[The following post is from the archives of my In Search Of Incredible blog, originally published on 22 March 2014. Minor edits have since been made from the original post to update some links and info.]
5 April 2012, Thursday
Morning call: 7:00am
Rise and shine, it’s the start of a brand new day in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Breakfast was not included at my accommodation, so I scouted the area for a nice place for breakfast. I eventually settled on an eatery nearby and ordered a cheese omelet and coffee set for US$3.50.
The eatery also served Happy Pizza, but I managed to resist and not give in to temptation. If you should know, Happy Pizza is no ordinary pizza. Just one bite and it will make you happy. You can even tell the chef to make it “extra happy”. Just be prepared to be stopped by the Customs officer when you return home!
The reason I chose Rory’s Pub & Guesthouse as my accommodation was because of its excellent location. Indeed, the Royal Palace is only 500m away, a 6-minute walk. Very convenient.
I arrived at the Royal Palace at 8:15am and paid the admission fee of 25,000 Riels (US$6.25) to enter. The Royal Palace is the royal residence of the King of Cambodia. It consists of a complex of buildings including the Throne Hall, Moonlight Pavilion, Silver Pagoda and Khemerin Place. The King’s living area, which takes up half of the total palace ground area, is closed to public.
If you’ve been to the Grand Palace in Bangkok, you can probably skip the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, as it is smaller and not as lavish. The building architecture and garden compound also look quite similar.
The complex is not very big, so I spent less than an hour inside the Royal Palace. I left at 9:05am and proceeded to my next destination, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum located at Street 113. The distance (as measured by Google) is 3.1km and I should actually have taken a tuk-tuk there, but I was not in a hurry so I decided to walk instead. In the end I took 55 minutes to get there, arriving at 10am.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum was known as S-21, aka Security 21 Prison, during Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. It used to be a high school until Pol Pot took over and turned it into a detention, interrogation and torture for his fellow Cambodians whom he suspected of being spies for CIA or KGB, or having links with them.
The Khmer Rouge regime started in 1975 and lasted 3 years, 8 months and 20 days. During that time, some 20,000 people were tortured at S-21. When Vietnamese forces infiltrated S-21, they found only 7 survivors and 14 corpses. The Khmer Rouge regime was especially crazy in the sense that they were torturing and killing fellow countrymen, which makes it even more baffling.
Visiting Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum was definitely a depressing and harrowing experience. I hired a guide for US$6 and he walked me through the compound and explained the exhibits and history behind the event.
I finally understood the importance of studying history. Back in Secondary 1, for the very first history lesson, my teacher outlined the reasons for studying history, and the most important one he said was – so that we will not make the same mistakes of the past.
Even if I understood it then, nothing drives home the message more than being there and then, standing at the very place where the misdeeds of the past had been enacted. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a grim reminder of the horrors of the recent past, and it is well worth a visit for anyone in Phnom Penh. Admission fee is US$2. Set aside about 2 hours for your visit.
I left Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum at 12:15pm and walked to the nearby Russian Market located at Street 155. It is 1.3km away, taking 15 minutes. The Russian Market is so-named because it was popular among Russian expats during the 1980s when most of the expats in Phnom Penh were Russians. It is also known as Phsar Toul Tom Poung among the locals.
I bought some A&F and Lacoste polo tees which I thought were cheap, but not till I visited the much larger Central Market the following day. Luckily I didn’t show hand yet. I then grabbed a bite in the air-conditioned comfort at KFC before hopping on a tuk-tuk at 2:22pm for a visit to The Killing Fields.
Choeung Ek was one of the most notorious killing fields in Cambodia. It is located about 12km away from the Phnom Penh city centre and takes about half an hour to travel by tuk-tuk. Choeung Ek was where most of the prisoners of S-21 were sent for execution. It was just one of the many killing fields throughout Cambodia, but the biggest.
Today, it has been converted to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, a historical museum for humankind. The US$5 entrance fee includes an audio guide, which gave good background information and explanations at the various stops. You should set aside about 1.5 hours here.
Choeung Ek was formerly an orchard before it became a mass gravesite. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, the remains of 8,985 bodies were exhumed in 1980. Over 8,000 skulls are housed in the Memorial Stupa that sits in the middle of the area.
Today, many of the graves are small depressions in the ground, being covered by soil and grass over the years. Some of the graves have been left untouched, and occasionally, bits of bone and cloth will surface, especially after a rain.
The most chilling thing here was The Killing Tree, which the Khmer Rouge used to smash the heads of babies/infants against in order to kill them. How anyone could do such an inhumane act against a helpless and defenceless human being is beyond me. As bullets were expensive, the most primitive methods were used to kill the adult victims. Farm tools like shovels were used to strike a blow to the head before slitting their throats. Chemical agents such as DDT were also used.
Like Tuol Sleng, the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center is a must-visit stop for anyone in Phnom Penh. Beneath its peaceful façade lies a grim and horrifying story that needs to be told and understood by anyone who has a heart. May the victims rest in peace.
I departed at 4:12pm and returned to Rory’s Guest House to freshen up. After a sober morning and afternoon, it was time to lighten up a bit so I walked over to Sorya Shopping Centre to chill out. After my previous experience in Hanoi, I’ve come not to expect too much from “shopping centres” and I was right, but Sorya was bigger than the one in Hanoi. At least it had air-conditioning, which always helps.
I didn’t have much to do so I decided to catch a movie. I paid US$3 to catch The Hunger Games and topped it up with a popcorn set for US$1.70. You can’t get these prices in Singapore!
After a late dinner (BBWorld fried chicken set meal for US$4.50), it was dark and the streets didn’t feel that safe, so I hopped on a tuk-tuk for the journey back to Rory’s. It had been a long and heavy day but also one of the most enriching on the trip.