Ep's Heart in Phnom Penh! (Pt 1 of 2)

S-21
After a six out bus ride (6 hours of honking, terrible roads and crazy Khmer music) we rolled into Phnom Penh (Pronounced Pnom Pen)which is the capital city of Cambodia! We sauntered into a hostel, took showers and napped before rolling out to explore. We got dinner at some place on the river, and enjoyed some palm wine. Well, nobody else liked it. We decided to swing by a market and hang out on the Mekong river banks. I took off my shoes, wiped out into the river and got my beloved Fitflops STOLEN! HEARTBREAK! But Shit happens, what are you going to do? After taking a tuk tuk home after trying to walk, we called it a day and went to bed.
IN the morning my friends, and the people we picked up along the way rolled into the S-21 genocide museum. S-21 was a high school the Khmer Rouge turned into a jail to torture 'enemies' of the regime, along with their families.
I'm not sure if I've ever been more disturbed in all my days. This place was depressing. They left the cells much like how they were found, except added pictures of how they found prisoners. These pictures and the like were graphic. I think one of the worst parts was the rooms of pictures of people that they knew went through the jail (Keep in mind, out of the thousands of people that went into the jail, only 12 came out alive) We spent all morning just looking at pictures and taking in what happened here.

Blood on the floor

If theres ever a place to wonder about humans, and what goes through peoples minds, this is probably one of 2 places to do it (I'm assuming the others are Concentration camps). I came out of this museum rattled. I don't know how this happened to these people for over 4 years without anybody doing anything about it. Its kind of hard to see the point in being angry about my shoes knowing that 30 years ago, people were being slaughtered in these buildings.

Barbed wire to keep prisoners from killing themselves

Patience, Faith and Peace
ErinJ