Motorcycle diaries - Cambodia: Killing fields

Last day in Phnom Penh (December 24th) we visited one of the Cambodia's Killing fields, were people were killed and buried in the mass graves by Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979. The one we visited, Choeung Ek, is located 15 km away from Phnom Penh. Over 20 000 people were killed and buried there.

It is very hard to grasp what happened in this country during that time. We, in Europe, study those events in our history classes, but it seems to be so abstract - something that happened in this small country somewhere far away in South East Asia. We seem to be more concerned and touched with World War II events, and it's understandable in a way - this war had such an impact on almost every family, at least in my home country.

However, the scale of crime of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is horrifying: out of 7,7 Mio. population in the 1970-ies, 3 Mio. were killed as enemies of regime during just few years, or died from tortures, starvation and deseases...

Meanwhile we also watched 2 movies about those times. One is called "Killing fields", it's a movie based on true story about American journalist, who worked for NY times, and his friend and colleague from Cambodia, who happened to be in the middle of the bloody events of the 70-ies in Cambodia.
Another movie is a documentary "S21", about those people who worked in the prison and execution site Choeung Ek. Many of them, who worked for Khmer Rouge that times, are now in their 40-ies or 50-ies. They were just young boys or teenagers, when all this was happening, and they were a part of the regime...

We also went to eat with family of our new local friend, who helped us a lot with our motorbike papers. We went to some restaurant outside the city, and our friend told us, that only rich people come to eat there. We paid 17 USD for 4 people's delicious lunch. Our friend works in the boat ticketing office, and earns 150 USD per month. He pays 80 USD for his apartment, and 50 USD for English school for his kid Pet. The rest is left for living.

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Little Pet