Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We arrived in Phnom Penh circa 3:00 and headed straight to the Vietnamese embassy to score some visas. It was here that we met Jennet and Meredith. Throughout the next few posts you will come to know and love them, or feel indifferent towards them, either way. Sticking with our goal of branching out to new cultures, these two hail all the way from eastern Toronto. The land where what we know as "Bloor St." becomes "The Danforth". We decided to booze as a collective that night. I invited out my good pal Brendan MacDonald who happened to be in the neighbourhood. He brought his acquaintance Mike Boynton. They also brought their personal hire tuk-tuk driver Joe (likely not his birthname, he's vietnamese). Boozing was fun.
To introduce the characters, from left to right: Mere, Boynton, mr.cole, Jenny, Brendo.
Our guesthouse was on the edge of a lake/marsh.
View from the guesthouse restaurant.
The next day we went to check out a couple of sites related to the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a communist army that took over Cambodia by force in 1975. They forced all people living in cities to move to the country. The idea was to establish an economy based on an absurd amount of rice exports. Many men, women and children, accused of objecting to the movement were tortured and killed. The people carrying out the killings were often doing so out of fear for their own safety from the ruling party. Roughly 1/3 of the country's population (or 1.5 million) were murdered under the Khmer Rouge rule. In 1979 the Socialist Republic of Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the Khmer Rouge from power. The people of Cambodia are recovering and trying to move on. We visited 2 sites: Tuol Sleng and the killing fields. Tuol Sleng was a detention and torture center and has now become a museum detailing various aspects of the Khmer Rouge rule.

Taken when the army moved into Phnom Penh.

Taken when the army was expelling city dwellers to the country.
They have erected a monument in memory of those murdered at the killing fields.
Inside are stacks upon stacks of just some of the hundreds of skulls of bodies dug up from the surrounding fields.
One of many mass grave sites. This one held 450 victims.

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