It was a late 10am start to the day thanks to the wild night. First stop was outside of town at what's known as The Killing Fields. It's one of many rural areas where Pol Pot's Kmer Rouge regime took a few million people, including women & infants, to be executed. Pol Pot was indoctrinated into Marxism in Paris, then tried to apply it in his own country but quickly found that the only way for it to succeed was through force-- after the utter destruction of every artifact of cultural and historical value, a destruction of the Cambodian identity-- a clean slate. Over 900 bodies have been exhumed from mass graves at this site, leaving an estimated 500 or more still untouched. 800 skulls are on display in a central memorial building. Out back is the mass grave area where you can see dozens of sunken pits with descriptions of how many bodies were recovered, if they were male or female, and if they were headless. You can also see the tree where soldiers would grab children by the ankles and swing them into the tree trunk head-first. They killed not only dissidents, but their entire family in order to avoid revenge from relatives in the future. It's not really a good way to start your day and not what we expected. It was definitely eye-opening and we were fairly glad we went.
Before being taken to the killing fields, most victims were prisoners in a grade school-turned-prison in downtown Phnom Penh. In each classroom (approx 20) was a bed and chair. On the walls were gory 36"x36" pictures of prisoners who'd been tortured and killed in that very room. There were still blood stains on some of the walls and furniture. With all the fun stuff out of the way, we stopped at the Royal Palace complex, which included several sections such as the Silver Pagoda, where there are hundreds of solid silver buddhist relics on display. The complex is worth a look if you don't mind the $12 entrance fee and 30min line to buy tickets in the foreigner line. We had wanted to make it to the history museum but it was getting to the point where we couldn't take any more.
I found a good guest house online called Me Mates Place, which was nice and clean ($20). A nice 2hr nap, followed by surfing the internets and booking airfare at a cafe got us ready for dinner. Across the street from the icafe was a restaurant named Friends that my Frommer's book recommended as a top pick in the city. It's not just a restaurant, but also a second chance for troubled kids that have gone down the wrong path. The saff is aged 15-19 and they all learn to cook and be professional wait staff. The place was really nice and the food was awesome. A can't miss meal in Phnom Penh for about $15/person.
THE KILLING FIELDS:
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