'Happy' Birthday

After the traveling fun of the last few days I woke up in Phnom Penh on my Birthday. As it was my birthday Ellie had told me that I could do anything I wanted, so to test this theory I went for breakfast and ordered fillet steak with sausages and hash browns, well it was going to be a long day and I’m a growing lad!

Anyway, as most of you know Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia and was the site of some of the worst atrocities during the Khmer Rouge years 1976 to 1979. If you didn’t know you do now!

As it was my birthday we decided that we would fill it with as much happiness and joy as we could. So…first we went to a place called S21 which was a former detention centre and torture facility. It was shocking to see how well the Khmer Rouge documented everything that they were doing including the methods and outcomes of torture sessions (including pictures). Having visited Auschwitz in the past the things that we were seeing here seemed to be of a more sadistic and barbaric nature (if that is possible).

This was further reinforced when we visited the killing fields only 15k away which is the site of some of the mass graves (in total 2.5 -3 million people were killed! - 40% of the population at the time!). A number of these mass graves have been uncovered to try to discover and detail what happened. There are 8,000 skulls in a memorial building, all of which have horrific fractures and holes where the victims were beaten to death with bamboo sticks, hammers, spades, axes and any other hard object that could be swung with devastating effect. The worst part of the visit by far was seeing an ordinary tree, this tree was used by the Khmer Rouge as a place to smash babies against in front of their parents before throwing them into the mass graves. None of the victims were ever shot as this would be a waste of bullets and therefore money to the Khmer Rouge government. What a loving, caring bunch they were!

So after a fun packed day it was no surprise that Ells and I were ready for (or needed!) a few birthday drinks. Even better I managed to find a very nice ex-pat restaurant that served bangers and mash with caramelised red onion gravy, hmmmmmm!

Thanks to everyone who sent me a birthday email, I really appreciated them!

Definately a Birthday to remember!