Sunday, August 21, 2011

Off to Indonesia!

Elisa and I spent the morning going out to the Killing Fields. It was an eerie experience. There's a memorial stupa with the skulls of 8000 victims piled up. Some terrific parent brought his four year old who kept tryig to touch the skulls. We then visited the Toul Sleng torture prison used by the Khmer Rouge. Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept detailed records of their barbaric treatment of prisoners. This translated into some displays that are painful to look at- including pictures of everyone who passed through the prison. There were only 7 survivors out of 20000. An international tribunal recently sentenced the guy who ran the prison (Duch) to 35 years in prison. He's old,so it is essentially a life sentence, but for someone who was responsible for torturing children to death, it seems like the Toul Sleng water torture machines should be taken out of retirement.

In the afternoon, we visited the royal palace, which had a gorgeous golden throne room. We then went to the Silver Pagoda, which houses a life size gold Buddha decorated with nearly 10000 diamonds! I want one but my bag will already be in trouble tomorrow with Air Asia's 15 kg weight limit.

We're off to Bali in the morning!

1 comment:

  1. I feel bad "liking" this post since it's about the killing fields and torture devices. But, I do like the recap, especially your commentary on the 4 year old. I expect tons of beach pics from Bali!

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