Tuol Sleng (S21) used to be a school, but since all schools were closed, it was turned into a prison. The Khmer Rouge brought prisoners here they wanted to interrogate. Interrogation involved a number of forms of torture. They also kept meticulous records, including photos of every prisoner and even photos of the tortured. The space has now become a museum which was horrific to walk through. Some rooms just had photos of all the prisoners. One building showed where prisoners were kept in small skinny rooms. Some of the buildings didn't have separate 'cells'. One room could be crowded with 30-40 people simply lying on the floor. These buildings also had barbed wire over the walkway/balcony area in order to prevent prisoners from trying to commit suicide.
Once the interrogation was done, most of the prisoners were stuffed into a truck and shipped 14km outside of town to Choeung Ek, now known as "The Killing Fields". Officers, men, women, children and babies were all killed here. Many by simply beatings because they didn't want to "waste precious bullets". Mass graves were found, the largest containing 450 bodies. One just had women and children in it.
In 1989 a memorial stupa was built for those killed. It has 17 tiers and contained the bones and ragged clothes from those found in the mass graves. How many people were killed by the Khmer Rouge is up for debate, but most numbers we saw mentioned almost 2 million.
The day was very sobering. Especially since there are still so many people alive that survived it or were greatly affected by what happened.
Sorry for the depressing blog post, but I felt it important to mention the history. It was something I was relatively ignorant of before this trip.
-Miranda
One room that contained wood cells.
View through the barbed wire to other buildings at S21.
The memorial stupa used to house the bones.
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We took a 9am bus heading to Phnom Penh so we would get there with enough time to find a place to stay. We made to within 30km of the city when the bus pulled over and stopped. After about half an hour of messing with it, the bus driver finally got it started again and off we went. We were in the city when it died again... Once he got it started, he drove another 5 minutes and reached a bus maintenance area. We waited for them to fuel it and mess with more stuff before we finally piled back on the bus where it took us to the Central Market. We found a pretty fancy hotel not far from there to stay in. The area is pretty chaotic, but it's quiet in the room, which is what matters.
Today we walked to the Grand Palace to be told by every single tuk-tuk driver "Grand Palace not open. Opens at 2 o'clock. You want to go to killing fields?" Saying 'no' to them barely dissuades, so, needless to say, it got a bit old. We did find some place to kill some time though. There was a national museum that was interesting and we had lunch at a Mediterranean place that was very good.
The Grand Palace was pretty impressive. The Silver Pagoda is a temple that has silver tiles on the floor (most of which are now covered with a carpet to prevent people from walking on them) and a Buddha that has 2000 diamonds on it. No photos were allowed inside though.
-Miranda
The Grand Palace.
Neat thing that I don't know the name of.
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Turns out there was a bowling alley in Pakse. Joe was all excited to check it out, so we did. They had bowling shoes and everything. Haha. The screens even did the little video shorts for strikes and spares and such. So funny. Anyway, we left Pakse the next morning and headed for the 4000 islands area. We picked the island of Don Det to spend some time on. It was pretty small. It reminded me a little of the Gilis in Indonesia, but definitely less busy. Also, scooters were on the island and would just come zipping by you once in a while. We walked around quite a bit, one of the days we walked to the southern part which took an hour.
When we arrived on the island, the river was definitely high. When we left, it had risen quite a bit more. Definitely interesting to see the difference over just two nights.
We left after two nights on the island to head into Cambodia. The bus company we used had us fill out the forms for the visa and arrival before getting on the bus, then we paid them and gave them our passports. Once we arrived at the border, everyone piled out of the bus, we walked across the border and waited there for the bus and the guy with our passports. Sort of weird, but then an immigration officer did come on the bus to compare our passports with us, which was a little more reassuring.
We arrived in Kratie in the afternoon and found a place to stay without too much trouble. While Joe walked around to figure out the town and possible places to eat, Sandra and I took a tuk-tuk to where you can get a boat to see Irrawaddy Dolphins. They are an endangered freshwater dolphin found in the Mekong. The tuk-tuk ride was neat since we were mostly on a relatively small road going through a village. The boat ride was also very nice, though the Mekong is gigantic! It would be interesting to be here again in the dry season to see the difference.
Once we got back, we found dinner, which, right as we were finding a place, wind was kicking up pretty insanely. After sitting at a place, it started down pouring. Everyone ended up a little cramped in the restaurant since they had to move some tables and chairs away from the edges to keep from getting soaked. Fortunately, it was done raining by the time we were done with dinner.
-Miranda
Joe bowling.
Road on Don Det.
Huge Mekong. It actually goes past what you can see on the other side.
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We were scheduled to take the afternoon bus to Vientiane, so we spent the morning going for a walk after breakfast. Joe knew where a cave was within walking distance that he wanted to check out.
