Sightseeing around Phnom Penh
12/23/11
We watched the movie "The Killing Fields" after spending a couple of days here. It is an excellent movie anyway, but it was even more meaningful to us watching it here. We had just taken a tour of the S21 prison which is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum. Our guide was a wonderful woman who had been thirteen at the time the Khmer Rouge forced everyone from the city of Phnom Penh and into the fields into forced labor. Her family was killed but she managed to survive the concentration camp conditions. We also met one of only seven men to survive the torture of S21 prison. It was a grim, but very moving day.
We also visited the royal palace and its Silver Pagoda, a lovely and peaceful place in this very hectic city.
We have now moved on to the town of Battambang, about six hours away. It seems more our speed!
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Posted by Pelham Family 02:03 Archived in Cambodia
Wow. Baylie will be the only 10th grader in the room a few years from now,with real comprehension of this horror when the class reads of the killing fields in chapter 17 of our text book. It's covered with a small paragraph, and a gruesome picture of a pile of skulls. What an education she is getting!
by Kathy