The Killing Fields of Cambodia - An Emotional Experience

Nice shot. Good morning guys. Welcome to another daily juice. We had a very good night's sleep here last night at Tea House in Phnom Penh. The bed is so soft and so comfy. So we're feeling good this morning and we're just down here now for their buffet breakfast and we're going to go and check out what it is. I need coffee ASAP. We are never that good on this and we haven't had coffee so I think it's kind of important that we get them now. Are we going to get us a coffee? All right. See you in a bit. Be right back. Today we are off to somewhere called the Killing Fields and we're going to tell you more about it probably on the way there. You've probably actually heard of it, it's quite a big thing and there was a film made about it and stuff and it's going to be a pretty sad day I think. I'm kind of seeing the devastation of this place when it wasn't even that long ago. So the breakfast here looks incredible. I've got half Asian, half American. I've got some pork stew here with some rice and then some crispy bacon and ham and onion omelette on toast. That rice looks amazing, I don't know why. This morning coffee looks delightful. You're about to witness George fall into a pond. No. We're actually on our way out of the hotel but I just wanted to sit in this cool chair for a second. I'm a bit too tall for it I think. It looks really comfy. It's quite good actually. Anyway, we're about to hop in a tuk-tuk now. We're off to the Killing Fields. It's about a 45 minute journey I think and our driver's going to wait for $15. They do a round trip, he'll take us there, he'll wait an hour and a half, two hours for us and then bring us back. I think the entrance fee is about $6 to get in. So it's actually just started to meter down with rain. So he pulled up on the side of the road and he zipped us up. We're all enclosed now in a tuk-tuk which we haven't been before. This is crazy, the rain is really really coming down. The traffic is mental here. It seems busier than Bangkok. We just went up on the pavement just to get around some traffic, absolutely mental. There's no road markings, everyone's going off this way and that way, there's no conformity at all. Everyone just goes where they want. It's really raining. England. Thank you. I guess. So we've put our audio score in now and there's different points around here, they're kind of numbered. Whatever number you're at, you've got to put it in. So it's quite good that you can go and see it at your own pace and it doesn't just do it all in one go. So it's good that this is all part of it as well and it's going to help us understand what's happened here. But so far what we know, Pol Pot was a politician and between 1975 and 1979 there were between 1.7 million and 2.5 million people killed in Cambodia, which is a quarter of the country. And this happened a few decades ago, which absolutely baffles us. We're not talking about saying it's a couple of hundred years ago. This is so real and it's only just happened really, which I suppose has put the whole of Cambodia behind because they've basically wiped out all the people that were educated and doctors and dentists and things. We're going to learn more now about it and we'll keep you updated on what we find out but it's just bizarre that it all happened right here. It's a very strange feeling. So right here was actually where the trucks would pull in and stop and then the prisoners would be dragged out. We were just hearing from actually an executioner talking after the events, saying that they had to trick the people into thinking they were coming to a new home. So the people in the trucks, although it said some of them had an idea, most of them didn't actually know if they were coming to be killed. They thought they were being transferred to a new house under this new regime. But right here is where the trucks would have pulled in and stopped. Pol Pot wanted a pure regime, as he put it, so he was fearful of educated people, doctors, lawyers, as Lucy said, and also we've just heard anyone with soft hands, people who wore glasses, and nuns and monks. He was just like... Anyone, basically. Yeah, so he was fearful that these people were too clever, basically. So he actually made the people, so people were actually tortured before coming here and when they're being tortured, he's making them admit to things they didn't do. Like some people, they'd been tortured for so long, they were signing things that said when they were a kid they worked for the CIA, a spy for the Americans. And it's just... It's just ridiculous. It doesn't even make sense. None of it makes sense. And the people that agreed to sort of come and work for him, the army he built, it was often people that lived in the countryside that had no education. They were told that the city people were awful people and that if these young men and boys signed up to this, that they would then get equality and they'd get a steady job and food because they were told the city people were responsible for their way of life in the countryside not being very good. And 80% of Cambodia was under extreme poverty at this point, so it was a huge amount of people that sort of bought into this to help him to kill everyone. We're walking through some of the fields now where the executions actually happened. And we've actually just been told they would play revolutionary songs during the day to kind of brainwash people into listening to that kind of stuff. And then they'd turn it up at night to cover up the screams of the people being killed. So there's some trees here, sugar palm trees, and you see a lot of them in Cambodia. They were just saying about the uses for them and then they said sometimes they'd use the to actually slit people's throats because when your throat's slit you can't scream and you can't yell out and it's a quieter way. So they didn't want to waste the bullets, so they'd do things like that and use spades to bash people in the heads to kill people because it was a cheaper thing to do. So just here's some of these trees. You can see here, the jagged, that is really, that is really, really hard and sharp. I honestly can't get my head around this at all. Sometimes when people were pushed into the pits in the fields, they weren't actually dead. They weren't completely dead. So they'd use a chemical called DDT and they'd like spray it all over the bodies, which not only killed them, but it also covered up the smell. Here, which were the actual graves. You can still see where they're dipped in the ground. And we were talking to each other this morning. We were like, why did other countries not kind of step in and sort this problem out? But we've just heard that the borders with Thailand and Vietnam were completely closed other than for diplomats who could come in and out. So actually no one knew what was going on. There wasn't like TV crews here and reporting news and stuff. It just, no one knew it was happening. They did this even after it all happened. They fled to the jungle and Pol Pot was still in charge of it all. They were actually still given a seat in the UN. People like the UK recognised him as the leader of this country still and they still didn't have any idea what was going on. They were given things like financial aid. He was carrying on being this