KILLING FIELDS

After over a month of travelling I was beginning to look a little rough around the edges so I decided to get my hair done in Phnom Penh. And I have to say it was one of the best experiences I have ever had at a hairdressers. They cut my hair then they washed it.The chair you have to sit in was amazing. You actually lie down and the chair massages your body.They not only wash your hair but give you a head massage and exfoliate the face. When she started splashing the water on my face I was wondering what was going on ,then she exfoliated it and gave me a face massage. Then as the colour took on my hair they gave me a back massage. And they gave me a pedicure and painted my toe nails. I felt a million dollars and it only cost fifty dollars for the lot!.



After that I met up with Katherine and Emma from Australia to go to the killing fields. We all knew that it would be bad but no-one prepared me for just how harrowing it was. Firstly we went to the Tuoi Sleng Museum. Basically in 1975 Pol Pot's security forces turned a school into a security prison.The largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Almost everyone held there was executed at the killing fields of Choeung Ek. Former classrooms have a single rusty bed and disturbingly gruesome black and white photos on the walls showing the people who had been tortured. It stands testament to the unthinkable horrors that happened there.There are rows and rows of photographs of the men,women and children who were held there. The fear etched into their faces. There are pictures and testements from people who were Khmer and the reasons why they helped kill. Some said it was blind terror. They had to kill or be killed! I just cannot imagine how they deal with what they did. It is a testament to the Buddhist faith that they live alongside each other those who lost family and those who did the killing.
We then went to the actual killing fields of Choeung Ek, rising amid 129 mass graves is a blinding white stupa that serves as a memorial to the approximately 17,000 men women and children who were executed by the Khmer Rouge there.



Behind glass panels rising upward ,shelf after shelf are over 8000 skulls found during the excavation in 1980.The guide showed us the bullet holes in some.And the crushed skulls of others that had been beaten over the head with sticks!!!!As we walked around the fields the guide showed us bones and teeth in the earth and bits of garments popping up from areas not yet excavated .He explained how they had to dig their own graves and then they were beated over the head and shoved into the grave. Some were still alive, so they were buried alive!! It was all too much for me to handle!!
We all rode back in the Tuk Tuk very quietly. We decided to go and have a drink at the nearby guesthouse where the Gondola boys hung out.
And they were all there, their antics really cheered us up, so we decided to go for a spin in the boats, just as it was getting dark.