Beautiful Phnom Penh, the killing fields and S-21

Have you ever been to a place before where you have to change your tshirt 3 times a day.. A place so hot that your underwear becomes another layer of wet skin? Perhaps that was too much information?
The point is that this place is hotter than hell .. And hell is relevant for Phnom Penh, for in the late 1970s the Khmer Rouge turned this city and the rest of Cambodia into a slaughter house for the well educated and politically connected. In their reign of terror they decided to try and destroy all links to the Khmer heritage in the country.. The easy way to do this in their minds was to execute everyone they could in power. This meant many well educated citizens removed their glasses and headed out to farms pretending they could not read or write a word in order to save their lives. After the horror,many towns and cities had to start again with no education and no one to pass down the trades to the next generations.

This leads me onto the killing fields. I debated whether to even write about this as we both found it a very emotional visit.. And I have even deleted all photos from my camera as it just didn’t feel right retaining and exposing them. I felt like I had infected myself with the misery and macabre scenes by recording the empty souls.

The day before we had ventured into the city for a walk at about 11am. By 1pm we were overheated and back in the hotel room with Ladesha nursing sun stroke and a severe migraine. This prompted us to get up and go to the fields by 7am to avoid the sweltering sun. This also meant we were there by ourselves - not a ‘soul’ about.

The first site you see is a temple at the gates of the ground. The Khmer used the religious temples around the country as torture chambers if you can believe that. After they had exhumed the mass graves they didn’t know what to do with the massive amount of bodies they had pulled. The idea they came up with was to build a temple and place the skulls inside to be on display while being respected. They have 8000 skulls here.. And there are many thousands more still in the fields as they certainly haven’t removed all the bodies.

This is the only shot I saved on my camera. You can see they have built the temple for respect. The next shot is a close up where you can just see the skulls behind the glass.

There are signs all over the place asking you to respect the dead by being quiet.. This makes the fields a very peaceful place to wander about. Not far from the temple is a signboard that marks the spot where a wooden shed was once built. This shed was used to store the overloaded amount of people brought for killing, as at one point the executors were killing 300 people a day, and they couldn’t keep up - so something had to be built to hold prisoners until the next day.
Among the dead 9 foreigners were also killed including an Australian caught up in the politics. I am guessing his body rests here as well.

What we saw next is almost unbelievable. We entered the graves with no warning to see a space about the size of a football field covered in craters where the mass graves have been exhumed. Looking down I thought I had stood on a tree root - but no, what we are standing on between the craters are the bones of the dead! All around the place are literally thousands of teeth, little bones and even parts of the skeleton starting to be revealed from the wear and the tear of the beaten pathway. At one point we looked down to see a jaw bone with a full set of teeth intact starting to make its way from the dry dirt. Clothes are everywhere, and although it has been almost 30 years, the clothing is still in one piece and the colours vibrant.. Which is scary as you get the idea that this was not a long time ago at all.

Signs are posted about to paint the scene and engineering of the place. There was a tree called the magic tree where a loud speaker was hung playing music at top volume to drown out the tortured screams of imminent death. Another tree was for beating the children to death on. There was a mass grave (still containing the bodies) of 163 headless victims.
Death here would come in only a few different methods. Mainly people were told to kneel on the edge of a grave while the executioner would bring down either an axe, hoe, or stick to the back of the head. The lucky ones got a bullet at the very top of the skull.

To complete this journey we needed to visit S-21. S-21 is their security centre where almost all of the victims were sent to before the killing fields to be tortured so they would admit information.
S-21 is actually a school the Khmer Rouge took over. The classrooms became torture chambers for the inmates and soundproof glass was installed so the screams would be muted.

It is a very grim site indeed. All the classrooms are open to look at and there are pictures on the walls of the found decomposing prisoners that were killed before the Rouge ran out.. These pictures obviously mark the rooms where they were found also. Not knowing what to do with the 14 badly decomposed bodies, it was decided they were to be buried in the school grounds with 14 marked graves. Looking down on the school room lino - you can clearly see the dark stains on the unwashed floors of the horrors that took place. Moving to a downstairs hall.. You can see room after room of black and white photos of each prisoner that came through here. Most are beaten and broken staring straight through the lens at us in pain - their expressions are timeless and you are instantly brought to the moment of the shutter - stomach’s churning and brains racing.
On one of the last boards is a picture of the Australian mentioned earlier. He is standing to the side in a poker dotted shirt with his head turned to us - his expression is one of “I wont be here long, this is obviously a mistake”.