We got to the trail to the cave only to find that we had to pay 10,000 kip per person and walk through muddy rice field. Sandra decided to not come with, so just Joe and I went. It was so muddy! The guy we paid was ahead of us a ways and at a place where the trail branches off, he motioned for us to follow him. Once we got to the cave he gave us headlamps... We started thinking that maybe we inadvertently paid for a guide and that there technically wasn't any entrance fee. Oh well. Though, it wasn't a good sign that the 'guide' took his pants off before going in the cave. Early on we were up to mid-thigh in water, then climbed up a rickety bamboo ladder. The cave was pretty neat, though muddy. Once we got to a spot where he said the water was basically belly deep, we told him we'd go back. We got back to the stream that was not far from the entrance of the cave and he says "money for guide?". Whoops. Of course Joe only had 50,000 kip bills, which was a bit much considering he didn't actually do that much. Oh well. That's still only a few dollars, so I'm sure we made his day.
After lunch, we got on the bus and arrived in Vientiane without issue. We found a place to stay and had yummy sushi for dinner. We didn't do much while there. It's the capitol city of Laos, but definitely not what you would normally picture for the capitol city of a country. Not crazy busy and not super huge. Sandra spent the afternoon by herself while Joe and I walked around checking out nearby sights.
The next day was our scheduled day to leave, but since we were taking the night/sleeper bus it wasn't going to be until at least 7pm. We took a tuk tuk to Pha That Luang, which. The buildings were impressive, though we weren't able to go inside because we happened to go during the lunch hour which is when it was closed. The rest of the day we just hung out in cafes.
Once it was time, we caught our ride to the bus station, eventually found our bus. These buses have upper and lower beds, two people on each side, though it's relatively skinny. Let's just say I'm glad I didn't have to try sleeping by someone I didn't know. We made our way into the bus after some confusion as to where our bags were supposed to go and found out we were to sleep in the very back, on the top, which is technically supposed to have 5 people in it.... Fortunately, there was only one lady there and no one else came. We all did sleep some. More than we probably would have on a bus where we had just normal seats.
We're now in Pakse and working on finding some place to stay, though it's still pretty early, so who knows if we'll be able to get a room, but hopefully we'll at least have some place to store our bags.
Oh, I finally updated our 'current location' also.
-Miranda
Walking through the muddy rice paddy.
Pha That Luang
This was in the hotel where we were staying. I like the wireless router sitting on top.
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We left Luang Prabang on Sunday. We took a 'VIP' bus. The trip was supposed to take 6 hours. The road was not exactly what we would normally consider a 'main drag'... It was small and very windy, going through the mountains. The scenery was definitely gorgeous though. Driving by some of the villages was very neat. The thatch roofs and houses, plus seeing the kids playing in the mud with whatever they had at hand.
At one point we stopped and they were pulling tools out. That was only about half an hour or so of delay and we were on our way again. We were stopped again at a relatively recent mud slide. There was a van stuck in the mud. A bunch of locals eventually pushed it out. The bus let people that were behind us go. We watched a few trucks and a van go through without a problem. However, instead of the bus going, a van on the other side went... With not even close to enough speed, he, of course, came to a stop and was stuck in the mud. His van sat there for basically 20 minutes with barely anyone helping to push it out or get it unstuck. Sure, he tried driving backwards only to slide deeper into the mud, but that's about it despite quite a few tourists standing around. Finally, Joe went out there and eventually started yelling push! After just 5 minutes the van was out of the mud.
The bus driver was smart enough not to let anyone else ahead of us this time. We made it through without a problem and continued on our way. We made it to Vang Vieng only a couple hours later than planned.
Since we've been here it's mostly been raining... This is the 'party' town of Laos. The main thing to do here is tubing. Along the river are bars playing loud music and they have rickety slides or swings to use to get back into the water. Anyway, we decided to do a one day trek our first full day. It sprinkled on and off all day, but we did a cave hike. The trails to the caves were incredibly muddy. The caves were big and limestone. Some formations were pretty neat, but it was mostly black from old candles and torches and from people touching them. There were Buddha statues in each of the caves.
The coolest one was the water cave. We got into an inner tube then pulled ourselves along a rope into a cave. It didn't go super far, but it was still neat. I took some video that, if it turned out, I'll try to get up later.
The last thing we did was tube down the river. The bar section was pretty annoying. Not many people, fortunately, but it was nice to get past that to the quiet section. Since then, it's mostly been raining and we've just wandered around town or hung out in the hotel room. Nothing too exciting.
-Miranda
Peanuts we bought when the bus was stranded the first time. They were a lot softer than the ones that have been dried.
The van stuck in the mud with all the tourists standing around.
Some amazing scenery on the way in. These huge limestone pinnacles are everywhere.
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