leader for another 20 years. He was put under house arrest and then a year later died or was poisoned. We're not sure. And he lived to the age of 73. Some of his victims were killed as babies. And he lived to 73 and he had quite a nice life. He wasn't put under house arrest until 1997 and he was killed in 1998. So it took that long after this had happened for anything to actually be done to him. And the rest of this country was just trying to repel what happened and start again effectively. All the buildings and things aren't here anymore. And it's just signs because the local villagers were so angry they tore it all down and used the tools and things to help rebuild their own lives because they had nothing. So this is another mass grave, 100 victims, children and women. And there's a bunch of wits of bone down there. I really can't get my head around this whole thing. And how this is so recent. And we've been saying the last two weeks we've been in Cambodia how friendly and happy the people are. Yeah, I guarantee, if it's a quarter of the population, most people we've met must know someone who was killed or have lost a family member of some sort. If you say you knew 100 people and you knew 25 of them were killed, it's just great. And everyone's still just so happy and friendly. And it's admirable that I suppose these people have done so much and so quickly to rebuild their lives. There's 10 layers, 17 layers in here. These are the first 10 are skulls. And they've all been put into order of how they were killed. There's little dots of colour on each one. I think they were killed by a cleaning rod, but then they've been washed to do the treatment. That was the last stop on the walk around the fields. They said every year there's a memorial service here that happens every May. But honestly that was, I don't know, upsetting, sad, emotional. It felt very real. It still feels recent. Seeing the bones and the skulls. That's the largest memorial. There are about 300 different killing fields around the country. Some haven't been discovered, some are covered by landmines and they're in the middle of the jungle. This is only one of over 300, so it just shows the scale of what actually happened here. It's just, I honestly just... I didn't even know much about it before I came. Neither did I, honestly. And knowing that we've got to this age and we haven't been taught about it and it actually happened. That's just been happening a few decades ago, like our parents' era, effectively. If you're coming here, I'd recommend paying a visit here just to learn about it. It's a huge part of their culture and history. I suppose it just makes you grateful to have been brought up somewhere that didn't have this and where the quality of life is just so much better. These people here are so grateful for everything they have. When this was happening a few decades ago. We're back at the hotel and we've come to the pool to drink it out. We haven't actually been here yet. We haven't actually been in. OK, it's a little bit later now. What time is it? Whoa. I thought it was ten. We finished swimming about four and a half hours ago. We literally got out of the pool, had some fried rice at the hotel. We sat downstairs for a couple of hours doing some stuff on our laptops and then we came upstairs for a couple of hours doing stuff on our laptops. We've been doing planning. We've edited the vlog and since then it's just been plan, plan, plan. We've booked several flights. We got a flight for £13 each, including 15kg of baggage, which is so cheap and ridiculous. It's all stuff around Vietnam. That's where we're going tomorrow. I'm so excited because I've never been. As you know, Jordan's never been. The things that you can do there and the stuff that you get up to just look absolutely amazing. What we do when we go somewhere new is we do a notes page on a Mac and put every day, put all the places we're going and then try and work out how we're getting from each place. We've actually just worked out the next two weeks of travel. We've booked up to the end of our time in Vietnam but then we don't know where we're going next or how we're getting there and we've only got two nights of accommodation booked. Planning honestly takes hours and hours. Obviously, we don't put into the vlog us sitting here on a laptop working and planning away but it does take a very long time. It's nice because if one person's editing and the other person's planning, it's up to the other person to make all the decisions on planning and the person that's editing, you don't want to keep interrupting them because it slows down the whole thing. So it's nice when the vlog's done and we can both sit there with a laptop each and go, Have you got that yet? Have you done that yet? How are we getting from there to there? Should we do flights? Should we do bus? Should we do train? And just having two people makes it a lot easier, I think. So I do love planning but I'm more behind than I want to be because, like I said, we've only got two nights of accommodation booked. I've got ideas for what we're doing for the next four or five days in terms of things in the actual day and stuff to do around these new places but before Thailand, we were pretty set for a couple of weeks in advance, at least the beginning of it was. So I kind of want to get back to that stage again when it's not like literally booking a minute ago, but it's a hotel for tomorrow night and that's a bit too close for me. Saying that, the other day we walked into somewhere and said, Can we have a room? So we can do it both ways, I suppose, but I much prefer it knowing that something's booked and that we only need to worry about what we're doing somewhere instead of having to work out where we're actually sleeping. But anyway, that's boring stuff. Enough of that. We're going to sleep now. My voice is actually going kind of weird. I don't know what it is, you're just sat in front of a laptop for ages and then your voice goes, but you're not speaking. Makes sense. Right, we need to pack. We spread out again. Everywhere we go. I'm doing alright. Well you're not, you're sat on the end of the bed talking to me. No, we're nearly there, we're nearly there. Early start tomorrow. Yes, what time? Breakfast at six. Bus at seven. Good luck, they don't start breakfast until half six. I'll have to make my own omelette. Yeah, we do this thing in a hotel, like if it's a small hotel, big hotel, whatever size, well not the whole hotel, the room, whatever size it is, we like explode our bags. We've done it again. We said we'd try and not actually unpack at all, but we seem to have exploded and spread out again. We just like use every plug there is. If there's ten plugs in a room, we're using all of them for some reason. If there's four shelves, we'll put something on each shelf. No, we do. Every glass, every mug, use everything we can. In our heads we're like, oh we're only here for a couple of nights, so it doesn't matter if it gets messy. And then we feel really guilty when the person comes in to clean it, and then it looks really neat when they come back, and we're like, oh, sorry about that. So thank you for watching. Subscribe if you're new. Subscribe to Weekly Juice. I do need to stop speaking so quickly, so sorry about that. And we'll see you bright and early in the morning. Bye.