In the final room are 8 skulls on display - and only on display during the trial. They are all evidence towards the methods of execution and torture used here - most marking blows to the head with blunt instruments before death. These skulls are in glass casing on slatted wooden stands. They are slatted so that the souls of the bodies are still free to enter and leave at will.

A lot of Cambodians wont visit these two sites for fear of the ghosts that walk the grounds, and I for one don’t blame them.

I feel like I should brighten this post up a bit. So I'm going to include some shots from the Royal Palace we visited. The architecture is simply stunning and on a very grand scale.

This is a funny start - trying to take a shot of ourselvs with the camera on a timer in a shrub

I love the serpents in this next temple.

The muddy Mekong

At this point we are really over doing the tour thing. Our only option to get in to Cambodia via boat was a 3 day tour of the Mekong where you inch towards the border for the first 2 days,. Then on the 3rd you get heaped onto a slowboat where we dribble down the river over 7 hours, finally transferring to a minibus for the last leg.

First day

After boarding a bus at 8am we are taken 2 hours South to where the mouth of the Mekong opens and sucks you in. Our day consisted of zigzagging the harbour like river, hopping small islands. It was a pretty standard affair of visiting crafts, coconut lolly making, traditional folk music, a row boat excursion, eating fruit, and drinking banana wine (more like a whiskey - my highlight).

Shots of us on a little row boat adventuere. It was actually pretty funny, as at some stage some Americans must have tipped them and they have caught onto it. So you will be cruising through this inlet in jungle and a little head will pop out with some dollars in hand and go "hey, remember to tip at the end". We all jumped out pretending we didn't understand.


We departed on bus again to hit the next town a little further North where we would spend the night. While waiting for the bus transfer we had a taste of the monsoon season - which would become a regular afternoon event.

The monsoons are one of the weirdest, and scariest spectacles I have witnessed. You will be standing on the street baking at a still 33degrees .. Thinking that this must be what an ant feels when you focussed the magnifying glass on them all those years ago. Then you see a strange dust cloud approaching. Okay - a little out of the blue - hold onto your hat.. Hey what is that in the distance? A dark cloud.. Holy shizzles, thunder, lightning and RAIN bucketing in thick sheets at us. . All this happens in less than 5 minutes.. And just like that it is gone again. Leaving thousands of people wearing their multi coloured, poker dotted plastic ponchos dripping dry. It may be the only times in their life when they stop working for 10 minutes.. Then tarps are pulled off their precious makeshift street carts and open once again.

Arriving into our next town we check into the tour hotel - not bad really - we decide not to opt for the $2 upgrade to air-conditioning.. And instead shift our bed under the giant roof fan which at top speed makes a sound like a helicopter narrowly escaping the earth below.

A note to make here. The 3 day tour costs less than it would for us to stay 2 more nights in Ho Chi Minh..

We had made friends that day with a nice Aussie couple who we went out for dinner with. They ended up shouting us as it was our wedding anniversary.. A pleasant end to the night.

Up the next day at 6am to get to the floating markets in time for all their hustling and bustling goodness. Desh and I had considered telling the guide that we weren’t interested in the tour - and could we just sit it out. I’m glad we didn’t, because it was awesome. There were hundreds of boats littered around the river selling anything and everything. The only way to know what they were selling was by the 2 metre bamboo pole with their trade stuck on top like a flag, flying their daily tradings.


Can you see the pet rooster saddled up in this next shot?

This river is a happy place - and nothing says it more than really really happy boats. This cracked us up - it was like being in an episode of Thomas the tank engine. They are everywhere.

After the markets it was a little slow, with walks to rice paper factories and a fruit vendor.. Zzzzzzzz
We then piled onto a minibus and were taken to a crocodile farm. This farm has about 10,000 crocs in different concrete pens according to age. We had this crazy Indian guy with us who decided he knew the alligator distress call from the discovery channel. He made these ridiculous noises at the adult crocs, and to the caretakers amazement the big crocs started swimming towards us.. Wow, what the ?? Next second there was a terrific bang as one of the crocs charged the concrete perimeter trying to get to us and the distressed Indian man alligator.


