Of course we checked out the ancient temples of Angkor Wat which were spectacular. We also took a break from traveling and spent one week on a remote island without internet, running water or electricity. It was great and it is our secret recommendation for every internet or mobile phone addict to do a rehab :p
Christmas we spent in the cool town of Battambang where we rode the famous bamboo train.
However, more than anything else I got deeply moved by visiting the S21 prison in Phnom Penh, which is standing for the traumatic history of the country and its reign of the Khmer rouge. After the Vietnam war the political party of the Khmer Rouge took over the power in the country with an extreme philosophy of establishing a country basically of farmers. All progress the country made just got sent back into the stone age and extreme violence, mass murdering and starving ruled Cambodia for a long period. Intellectuals (you just needed to wear glasses), the upper educated class and everyone else who might have possessed a threat to the regime was sent into the prison. It was basically a death penalty. After torturing ten thousands of people with the sickest possible ways you could not imagine eventually they “confessed” to be a spy on the regime (if they made it that far) and got sent to the killing fields. In order to save bullets and to not raise awareness of the surrounding villages they killed babies, women and men with bates…
The memory of the blood on the ground of the prison or on the walls (you see hand marks or scratches from finger nails) still make us shivering. We became a witness of a genocide we were until so far not aware of.
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