A sombre morning's activities. First the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where an ordinary primary and high school in the middle of town had been turned into Office 21 or S-21 for the purpose of detaining, interrogating, torturing and killing enemies of the regime. Between 13,000 and 20,000 people died in the 4 years it was operating. There were only a handful of survivors, 2 of whom were there today, recounting their experiences. The sheer ordinariness of the setting adds to the impact of what was done there. This was equally the case at our second visit where a beautiful, rural setting, an old Chinese burial ground, is the site of Cheuong Ek Killing Fields. The Memorial contains the remains of 8,985 bodies exhumed in 1980; there are still more mass graves yet to be exhumed. All very thought provoking.
The group ate lunch together before we split up for a free afternoon, our first. We headed over to the sights, sounds and smells of the huge Central Market; inevitably money changed hands.
Tomorrow we say goodbye to Cambodia and head down the Mekong River by (speed)boat to Vietnam.
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