Day 19 - ATV tour and Killing Fields

Today was a somewhat early day we got up around 7 and went down to eat some breakfast at the hostel. Not only was the food awful (they some how managed to screw up toast, how hard is that to make seriously?!) but I was feeling like I was about to puke. I'm pretty sure I ate some bad street food in Laos or maybe drank some bad water on accident, whatever it was I felt awful! We got picked up by tuk tuk which took us just outside the city to the atv tour place. The guy who ran the place was French. It was just me and my dad on the tour and we drove around the countryside following the French guy. 

We rode for about an hour through some villages. The tour was fun, little kids would run up and say hi when we passed by. We didn't get to go very fast though which was a big disappointment, the dirtbike your was much much better. This was my first time riding an atv though so that was fun! Once we got back after riding the atv our tuk tuk took us to one of the killing fields where we did an audio tour. 

It was a very interesting history lesson about Cambodia. Here's the basic overview: in the mid 1970's this super evil guy Pol Pot came to power, his group was called the Khmer Rouge, he took over Phnom Penh and forced everyone to the countryside to work in labor camps. Pol Pot was also very paranoid and had a philosophy that 'it is better to kill an innocent by accident than to spare an enemy'. This resulted in mass killings and genocide of the Cambodian people. At the killing field we were at literally thousands of people were killed overall it was estimated that 2-3 million Cambodians were killed out of a population of 8 million! That's over 25% of the population! The guy was insane! Anyway at the killing field we got to see some of the mass graves and skulls that were uncovered when the field was discovered. 

-Mass Grave

-They would kill babies by bashing their heads against this tree :(

-Skulls in the Stupa

It was a truly sad experience to see this place where so many people died just over 30 years ago. The tour didn't help my stomach whatsoever!

After the audio tour our tuk tuk took us back into the city to our hostel. At this point I had to go rest since I was feeling awful. We stayed in till about 330 or so and then walked around the city. We stopped at the royal palace but didn't go in because they wanted $7 which was outrageous! We also saw the independence monument and a few wats. 

 -independence monument 

After our sightseeing we took a tuktuk back and started to look for a place to eat. We walked into a restaurant called Malis, which was really fancy but had great food!! It was good to I finally eat something since I hadn't had any food all day! After dinner we went back to the hostel and went to the bar since we had free drink cupons. The bar was really cool on the top floor with a balcony overlooking the city. After the beer we went back to the room to try and get some rest. Tomorrow we take a bus to Sihanoukville (on the coast) I can't wait to relax on the beach!