A visit to the Royal Palace here was underwhelming as one of the principal attractions was the Throne Room but they didn't tell you before entry the day we did that it was closed. The other main attraction was the "Silver Pagoda containing some finely worked gold caskets & decorative items surrounded by 100's of gold buddhas of from tiny a couple of inches to several feet tall. The silver floor that the pagoda is famous for turns out to be silver tiles mainly covered in carpet with many currently held in place with gaffer tape !
Our penultimate morning in towns was used by yisiting the Cheung Ek Genocidal Museum better known as the Killing Fields (more correctly one of, as there have been 300 such sites found in Cambodia).We were "greeted by"two one legged men, presumably from land mines, with caps in hand that you could not ignore.Our $5 dollar entry fee included the audio tour which I would normally have rejected but turned out to be invaluable as it contained a detailed explanation of what we were seeing. Most of the buildings on the original site were recycled after the war & have been replaced by simple shelters with a brief explanation of the originals purpose.Approximately half of the mass execution spots/graves -they used the cheapest form of murder they could - have been excavated revealing the remains of 10,000 men,women & children. One grave was found to contain 100 headless men accused of being traitors or of having vietnamese heads on cambodian bodies. In some parts of the site you come across fractions of clothing or bone disturbed by rain or wildlife which is quite macabre.. The audio tour included one piece recorded by a guard recounting his duties & a short life history of a young man who avoided death & ended up running the documentation centre recording details of evidence for the regimes prosecution. Sad to say the trial of some very senior figures is still incomplete by a tribunal who won't accept the evidence of "Duch", the head man at the S-21 interrogation centre, against them. A chilling place togo!
Tomorrow we have a 6 hour coach ride ($5 each)to Battambong .
Our penultimate morning in towns was used by yisiting the Cheung Ek Genocidal Museum better known as the Killing Fields (more correctly one of, as there have been 300 such sites found in Cambodia).We were "greeted by"two one legged men, presumably from land mines, with caps in hand that you could not ignore.Our $5 dollar entry fee included the audio tour which I would normally have rejected but turned out to be invaluable as it contained a detailed explanation of what we were seeing. Most of the buildings on the original site were recycled after the war & have been replaced by simple shelters with a brief explanation of the originals purpose.Approximately half of the mass execution spots/graves -they used the cheapest form of murder they could - have been excavated revealing the remains of 10,000 men,women & children. One grave was found to contain 100 headless men accused of being traitors or of having vietnamese heads on cambodian bodies. In some parts of the site you come across fractions of clothing or bone disturbed by rain or wildlife which is quite macabre.. The audio tour included one piece recorded by a guard recounting his duties & a short life history of a young man who avoided death & ended up running the documentation centre recording details of evidence for the regimes prosecution. Sad to say the trial of some very senior figures is still incomplete by a tribunal who won't accept the evidence of "Duch", the head man at the S-21 interrogation centre, against them. A chilling place togo!
Tomorrow we have a 6 hour coach ride ($5 each)to Battambong .
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