....................Stan and Michelle Peterson: June 2011

Sunday, June 5, 2011

From Phnom Penh to Koh Chang

We traveled by van, plane, bus, and ferry to get from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Koh Chang, Thailand. It was a low key, sleep in the van or when you can kind of day.

We had the second floor of this building at Amber Sands Resort.

Like most museums we were not able to take pictures inside. There were many great artifacts. It was interesting to see the progression of art from the pre-Angkor period to recent works. The museum comprised of four pavilions each facing the garden area.

Toul Sleng (S-21) & The Killing Fields

In 1075 Tuol Svay Prey High School was taken over by Pol Pot's security forces and turned into a prison known as Security Prison 21 (S-21.) Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge leaders were meticulous in keeping records of their barbarism. Each prisoner who passed through S-21 was photographed, sometimes before and after torture.


These children should be playing in the playground reflected in this display, not tortured.

When the Vietnamese army liberated Phnom Penh in early 1979, there wre only seven prisoners alive at S-21, all of whom had used their skills, such as painting, mechanics, or photography to stay alive. We met a mechanic at this museum who was one of the seven.

These are not bathroom stalls, but cells where prisoners were shackled and tortured. One floor used bricks, one floor used blocks, and one floor used wood. It was very, very sad.

These are the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Between 1975 and 1978 about 17,000 men, women, children, and infants who had been detained and tortured at S-21 were transported to this extermination camp. These pictures do not represent the magnitude of what we saw.