Hey everyone, today I am back with day eight of my trip to Cambodia. Last September I went on a twelve-day trip around Cambodia with a tour group. As I had mentioned in my previous post which you can read here we were unable to visit the Killing Fields the day before due to the heavy rain and the centre being all outside. The next day we left our hostel in Phnom Penh and headed to the Killing Fields which were about an hour outside of the city. When we got there we stopped for some food at a restaurant just outside the centre before we went in. I decided to get something small and easy to digest as I knew we had a long road trip afterward and that I wasn’t that great in-car journeys. I decided to go for vegetable noodle soup which was a perfect choice.
After we ate we then headed into the Killing Fields which was a similar set up to the S-21 Prison as you they give you a headset and you go around the centre following the route whilst listening to the audio. The tour much like the S-21 Prison was astounding as I just couldn’t believe that this was allowed to have happened. So many horrendous things happened to people of all ages including babies. In order to be respectful of the people who lost their lives but also people who lost their loved ones, I am only posting the photo above as I don’t feel comfortable posting more photos of the Killing Fields.
The stories of what happened there completely took me by surprise as they were so brutal and horrendous. People were literally taken to these fields to be killed and to think that this happened only 41 years ago blows my mind even more. If you ever visit Cambodia then I highly recommend visiting the Killing Fields as well as the S-21 Prison. In order to fully understand the full story of what the Cambodian genocide was really like I believe that you need to visit both. They are extremely hard to visit and very emotional but they are so eye-opening as well and they make you realise that something like the Cambodian genocide should never be allowed to happen again. I am so in awe of how the Cambodian people have managed to overcome what has happened and are very happy people. Of course, there is a lot of hurt there still but they are so thankful for the smallest things and this really made me realise how lucky I am that I have never lost anyone in my family due to a genocide.
After visiting the Killing Fields we then headed to Kampot which is in the South of Cambodia. The trip took about three hours in the minivan which wasn’t too bad as it was one of the shorter road trips that we had to do throughout the trip. We stayed at the Mad Monkey hostel in Kampot which was one of the nicer hostels however, the beds were only singles and we were used to sleeping on a double bed but that wasn’t the end of the world. We were very lucky that all of the beds we slept in had really good mattresses, especially for hostels. I didn’t sleep too bad on the trip I only woke up because of jetlag or one time when I got sunstroke but we will get to that in a later blog post. When we got to the hostel we unpacked, showered, and changed before we headed down to the bar in the hostel to have a drink before going out for dinner.
As most of the day was spent at the Killing Fields we didn’t do much when we got to the hostel except go for dinner at a local restaurant. As I have mentioned before when you book a tour they tend to take you to westernised restaurants due to the rules set by the tour company, this is why most of the food I am eating is pretty familiar. I decided to go for a classic margherita pizza which was actually delicious. We then headed back to the hostel and I went to bed because I was exhausted from the past few days. One thing I didn’t realise is how mentally and physically exhausting a trip like this would be because you are always on the go. As I have always gone on trips with family or friends they are usually pretty relaxed but because this was organised by a tour group it was full on every day but now that I look back on it, I wouldn’t change it as we got to do so much in a short amount of time. This is the trip I went on as I have had a lot of questions asking which one it was.
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