The Royal Palace of Phnom Penh
A Stupa, which is a tomb of a previous King!
Some formal wear.
First trip to a cinema in over 3 months and we find this beauty! Sofas to lounge on in front of the big screen and we got very lucky as we had the whole place to ourselves. As it was Easter Weekend they were showing one of Joshua's favourites 'Hop'. We stayed on after this to watch the new Star Wars movie we hadn't had a chance to see in Sydney. It's always good to have a chill out day within this crazy traveling and for $3.50 for both movies it was a bargain!
We took a ride over to 'Silk Island' for the morning. This involved a trip through the fields, a visit to the home of a silk making family, over a bridge to see the cows having a bath, a tour around the silk farm and a swim in the local swimming pool! Our Tuk Tuk driver brought along his eight year old son for company for Josh.
Over on the ferry with the locals.
The cows having a bath and some kids enjoying a skipping game.
A silk loom located under a family home. They were very busy and produced some beautiful silk scarfs and tablecloths.
Silk worm eggs
Silk worms
Silk worms making their cocoons
These are the cocoons of the lucky worms who get to survive to make silk worm babies.
The others will be boiled up to harvest their silk from their cocoon.
The yellow silk is the natural colour once harvested from the worms.
Industrial loom
The local swimming pool!!
The Knotted Gun Monument
This monument was erected after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
Time for a good old market stop!
An evening of Cambodian storytelling, traditional music & dance.
Both beautiful & mesmerising.
So we have the fish van & the ice cream van Phnom Penh Hamas the chicken Tuk Tuk!!!!!!
Whilst in Phnom Penh we were taken to The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21). It highlights the atrocities carried out by the Khmer Rouge Regiem governed by Pol Pot between 1975-1979 leaving over 2million Cambodians dead, categories for the dead included people wearing glasses, doctors, teachers, bilingual and children. Children were killed of the parents killed to ensure these children would not crave revenge in later years. His thinking was for his country to be self sufficient and abolished the use of & need for money & communication with any other country. The whole of Phnom Penh was one of the cities emptied within a day with people made to work the land. Pol Pot demanded unrealistic expectations of rice productions with men, women & children of all ages, without any previous farming skills, made to work long hours with very little food and drink. Many died from sheer exhaustion or treatable illnesses as they had no access to medication, The people who were deemed too clever, were escorted to what they thought was a new start in a new home, to the various 'Killing Fields' to be tortured & executed one by one. The Khmer Rouge was finally overthrown by Vitnam troops and only then the true horror of what had gone on was realised.
It is a very, very sad part of Cambodian history and it was very hard to listen to the harrowing stories and look at distressing pictures but visiting the country I think it was something we had to do. Josh dealt with it all although there were some pictures we skipped past as they were too distressing for us let alone a 9 year old, although we did believe it was important for him to get a grasp on the reality of this period in Cambodias history.
It was very sad and very difficult to understand how Pol Pot could imagine this was the right way to better this country. Such a sad, sad history but the people who have come out the other end are doing their best to recover but it is going to take a long time to forget the past.
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