The Killing Fields & Genocide Museum - Saturday 20th

The group boarded the mini van to head to Phnom Penh which is a 2.5 hour drive from Kampong Cham. The sights along the way represented typical scenery of the Cambodian country side: bullocks working in the rice fields, children happily playing by the side of the road, motorcyles sharing the road with bullock or pony-drawn carts, the sun fighting its way thtough the hazy skyline, pegodas scattered amongst fields and food markets selling local produce.

At one of our stops along the way, Jim sampled some of the local cuisine - fried Tarantulas. Yes, with a bit of peer pressure, he bit the furry leg of a large, black spider which would send shivers up th spine of most westerners. Sue stayed in the van at the thought of the unfried spiders still running across the market floor while the rest of us giggled at the thought of what seems a delicacy to Cambodians. The body of the spider contains eggs and Jim even had a bite of that part of the snack. Our driver happily finished off the spider along with a fried cricket.

After lunch, we were quickly sobered with a visit to the Killing Fields and Genocide Museum. The Killing Fields are about 20km out of town and are the location of mass executions under Pol Pot's regime. Remaining are the holes of the mass graves where men, women and children were told to kneel or squat before they were beaten across the back of the neck with an iron bar and sliced across their throats with a knife before being tossed into a mass grave. Clothes and bones still poke out from the ground, a sickening reminder of the human atrocities that occurred during this period of our history. Tourists from across the globe come to remember in silence and hope that history does not repeat.

The Genocide Museum is contained within one of the main prisons the Khmer Rouge used to detain, torture and kill prisoners. They executed the educated, the wealthy or anyone they suspected of betrayal of the regime. If a man had a large belly, he was considered well-off and killed. The faces of thousands of innocent Cambodian prisoners are displayed throughout the museum. Their eyes tell the story. There are faces filled with fear, faces of defiance, faces of defeat and faces of confusion. It is impossible to walk through this place void of emotion of some kind.

The prison cells, the torture equipment and the gallows are a visual reminder of the abominable acts of genocide that were commited at this prison. It is aptly located on a site called Toul Sleng which means poisonous hill in Khmer.