Day 11 - Fascinating Vietnam, Cambodia & the Mekong River with Bangkok – Southbound

February 2015 - Cruising the Mekong

Day 11 February 16 Cruising: Phnom Penh

The drive to today's excursion was interesting as we passed through Phnom /Penh.

You will also visit one of the KILLING FIELDS, where over 200,000 people were killed by the Khmer Rouge.

We started with the Killing Fields and then went to the high school.

This was a very disturbing excursion, my knowledge of this war is almost nil, so I have some reading to do when we get home. I will post more photos separately.

Nor being facetious, but the guy selling these flowers makes a fortune, we pay $1 put them in the container then when we go he recycles the flowers.

Sightseeing this morning provides a glimpse of the atrocities inflicted on the Cambodian people by the Khmer Rouge regime. Visit the TUOL SLENG GENOCIDE MUSEUM, a former high school that housed over 17,000 prisoners. Of this number, it is believed that less than 15 survived the torture and avoided being sent to the Killing Fields.

Tuol Svay Pray High School sits on a dusty road on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the high school S-21 and turned it into a torture, interrogation and execution center. Of the 14,000 people known to have entered, only seven survived.

 Just read these rules!

 Not only did the Khmer Rouge carefully transcribe the prisoners' interrogations; they also carefully photographed the vast majority of the inmates and created an astonishing photographic archive. Each of the almost 6,000 S-21 portraits that have been recovered tells a story shock, resignation, confusion, defiance and horror. Although the most gruesome images to come out of Cambodia were those of the mass graves, the most haunting were the portraits taken by the Khmer Rouge at S-21.

This afternoon, enjoy time on board the ship as we sail for the border, where we will anchor for the night. (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner)

It was nice to spend the afternoon sailing and reading.There wasn't much of an internet connection.