Day 8- Brenton and Mitchell's day in Phnom Penh

Today’s events were hard on everyone on the trip, reducing many to tears and for the morning lowering the previously high morale of everyone. However they were mixed with more light-hearted, enjoyable moments. We began with a wake-up call at 8 am even though most were up by 7, followed on with a light breakfast at the hotel before we got on the bus to head off to the S-21 museum. Before the bus set off we had the usual head checks to make entirely sure all of the students were on the bus before we realized just before the prison that we had forgotten Coxy.

The S-21 prison was filled with conflicting images of imprisonment, torture and death. Opened in 1975 under the order of the early Pol Pot regime, the series of buildings were converted from a school into the prison we saw today. We were given some warning of what was to come as the outside walls of the museum were covered in jagged barbed wire before we entered the prison. When we came through the old gates, we explored the four buildings of the prison. The first of which was filled with pictures of all of the inmates, all but seven of which were murdered, as well as the wire beds they slept on whilst attached to shackles every night in their imprisonment.

Continuing on to the other buildings the cells seemed to become smaller and more dilapidated with barbed wire and metal bars stopping the prisoners escaping from the buildings. In the cells remained blood stains from prisoners who had been given lashes from electrical wire as punishment for breaking the strict rules, followed by the more confronting images of torture throughout the prison.

The disheartening images continued as we travelled from the prison to one of the many killing fields situated around the 21 provinces of Cambodia. Lucky gave an emotion filled tour around the fields making us cautious of the fact that we would almost definitely step on the bones of a victim at one point, whist showing us the cruel and sadistic ways people were murdered. We were shown the mass graves of up to 400 people before we finished off with a quick look at a memorial to pay respect to the victims in the shape of a building with 17 tiers of excavated skulls.

After lunch, we continued our day tour to the university of law and economics. On the bus trip towards the university we discovered that Lucky (our tour guide) was an excellent singer and had a deep emotional side clinging to his past relationships. After Lucky wiping away his tears we found ourselves at the university, to be introduced to some of the students and to have a tour of the school. The mood was lightened at the school from the events of the morning as we continued to joke around with the students and to get to know them through the tour before we returned to the room we met all of the students again in a room where we discussed the afternoon and shared songs beginning with us singing the national anthem, with their reply being a traditional Cambodian song accompanied by guitar and finally Mitchell Curley and I singing Wonderwall by Oasis. We then proceeded to play a game with some of the students of the 20000 large university; called ‘I love you’, before we left the school to return to the hotel momentarily before we left once again for dinner.

We split up into groups and went to our choice of restaurant before we returned to our meeting place by the Mekong river to play a spirited game of soccer against some of the locals, at one stage we had the lead before the skill of the locals gave them a 4:2 win, however our pride was still intact and we returned to the hotel via Tuk Tuk singing ‘aussie, aussie, aussie, oi, oi, oi’ the whole way back to our hotel.

By Brenton Kerr and Mitchell Curley