Day 7 in Cambodia

Howdy,

So today we had tours all over the city. We started with the Royal Palace, this was interesting, but because the palace is realtively new, it doesnt have any incredible history or anything. Although the silver pragoda was pretty cool, the whole floor is made out of silver tiles that weigh 1kg each. From there we went to the National Museum, this was also quite interesting, although i would of prefered to walk around at my own pace without the guide. Then we went Wat Penhom, which is a big buddist shrine, it was pretty gnarly as it was covered with monkeys.

After lunch we travelled about 15ks to the Killing Fields, this took half n hr or more because tuk tuk's are so slow. Immediately as you walk in you can see a big tower filled with over 9000 skulls that have been extuvated from the mass graves. There is over 200 mass graves, some holding up to 600 bodies, only 43 haven't been excavated. It is really hard to describe the feeling you get being there, what happened there is hard to comprehend - they had speakers hanging from the trees playing the regimes music to mask the moaning and scream from the victims, they had a particualr tree where they would swing children's heads into, babies were throw into the air and caught on the spears of guns.... bullets were not used because they were too expensive.
Poor Andrew was a bit emotional and was caught of gaurd with children beggers - so soon we were swarmed, after what we had just witnessed it was very hard to just look away.

From here we went to the Genocide Museum, which is called Toul Sleng - this was the high school that was turned into a prison between 1975 and 1978 ( it was called S-21), over 16 000 people were brought there and only 7 people survived. Walking thorough the building any emotions occur to you because it is so hard to understand how this could of happened. The torture is very well documented, and every single person who entered had their photo taken, all of this is on display. So you walk past rows and rows of boards each filled with 60 pictures, seeing these pictures make the statistics come to life - mother and baby, old men, young girls - every single expression on their faces you can imagine, their hands ties behind their back. You walk into their cells, and the tourture chambers, the weapons, chains and tolls still on the ground, blood splattered on the walls, and roof. I found so hard to understand this happened so little time ago, yet no one did anything about it, in fact most Australians wouldn't even know that it had happened. Our guide was 11 in 1975 and told us how he had lost his father, two brothers and two sisters, and his own story was very moving.

It was such an intense and draining day, so i think we will have a very quite night , even if it is our last night with Andrew and Sarah. Sarah was really sick today which was so sad because she was the one who was most looking forward to all these sites, and she studied them for her HSC. And because she was sick she could not come to it all.

I don't know what Elise and I will do tomorrow, it will be our first day by our selves and we won't have to go to school... maybe we will just have a rest - as we are both sooo tired!!

Love Steph xx