealed' on the display boards but its not. It is very hot in the stupa. The clothes are slightly more moving than the skulls.
I think sometimes that all this is a tiny bit of a desperate attempt to educate the Cambodians themselves.
129 graves have been found here, 86 were excavated. Approx. 8000 corpses of approx 14000 average estimate in total killed here, were found.
In fact they excavated 85 graves. A local who assisted the excavation then found an 86th and excavated it with friends. They found 166 headless bodies, possibly wearing khaki, who therefore may have been 'national army'. A documentary we were shown in the little museum on site told us this, complete with poor quality recordings and a voiceover possibly read by a british intern, who sounded young. He did his best to read it colloquially but the subtitles were ...poor and often with inaccurate info. (Everywhere you see signs in English that don't quite make sense, I'm looking at one now in the wifi cafe: instead of 'warning, no drugs' it says "warming, no drugs").
450 bodies were found in the biggest pit. The Khmer kept rosters and there are examples of the tools used to kill (anything really). The Khmer Rouge soldiers conducted all activities here discretely. The area at the time was completely forested.
They worked and killed at night, except when the numbers of prisoners rose. The prisoners were despatched immediately at first but eventually a two floor shed was constructed. Prisoners arriving, in dead silence and blindfolded, from Tuol Sleng, would be shackled downstairs while the 'soldiers' rostered things upstairs. This shed and the tool shed and 'office' for the permanently posted duty officer, have all gone and are marked with signs. They filled in the graves as soon as they had been 'used'.
Occasionally in the rains more bones are revealed. We found some.
In Tuol Sleng one of the most horrific paintings shows a K.R dashing a baby's brains out against a tree. This is that tree.
The K.R hung a loudspeaker from the magic tree (a Buddha tree) to play music to drown out other sounds. I'm not sure how this fits in with the whole secrecy bit, but whatever.
We walked on around the dyke at the bottom of the field. Cambodia is covered with dykes, many hand built during the K.R period. The water here was red with blood at that time.
We saw a snake and other creatures, possibly a chameleon! going about their business. The snake may have been poisonous. It moved extremely fast up the tree after this picture.
At the museum we discovered that Duch has admitted responsibility for The Baby Tree, even going so far as to say he recalls it. He has life imprisonment I think.
On the way out we heard the monks blessing, chanting from the nearby pagoda.
The oddest thing I've noticed is that the Cambodians, from Chum Mey in his book, to Sython and Chamrong, are very keen to show that this genocide is far worse than the Nazis, or any others. It's not. ( though how some caring person could cart Chum Mey off to Berlin for a show and tell, with no shoes or clothes, is a mystery. Apparently there is 'some work' being done on mass PTSD, but in my opinion they are not off to a good start). Also, Chamrong had not heard of the movie The Killing Fields. He thought the documentary we were shown in the Museum was 'the movie' Herman and Ella kept referring to.
The Killing Fields have wifi (for AV tours) and a number of people were logging in around the entrance for various reasons, including Herman and Ella. The heavens opened and we got stuck in a traffic jam on the way back and took ages to get back ( it's about 40 mins by tuk-tuk). I had a zomig. It had just enough time to kick in before the tuk-tuk broke down in the middle of a flooded, jammed, crossroads and we had to get out and push. This at least was amusing.
Finally met Sython when we made it back, heard for the first time that we would be doing a 'home stay' overnight in a local host family's village the following night.
Went out for Mexican at 'Viva' on Riverside that evening. That was fun and good food. There was a power outage in the middle of it, but almost everyone was there. Much kindness was in evidence.
So thats the Killing Fields. In other news, we have an all night karaoke beer garden next door to us, there are anti drugs signs in the bedrooms and reference was made to "happy cake" tonight.
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