Pnom Penh: Pretty Damn Depressing

We've been in Pnom Penh for the past couple of days. It's not the cleanest or most relaxed city by any means, so we've mostly just been chilling out by the pool of our hostel. However, yesterday we figured we'd do the obligatory sightseeing.

The day started out on a pretty light note with a trip to the shooting range. This terrified me, to be honest, but what we saw later on made this seem like a trip to the ice cream shop. Here in Cambodia (and Vietnam from what I've heard) if you have the money, you can shoot any gun you want. They had a "menu" with all of the available weapons and prices listed - you could even shoot a rocket launcher for $300! Seriously, who needs to do that? Well, I guess I can see the appeal (maybe), but I'm not much of a gun lover (ie I think they're terrible) so I passed on going buck wild at the shooting range. Brittny said she can shoot guns whenever she wants at home for free, so that just left Jayne and Cassie to go Rambo on all our asses. They chose an AK47 and an M16 and within a couple of minutes, they were shooting at coconuts. Both of them blew up their coconuts and Cassie even shot her target in the cheek...twice! I think we've all learned a valuable lesson here: do not eff with serious gun totin' ladies!





After playing with guns, our day got a little more serious. Our next stop was the Killing Fields, the place where the Khmer Rouge murdered thousands upon thousands of Cambodians during the 1970s. If you don't know much about this particularly grisly part of history, I recommend reading First They Killed My Father, a young girl's story of what it was like growing up under the Khmer Rouge. It's definitely not an uplifting read, but it tells an important story.

Visiting the Killing Fields and s-21, a school that was converted into a prison where Cambodians were interrogated and tortured, was akin to visting a concentration camp. Nobody really wants to get themselves all depressed and feeling shitty about humankind, but it's important to visit these places, at least so we can stay educated and aware of the atrocities that go on while the rest of the world isn't paying attention. It's not like I think I know how to save the world or anything like that at all, but I do feel that if I'm in a country where something major went down, I should at least see it. You know what they say, seeing is believing. Seeing the exact tree against which babies were beaten to death, in order to flush out a political opponent's entire family (or anyone suspected of opposing the Khmer Rouge in the slightest - even people who wore glasses)...let's just say that was an intense level of believing.

By the end of the day, we were all pretty much drained, physically and emotionally. Seeing the place of so many murders took it out of me in a serious way. I've been to concentration camps before, and it was a similar experience. Terrible. But something about this place was different. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was only 30 years ago that Cambodia was liberated. It wasn't all that long ago. When I see older people on the streets of Phom Penh, I can't help but wonder what their stories are. Every single one of those people must have lost someone.


Monument at the Killing Fields. Inside are many levels filled with bones that were exhumed from the mass graves.


Victims' skulls


The Killing Tree


S-21, notorious Khmer Rouge prison
Well, hope I haven't depressed everyone too much with this post. I just want to share what I've been seeing/thinking about and this time it was pretty grim. Tomorrow morning we're all heading to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, so I should have some more stories to tell soon. And hopefully not all depressing things about the Vietnam War, either...!