At first look, aside from the 14 coffins that lie in its courtyard, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum could still pass for the Phnom Penh high school it once was . In the mid 70s the Khmer Rouge took it over and turned the school into a vicious interrogation centre. Water boarding, whipping, electric shock treatments (with pain the only purpose), coffin drowning, and one that really makes me cringe: hanging prisoners from a cross-beam by their hands which were tied behind their backs. After these people passed out they were brought down and revived by having their heads dunked in pots of wet feces. Then the routine would start all over again. And this was all in an attempt to have them rat on someone about something they most likely knew nothing about in the first place.
 
During the Khmer Rouge regime (1975 - 1979) between 12,000 and 20,000 men, women and children passed through the gates of the secretive Tuol Sleng interrogation centre. Only twelve of these people are known to have survived the next step, the Killing Fields of Cambodia. One of these twelve was giving a lecture at Tuol Sleng while we were there. He had escaped death because of a skill he'd learned - how to repair typewriters . Another, through audio tape, told how prisoners who mistakenly pooped or peed on their cell floor had to lick the floor clean. In all, upwards of 2 million people, or about 25 percent of the Cambodian population were put to death by the Khmer Rouge. If you're looking for a true sense of this former 'school of death' arrive when it opens at 7:30 a.m. It'll be just you and the ghosts until around nine o'clock when the place starts to get busy.
 

 
On a dark-in-a-different-way note, Elenka and I left Pearson International Airport in Toronto for Cambodia this past Tuesday at one-thirty in the morning. We flew fifteen hours in total darkness before arriving at our connection point in Taipei, Taiwan. When we arrived at our hotel in downtown Phnom Penh, I was raring to go. Elenka wanted to take a shower. Then we decided to rest for a few moments before walking out into the heat of the day. We woke up sixteen hours later just as breakfast was being served.
 
The city of Phnom Penh is an oddity . In the city's downtown, one side of the river lies in poverty while the other side undergoes booming hi-rise construction. While row after row of dilapidated boats rest on one shore, cinema projections bounce off the sides of massive condos and offices on the other side. If you enter a restaurant which caters to Westerners you'll pay Western prices. If you eat in local spot, the food is better and far less expensive. Oh, and the Internet: while connectivity is dodgy, just about everyone stares intently at their smartphones.
 
In about an hour we head for Rabbit Island (below is a website about the Rabbit) where there isn't even electricity, let alone Internet. We've been told the stars look great in the dark.             



http://www.timetravelturtle.com/2013/03/rabbit-island-kep-cambodia/