Our next stop was a mountain on the border of Cambodia with a beautiful Pagoda on top which we would visit. Of course while we were here a monsoon came through and bucketed upon us. This was a great place to see the storm though - as you can can see for miles from the mountain across Vietnam and Cambodia. The big difference at this point looking at Cambodia is the sparse clean land with a lack of development. There is actually a man made river in this shot between the countries. This river was used for Cambodian armed forces to float up and down protecting their country in the 70s.. I think perhaps it was something to do with the Vietnam and Cambodian problems with the ruling of the Khmer Rouge during their reign of terror.

The mountain Pagoda was protected by these lions.
The rain here is more like someone tipping a bucket over your head all at once.

A peeping Tom hole back to the outside world

the view from Vietnam looking out to Cambodia


Next morning we were taken by boat to the Cambodian border. But first we had to visit a fish market and minority village.. At the minority village the kids try anything they can to sell you their little plastic wrapped waffles, until we spotted this sign.

The slow boat took a good 6-7 hours of cruising up Cambodia. Straight away we noticed how friendly the people were, waving at us and genuinely quite excited to see foreigners. The people live their lives by the water and seem to do everything in it. Around 5pm everyone living around the Mekong was in it washing and shampooing not just themselves.. But their cows too!

The Captain really needed to go take a wizz off the back of the boat - so he handed the controls over to his 2nd in charge for a few minutes of excitement..

I decided the vessel would need more power for the muddy water up ahead.

After getting through the border we decided to celebrate with a sweet drop of gold. With such a strong message - I felt like it was saying "drink me or you will suffer"

So did Desh

Some good ol fashioned cow washing



After the boat ride we were piled into a mini van taking us into Phnom Penh. Arriving into this city is incredible, as no matter where you look there will be an amazing temple of some sort. The bus did the typical drop off to their recommended hotel, which happened to be on the far side of where we wanted to be. The rooms actually weren’t too bad, but we wanted to be closer to the river front. The final decision came when talking our way out of staying there a giant river rat ran past our feet - OUTOF HERE -
What followed next was cliché backpacker style - we spent a solid hour with our packs trudging from hotel to hotel to ghetto until we found what we were looking for >> a nice air-conditioned family joint down an alley.. Little did we know that everyday they have a 4 hour power cut to save on $ - not just the hotel, but the whole district. You see, the average wage in Cambodia is $1USD per day, yet their power costs more than the power in New Zealand or the U.K for instance. That is because the government is totally corrupt here and doesn’t believe in helping their people. Hence walking down the street there is a mix of sleeping dirty children and Porsche 911 turbos.

Rewind to Ho Chi

It's a crazy place and we wanted it again - oh yes ..
We decided the best way into Cambodia would be via the Mekong Delta and that meant re-entry to our initial crazy hub of Ho Chi.
Arriving with the confidence of knowing your old town - we decided to venture into the city from the airport with a public bus for $0.45 each.. Hurrah. It so happened that we arrived just in time for 'rush hour' .. .. I would like to mention as a side note that it is a 1.5 hour journey via plane - but yet it took us all day to get there. That is the way this country/continent rolls.

The view from the bus. So hard to capture 12million tiny people through a lens.

Ho Chi had a hard job ahead of it. It had to host our 1 year anniversary!
Of course for this serving we would have to play the facade of the rich and famous. The place to start this role is the roof top bar at the Sheraton. We sip excitedly on our happy hour 2 for 1 Singapore Slippers and admire the view 23 storeys above the crazed streets littered with traffic ants. We considered dinner here, but the $110USD Australian steak wasn't good enough for our kiwi taste buds.


After the drinks at our dream hotel - we ventured to a hidden gem of a restaurant called ' The Temple Club '. Tiny little Elephants lit the entrance, and once inside the wooden decor and glowing lanterns served to enhance the romantic evening.



To tell the honest truth here - our anniversary was the following day - but a 8am start to a 3 day tour stuck on buses and boats all day didn't sound like the kind of romance gig we were after.

On the walk home from dinner we stopped to admire the magic that was in front of us in the central park. As this was a Saturday night, we got to witness the hundreds of teenagers that come to hang out and meet a new love. It is sooooo cute, they come on scooters - some couples and some singles and just hang out and chat/cuddle. The single girls gather in groups and wait for the boys to approach..
As a note - Surprisingly the city does actually sleep - unlike Bangkok that has traffic with no rest.


We were out for a walk when we spotted this shirt. Some of you may remember my tsubi tshirt that has a picture of a nuclear family and the bold statement "sniffing glue wont keep families together". This innocent Vietnamese girl has the same statement printed on the back of her shirt, and on the front was a love heart stitched on... It seems a strange place to put a statement like that eh??

