In the Footsteps of the Red Khmers

After breakfast, we hopped on a tuk tuk and headed out to the Russian Market. A Cambodian tuk tuk is basically a motorcycle with a cart attached to the back, while a Thai tuk tuk is a three-wheeled motorcycle with a built-in cart. The Russian Market is massive and packed with everything you can imagine. According to Lonely Planet, you can buy clothes from surplus stock from the factories that supply European stores. But when you ask the locals, they say that’s not true. Why would they lie? They could sell the goods for a higher price if it were genuine. There were some stunning Gucci, Prada, and Burberry bags, but in our opinion, the prices were way too high. It was impossible to get them down to less than 15 dollars. On the other hand, backpacks like North Face were super cheap. Honny snagged one for just 8 dollars. Two Diesel t-shirts cost 3 dollars, and a cap was only 75 cents. It's worth mentioning that you can use dollars everywhere here. There's no need to exchange for riel. 4000 riel equals 1 dollar, so we don’t have to carry around a ton of cash. The Russian Market is covered, so it got pretty hot after midday. Instead, we took a tuk tuk to cool off and headed out to a shooting range before making our way to the Killing Fields. The shooting range was a bit outside the city, and as the name suggests, you can actually shoot there. Honny got 24 rounds for 30 dollars with a Kalashnikov AK. There was a huge selection of weapons to try out, and you could even throw a grenade—definitely a bit wild for our taste. Next, our tuk tuk driver took us to the Killing Fields, a memorial to Cambodia's horrific and bloody past under Pol Pot’s regime from 1975 to 1979. The Killing Fields used to be a Chinese cemetery. Pol Pot chose it because it was far from the city and already used for burials. He thought it would be easier to hide all the bodies of the people he killed. Pol Pot despised anyone who was intellectual, artistic, wore glasses, had an education, or opposed his rule. After he came to power, he gave foreigners 24 hours to leave the country. In his communist regime, everyone was forced to work in agriculture. So, everyone was ordered out of the cities and into the countryside. Anyone who opposed him was imprisoned, including at S21, which is located in the capital, Phnom Penh. After people were tortured at S21—among them nine foreign journalists who hadn’t left the country—they were taken to the Killing Fields, where they were bound together, blindfolded, and led to a large pit. Here, men, women, and children were bludgeoned to death. Children were taken by their legs and smashed against trees until they died. There were still bloodstains on the trees from the many blows. No guns were used to kill people because Pol Pot didn’t want to waste bullets. He also didn’t want any noise. Everything had to happen in silence. Music was played to drown out the screams. Often, people were only half-killed but were still buried in mass graves at the Chinese cemetery! In total, 20,000 people died at the Killing Fields. Today, 9,000 skulls have been excavated and displayed as a testament to the past. As you walk around the mass graves at the Killing Fields, you can see many bones and pieces of clothing sticking out of the ground. Every time it rains, more bones emerge. According to Buddhist beliefs, all the bodies should be exhumed and cremated. But the government wants everyone to see the atrocities that occurred in Cambodia and learn from them. Every single family in Cambodia lost relatives during Pol Pot’s regime. Our guide was no exception; he had also lost family members.