Why use 2 currencies?
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2006
1
68
101
Trip End
Ongoing
Pnom Penh, Cambodia
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Arrived here last Tuesday, my God I've been here a week. That's ok though as it's pretty nice.
What have I been upto?
Well, mostly nothing. Yep. Nothing.
Met an Aussie girl on the plane, chilled with her for a bit, went out at night with her and my new friend Jeremy and had beer and had food and had lots of good chatting. It was good. And I beat 3 kids at Connect 4. Ok my first victory I may have cheated. You know, broke down her confidence then swooped with a Connect 4 terror strike leaving kids in my wake. Quite the hero I am. I know it. You don't have to keep telling me.
Went to Tuol Sleng. Now this is some pretty harrowing stuff. It's the prison that Pol Pot and his army used to torture and execute traitors, suspected traitors, children, women, anyone educated, doctors, engineers, teachers etc...
It used to be a junior school. Then it became the place where people who had been to a junior school died. Pretty bad. The rooms and cells are still there as they were when the Vietnamese liberated it, still with the steel frame beds and the chains that the prisoners were chained to them with. On the walls of some of these cells were pictures of the way they found the victims from those rooms. I.e. dead and bloody and generally a little contorted from the whippings and electrocutions they'd just been through. As I said, pretty harrowing.
Then the benefactor of my philanthropic acts in Bangkok came to Pnom Penh and we went out with my new friend Jeremy and had food and had beer and lots of good chatting. It was good.
And we went to the killing fields of Choeung Ek. This is where Pol Pot and his army took the people he hadn't killed in the prison. And he killed them. Shot them or beat them into mass graves. Pretty harrowing stuff. One story goes that they didn't want to waste bullets so they threw babies in the air and impaled them on their machetes. Sorry to anyone who didn't want to hear it but, it happened. It's quite hard to describe this stuff as it's all horrifically bad and gets you thinking. Though you don't know what to fell because you can't even begin to imagine what it was like to be there. And lots of the people readin this were alive when it all happened. If you'd have been born in Cambodia it could have been you. Nice.
Anyway, sorry for all the heavy theatrics. Guess it gets to you a little.
Aside from that I've done a whooooooooole lot of nothing. Though I firmly believe that watching upto 4 DVDs per day is educational and therefore qualifies as doing something. I've learnt, for instance, that Spiderman CAN beat the Sandman, and that if you wound Beatrix Kiddo, you'd better damned well kill her. See, I'm having fun AND learning.
I am also learning, as we speak, that Cambodian kids are bloody noisy when they play in the street and that their favourite game appears to be one called "Scream as loud and as high pitched as you possbily can".
So my plans keep changing, to the point where I now don't seem to have one. I'm thinkin Laos within a week and then we'll take it from there.
And I guess there's movies to be watched, beer to be drunk, and new friends to be chatted to so I am out...
Comments
Re doing nothing!
Oi Marc get back to Bali and entertain Agus for me seems you both doing nothing hence his 2am sms to me this morning grrrrrr. He wanted to know if he could still come to Australia ha ha. I think he thinks everyone is up and partying at 2am like in Bali. I have printed off the photos of you and him and the one of him up the tree and will give them to him in 7 weeks whilst I am in Bali that will spin him out more ha ha. I will be travelling more from now on. I am going to Bali July, Oct and December this year then off to see more of asia so taking note of your trip and comments, have a good one,Michelle