Siem Reap, Cambodia

I’m a little behind in my blogging, I’m currently in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), and I’ve been stuck in my hotel room with a pretty bad case of food poisoning.  It began yesterday and has continued for more than 24 hours. The whole Contiki tour group went on to the Mekong Delta, and will be returning to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully I’ll join up with them then. I wasn’t well enough to travel so I stayed behind alone. I’m still not better yet, but I have a little bit more energy now so I’m going to recap the past few days.
On our final night in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, (June 9th) before flying to Siem Reap the following morning, we spent part of the evening exploring the markets.



After exploring the markets we went out for dinner, and we were given the opportunity to try tarantulas as an appetizer:


I didn’t try them… but apparently they were quite tasty!
The following morning we flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Our hotel was beautiful, and fully equipped with a fitness center, spa and pool:

In the afternoon we headed over to Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. This lake is the home for many people living in the floating villages. It was really interesting to tour the floating villages (by boat), as their way of life is so different than ours. There are hundreds of houses, all floating on the water, made up of bamboo, wood and scraps, all put together to form a roof on top of either a boat, or a floating platform.
We could see right into most of the houses, and each one contained a living area and a kitchen; some even contained TV’s and satellite dishes!




The whole village lives in poverty, and it’s sad when you look inside the tiny floating houses and see how most of the houses are falling apart. In addition, the water from the lake is pretty dirty looking (it is a red-brown colour), and they use this water for everything including washing, cooking, drinking, disposing of bodily waste and swimming. They only recently got a water filter station, where they can bring their water and have it filtered in one central location on the lake, but before the filter station they would use other methods (like boiling the water) to drink it. For washing of clothing and dishes the water is used straight from the lake. I couldn’t even imagine using the same water where toilets are directly disposed into for washing my dishes!
The day we went to see the floating village must have been moving day for many people, because we saw a number of houses being relocated on the lake. To move a house they hook it up to a boat using rope, and then pull the house to the new location:

The following morning (June 10) we woke up at 4:15am to see the sunrise over the famous Angkor Wat temple. The entrance tickets are pretty interesting. In order to stop people from scalping tickets, they require each person have their photo taken, and the photo is then printed on your entrance ticket. Below is my ticket (keep in mind that my photo was taken at 4:45am).

Angkor Wat was built in the early 12th century as a mausoleum and temple for King Suryanarman II. It was abandoned for a few hundred years in the 16th century, while the jungle grew in around it.Once it was discovered again, and cleared away from the jungle, it was put back into use. It is currently the world’s largest religious building.
It is a magnificent site, and it is breathtakingly beautiful at sunrise. Unfortunately it’s hard to capture this beauty in a photograph. 



Once the sun was up, we were able to tour around the temple and see the beautiful and incredible architecture.

It is incredible to walk through the temple and see such amazing architecture that was built thousands of years ago. Even though I was very tired from waking up at 4:15am, it was well worth it to see such a magnificent sight!

We took a little nap and pool break back at the hotel after seeing Angkor Wat, and then made our way back to the Angkor complex to see two more temples.
The first temple was the Bayon temple, known for the many massive stone faces carved in the towers of the temple. It was an incredible sight!

We then visited the Ta Prohm temple, better known as the Tomb Raider Temple. This is where a number of scenes from Angelina Jolie’s movie Tomb Raider was filmed.

I wish I could write more but I feel way too sick to continue writing. Hopefully tomorrow I will feel better and will be able to continue. I’m sorry this entry is so bare, today I just do not have the energy to write longer stories. I’ve barely eaten anything in the past 24 hours, as anything I eat only stays in my body for about 20 minutes. Once I’m better I will continue with my blogging.

Leaving Laos and Phnom Penh, Cambodia: The Killing Fields

After leaving the COPE center on June 7th, we did some sight-seeing around Vientiane, Laos. Our first stop was the Pha That Luang, one of Laos’ most important religious symbols. The beautiful Golden Stupa is 45 metres high, and is surrounded by 30 small stupas.

Our next stop was the Patuxay, or Victory Gate of Vientiane. It is a huge gateway that closely resembles the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It was built in 1962, and is dedicated to the people of Laos who fought in the struggle for independence from France.