Lastly. throughout the country we have been spotting propaganda posters everywhere. It is how the government spreads their messages - although most of them are Communist statements going along the lines of; cops keep families safe etc.. (mmm, or do they extort cash??) . One striker is their aids campaign. My favourite so far, which I haven't spotted again for the kodak moment.. was a poster laid out like this;
2 teenagers sitting inside a giant condom. These kids are floating on a surfboard at sea with sharks all about them ready to strike.. Brilliant.
This one is far more direct - and screams wear protection!
p.s - check out the cute graffiti to the left side.. kinda puts a smile on for the grim site.

Until next time, buckle up and stay safe.

Hanging in Halong Bay

When you are on tours you tend to have a lot of thinking time. In this case 4 hours each way (short in Vietnam standards) on a bus . Just to warn you, this statement isn't going to be all that profound because when you have been touring like us your brain goes into idle mode. So 8 hours of bus thinking produced 1 vibrating thought;
With so many tourists visiting the same places, I wonder how many photos are being snapped every day?
With Halong bay my answer goes something like this;
*In low season there would be 800-1200 tourists on the water starting out on their first day. In high season 4000-5000.
* That means 800-1200 tourists are still on the water from the day before, and 4000-5000 in high season again.
* And a third of that are people doing the third day of their tour (most go home on the 2nd).
>> that means as a medium of those numbers 2350 are on the water at any time in the low season and 12000 in high season
** I estimate that an average of 30 photos are taken every day per person.. probably hundreds from the keen ones and 10s from the "mmmm, better take a shot I spose fellas"
Taking these figures to the ol bus brain computer gives 70,500 photos per day in the low season... and 360,000 a day in high season..
I could go on about how many photos of Ha Long bay exist, judging by this tour being in operation for all these years.. or digital leaving analog, and the exponential growth of the daily photographer, but really, all this is boring.

Maybe my point here is that we are struggling to use our brains these days, and I really believe we will be solid assets to our next employers for the first short period while we enjoy the feeling of something generating in our noodle from left to right.

Get on with it!
So we board a Junk for a 3 day tour. This boat is a slow moving diesel powered barge that carries/sleeps 16 people plus guides. We get taken around these incredible 3000 odd islands at walking pace which gives the average white tourist a lot of sun bathing time on top deck.
On our first day we cruised the bays, walked some incredible caves, kayaked and then went swimming at a small island. How much of that did we actually do? Well, the kayaking was done by everyone except for us as we were the only ones doing a 3 day tour and the kayaking was scheduled for the next day. We went to go swimming but the water here is full of rubbish and a English kid pulled a syringe out of the sand right on the shore line. The waters are very pretty - but rubbish is a big problem here with 100s of boats and no one seems to be cleaning the aftermath.

Our junk was kinda like the gay pride party bus, parading a nice selection of multi coloured flags. At night it turned into a karaoke disco with green laser beams and a disco ball.. no lie!

Our sunbathing platform;
The afternoon sun across the water;

The sunset over the Ha Long Islands is spectacular.

That night after the disco, and the crazy Polish guy feeding me bisongrass vodka had calmed down, we slept with the gentle flow of the ocean. At about 3am I was awoken by the sound of giant water rats racing around the inside of our walls and desperately trying to gnaw their way in. We drifted in and out of sleep and only awoke once an hour as the rats were getting more and more frustrated with their failures. In the morning it was like nothing had happened as no one spoke of the rats over breaky, but I suspect we all had similar experiences.

After breakfast we were transported to another junk with just one other person.. and the 3 of us on this giant boat cruised to Cat Ba island where we went mountain biking and trekking through caves with flying bats. The biking was magic as the roads were ancient and there was a great lake and jungle.

After lunch we went to a floating fishing village (like a house built on polystyrene bricks) who hires out kayaks and paddled around the small floating villages for an hour. The people here catch fish and store them in netted chambers around their houses - this is their trade and sometimes the tour lunches.

We then sailed around the other side of Cat Ba and checked into a hotel for the night. The next day we departed at 7.30am and cruised slowly back to Ha Long city over a 5 hour trip before heading back to Ha Noi in the afternoon.

A truely magical trip and worth every penny paid. My only advice is not to fall into the trap of thinking, as you may end up boring the readers of your blog ;)

The caves you visit. It's like a hollowed out cliff face - the biggest cave I've ever seen.. better than Waitomo even.. could you believe that ;)


Sea Hawks are everywhere hunting and giving people omens