“Better to kill an innocent mistake by saving an enemy by mistake.” Pol Pot

Between travel fatigue, jet lag and some Angkor pressure yesterday, we deserved a fatty morning. After showering, we realize that we are somewhat hungry, having nothing ate last night. At the corner of our street, Alien restaurant warmly welcomes us and treats us extremely hearty for the price : pancake - omelette - with long, white mushrooms, cabbage and kale salad.

If Thailand were smiling, I think for now even some kind Cambodian, showing a sincere interest that seems to the person facing them. They laugh every time we talk to them Khmer - finally talk is a big word, we simply hello, thank you and have learned since last goodbye and chin-chin !

Back to the guesthouse to ask our tuk-tuk driver yesterday and book the bus for our departure tomorrow morning. Disappointed reach another driver who still speaks less English, we accommodons in and we leave to bring a first exchange office. Nous montrons que l’on souhaite changer 180 euros for US dollars and man shows us the sum of 120 on his calculator. Thinking he shows us the dollars he would give, we refuse and try to make him understand that the euro is stronger than the dollar. He writes 180, we still refuse, thinking he's trying to rip us we'll see other stands. Pendant que Monsieur va plus loin, retype a lady 120 on his calculator and try to ask her what she means by that ... But the light is only in my brain, it is the exchange rate they register by omitting the comma ! Nous échangerons finalement à un taux de 1,22 dollars per euro. So do not hesitate to compare !

Dollars in pocket, we're back in the flow of Phnom Penh, a capital airier and less decrepit than Bangkok but still an accumulation of heterogeneous buildings to streets full of rubbish, rappelant Glasgow ! We move away from the center and nature reappears in places, with a lot of plastic and sometimes houses built of odds and ends, but people seem to live quietly. Sometimes we perceive a small piece of garden where a man cultivates.

After ten kilometers we reach destination : the genocide memorial in Choeung Ek, better known as the Killing Fields. For the rest of the article, sensible soul to withhold.

Three dollars entry and three dollars for the audio guide - essential. Ear Headphones, we listen to the guide stand then start its history. Choeung Ek is one of three hundred lots of executions and mass graves created by the Khmer Rouge as the ultra-communist regime of Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea, between 1975 and 1979. In one place, about 20 000 people, Cambodian mostly but also some foreigners, were massacred with axes, piles or other tools normally used for farming. The firearms were too expensive and the music was spinning at full volume would perhaps not covered detonations ... It covered against by the cries of the victims. Through the rest of the country is between 1,7 and 3 million deaths : political opponents, members of the regular army and police, ethnic minority, "Intellectuals", Press photographers ... but also their families.

Often barely got off the truck that had led them to Choeung Ek, the prisoners were executed and thrown into pits, then covered with chemicals to cover the smell or complete survivors. No distinction was made : old, youth, women, children, Babies ... The men who run these orders are usually conscripted, finding themselves faced with the choice to kill or be killed…

Newbie visit, it is initially difficult to imagine such horrors as the place is charming, but quickly, further along, passing traces of graves and tombs, listening to our guide and testimonials, the cold is our throat and uses to the "killing tree" where small skulls were smashed, leaving no offspring likely to seek revenge ...

I have the same feeling at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, it's hot outside but my body is covered from chills. We end our tour at the funeral stupa - Jaina and Buddhist architecture – erected in honor of victims. We will visit nothing else and returned to the inn.

At night we eat in our neighborhood and we baladons a moment in the streets of Phnom Penh before returning not to bed too late, tomorrow a shuttle picked us up at seven in the morning to take us to the bus station Sorya…

What to say, mass has been said … Ah, no more worship ! They still managed to empty the capital in two days citing a possible US bombing – I must say that the bombs regularly exceeded the borders of Vietnam.

I believe this empaffé wanted to create a kind of Uberpaysan from … Like any radical idea it always ends in massacres and other denunciations.

For memory, this butcher is dead 73 years in house arrest (possibly poisoned – it was not to miss enemies, even its edge … nobody is the pol pal !)