The first day in Phnom Penh we planned to visit the National Museum. But we were a little bit late and had to wait until 1400, so we walked arround town a bit (pfff 5km or so!) We lunched in Friends, a nice little restaurant. All proceeds go to helping street children into education and job training. The cooks and servant are street children also. Great food and excellent service! After lunch we went to the National Museum, full of Khmer art, and statues of the Angkor period. Nice things on display, but the information given is to little to make a good picture of what you\’re looking at. We had dinner in the city. We found a nice restaurant, with great atmosphere. We sat on the ground, on cussions, on the second floor. It was a nice experience, and the food was good. After we went back to the guesthouse.

The next day we went to visit the Tuol Sleng museum and the Choeun Ek Killing fields. Tuol Sleng is a security prison from the Khmer Rouge regiem in Cambodia. During this regiem (1972-1977) all families in Cambodia experienced at least some death, torture, or imprisnment of at least one or more relatives. Watch the movie ‘The Killing Fields’ for more info on this subject. The Khmer Rouge regiem under Poll Pot (died in 1995) was set to get all educated, literatured, spiritual(monks) and intelectual people to work on the countryside. If you spoke foreign language, wore glasses, had education, had a connection to the former gouvernment or relatives who did so, you were a target. Many of them ended up dead, and many of them went through S21 (security prison) first. The most infamous of S21 prisons is Tuol Sleng.

Realy impressive of Tuol Sleng is that it is set in the middle of a living area of phnom penh. A former High School, with the Khmer Rouge turning it into a prison. They made holes in the clasrooms from one to another, had small cells built in them from bricks and wood, and there were mass emprisonment cells, were 30 or more people lay beside each other, chained to a long iron bar. They were not allowed to speak with each other, nor were the guards. Each breach of the rules resulted in severe punishment. In 1977 almost 100 people a per day (!) were killed here. They were tortured to confes about conspiracy or other things, then taken to the Choen Ek Killing Fileds, shot or beaten to death, and left behind to rot in mass graves….

The museum allows you to see the brick cells made in the old classrooms, shows pictures of the prisoners made by the Khmer before and even after torture, and shows rooms and pictures were people were tortured. When Phnom Penh was liberated, they found 7 people tortured to dead, only that day. They are burried on the grounds of the museum, and the rooms were they were found are still left intact, with pictures of them on the wall….

This was a impressive day. The Toul Sleng museum is a profoundly depressing experience, but not to be missed by anyone visiting Phnom Pehn, or even Cambodia. Because we had enough of the day(it was very hot!) we had dinner in the guesthouse, and went to bed early, the next day a tuk tuk would take us to the pier, from were a fast boat would take us across the Tonle Sap Lake to Siem Reap.