This was our last day in Laos, as we would be traveling by plane to Phnom Penh, Cambodia in the morning. I really enjoyed the country of Laos. The natural beauty of the Mekong River and mountains were breathtaking, but on the flip-side, I was very saddened to learn about the devastation caused by the United States during the Vietnam War from the 260 million bombs they dropped. It makes me really sad to think about how the effects of those actions are still severely impacting the people today. I am happy that I visited Laos, and overall Laos was a very informative, eye-opening and beautiful section of my trip.
On June 8th we took a flight from Vientiane to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Phnom Penh is a large and very busy city in Cambodia, an it was a nice change from from the cities we had seen in Laos.  We immediately hopped on the bus and headed to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
Visiting this museum was a very saddening experience. Learning about the genocide in Cambodia that killed 2.4-3 million Cambodians under rule of the Khmer Rouge was an eye opener for me. It is so awful what the Cambodian people have been through. In case those reading this blog don’t know the background, I’ll try to briefly summarize it.
The Khmer Rouge were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, and were led by Pol Pot, also known as the “Hitler” of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge were a communist party, and believed that peasants were the ideal communists, while city dwellers were the root of all capitalist evil. They began their ruling by forcing all city dwellers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to abandon their homes as quickly as possible and migrate to the countryside. They were then put to work for 12-14 hour days of hard manual labour working in the fields. The Khmer Rouge believed that to have the ideal communist society all people would have to live and work as peasants in the countryside. This manual labour lead to many deaths from starvation and overwork.

But this was just the first of many steps taken by the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge then banned religion, money and private ownership. Communications with the outside world were strictly forbidden and family relationships were demolished.
Anyone who fit into the category of a supposed “enemy” (including people committing the forbidden acts listed above) were arrested, tortured and eventually executed. Professionals and intellectuals, or even people wearing glasses, were considered “enemies”, in addition to anyone with connections to the former Cambodian government, or any foreign governments. Christians, Muslims and Buddhist monks fell into this “enemy” category as well. Anyone who the Khmer Rouge believed was against them, or was supporting capitalism was considered an “enemy”, in addition to all of their family members and children.
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is the former Security Office 21, which was created by the orders of Pol Pot. Previously this area was the Tuol Sleng Primary School and Tuol Svay Prey High School. This security office doubled as a prison, and was used for detention, interrogation, torture, and then killing of Cambodian “enemies”. This was a place where people went in, but never came out. The main purpose of this location was to extract confessions from prisoners before they were taken away for execution.



There was barbed wire outside the buildings, so that prisoners would not escape, or commit suicide by jumping from the higher floors of the building.

Each room was converted into a number of small cells, and each small cell would contain a number of prisoners.


The Khmer Rouge collected photographs of the prisoners and films of the confessions. The photos were displayed in the museum.

Once the prisoners were tortured and interrogated, they were taken to the Killing Fields to be executed.
It is not exactly known how many deaths resulted from the rule of the Khmer Rouge, but it is estimated that in the country of Cambodia (with a total population of 7 million people), 2.4 – 3 million people were executed by the Khmer Rouge. This number accounts for more than 30% of the population of Cambodia, that were executed on Cambodian soil by their own leader.
You can see in the photo below that many of the people were executed with blindfolds on, and ropes tied around their wrists.


Walking through the prison was very difficult, and it was devastating to see how people suffered through this period and the vast and atrocious number of unnecessary deaths of innocent Cambodian people that resulted from the Khmer Rouge rule.
We then visited the Killing Fields, which contain more than 20,000 mass graves. To save ammunition, executions were done using poison, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. Children and infants of the adult victims were killed by bashing their heads against trees. The children were executed as a precaution in case they grew up taking revenge for their parents death.
While walking through the Killing Fields we saw a number of the mass graves.



The entire area contains bodies under the soil, and most of the graves have not been excavated, in order to let the dead rest in peace.


While walking through the paths you can see bone fragments in the ground, peaking up through the soil (it’s hard to see them clearly in the photo below). You can also see pieces of clothing peaking through the soil as well. This is because many prisoners were forced to dig their own graves, and they were too weak to dig very deep.

At the Killing Fields there is a memorial dedicated in the honour of the Cambodian people who died during the genocide. Inside the memorial are the skulls of the excavated bodies.


It was devastating to see how the Cambodian people suffered only about 30 years ago under the rule of the Khmer Rouge, leading to the death of 2.4 - 3 million people! All these deaths have resulted in a Cambodian population where currently about 50% of the population is under 20 years of age, as the majority of the older population was killed during the genocide.
This was a very sad day.