Dark Days

We had seen some fantastic things on our travels, and most of them would easily put a smile on your face. However, apart from the Angkor Wat temples there is another thing that Cambodia is famous for. In the 1970’s Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge party, set about killing his countries people to try and make a communist utopia. Almost 3 million people were killed, of a population of only 8 million, and we were to visit one of the most famous interrogation centres in the genocide. It is now a museum and has many visitors each day, and there would be two more from England on this particular day.

The outside of the Tuol Sleng museum

We arrived mid-morning and already the sun was blazing. When we got inside it was great just to get out of the heat, but then we realised why we were there, and it all became rather humbling. We walked around the 4 buildings where the accused were tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge cadres, some with photos of the last victims to be found on the walls. There were lots of others milling around the place and we sometimes caught snippits of information from the tour guides who were leading them through the buildings. It’s too horrible to go into full details, but sufficed to say it was not a very happy place to be around.

Inside one of the interrogation rooms

Three of the other buildings had housed the other inmates in tiny cells, smaller than a single mattress, with an empty ammunition box to be used for waste. Some were made from bricks and others from wood, but they all looked incredibly small and added to the horror of the place. What made it even more thought-provoking and terrible was the fact that the facility used to be a school, with some of the rooms still with their blackboards up on the wall. There were hundreds and hundreds of photos, the majority being the victims who were catalogued intensely. As we left we were set upon by a number of tuk-tuk drivers all asking us if we were heading to the Killing Fields (where most of the victims would eventually end up for execution) just outside of the city, but we declined, as that was a job for the next day – to do both in one day would have just been unbearable.

The tiny cells

We walked the long way back to the hotel and grabbed some food. A lazy afternoon was in order so we booked a hotel for Ho Chi Minh and I looked at the pros and cons of Da Nang vs Hoi An. As we prepared to leave for dinner we noticed that there were hundreds of people in the streets outside our hotel. We knew that the day was the last official day of mourning for the king, so we were expecting something to be going on. We dressed in a white short, as a mark of respect, and before going for some food we joined in with everyone else in heading down towards one of the main temples. We only got halfway though, it was just too crowded with people, and thankfully there were a couple of ambulances on-hand just in case the whole thing got out of hand. We headed to the riverside again and selected our restaurant, based on the fact that there was a massive rumble of thunder from behind us so the nearest place would do just fine!

Spot the Englishmen...

As we sat down to peruse the menu we could still see the throng of people outside, heading down to the temple with flowers and incense sticks in their hands. And suddenly, without warning, people dropped to their knees and formed two rows facing each other. Everyone in the restaurant jumped to their feet and we wandered outside to see what all the fuss was about. I managed to crane my neck out over the crowd and there was a massive procession of monks walking down between the rows of people. We weren’t sure who the top brass were at the front of the procession, but it was a humbling sight, and we watched as hundreds of monks all walked down the line in their distinctive orange robes. Once they had all gone we returned to our table and ordered the food. It wasn’t great food by all accounts and we never go to the same place twice, and we will definitely not go there twice! But as we sat there we saw the first drops of rain. These continued until after about 2 minutes a swirling thunderstorm had hit, and unfortunately for everyone outside they got absolutely soaked. I can only hope that the monks had got to where they were going before the heavens had opened. SO we had to wait it out again, with another beer, until we saw the eye of the storm. The check was ordered and paid within seconds and we dashed back to the hotel just in time for the rain to start again. Somehow, “April showers” don’t seem all that bad now…

The monks, before the storm