31 October Koh Chen

Just out of Phnom Penh is an island in the river with a small village,  Oknha Tei, where the locals weave silk. 

Royal Palace Phnom Penh 

Riverside Oknha Tei

30 0ctober Phnom Penh - afternoon

In the afternoon we went on a rickshaw ride around Phnom Penh, visiting the railway station and the Independence Monument followed by the Central Market,  restored by the French Government in 2011.

 

Inside the railway station

The railway system was restored with help from an Australian Government Development Grant

The Central Market

Independence Memorial

  

                       King Norodom Sihanouk

30 October Phnom Penh

 We arrived in Phnom Penh early in the morning. After breakfast we embarked on a tour of one of the 398 Killing Fields in Cambodia, this one just out of the city and not far from the S21 Prison. The S stood for security and this was the prison where people suspected as security threats were sent. The threat was mostly that they’d been trained in Vietnam or China and so couldn’t be trusted to support the nationalist  agenda of Pol Pot. Here people were harshly treated, housed in small rooms with multiple people to a room, or in small cells, tortured and executed without trial. The instruments of torture varied from whips and chains to machetes, hoes, spades and axes. 109s of people were killed here and their clothes removed and cleaned to be given to the next batch of prisoners.  When the prison was finally shut down by the liberation army 4 young children were discovered hiding under one of those piles of old clothes.

 

One of the prison rooms and the children's climbing frame that became the gallows. 

Building B had its rooms converted into tiny 1.2 x 2m cells

Various instruments of torture

The nearby killing field now has a memorial built by the Japanese government which houses does of skulls. People would be brought here at night and put into a pit and then shot. The bodies would then have DDT poured over them so they wouldn't smell and also to make sure that no-one survived. 

Japanese built memorial

Homes in the ground where mass graves have been found.

29 October Tan Chau

Today we’re at the end of the Vietnam section of the river and will pass into Cambodia tonight. 

We again boarded motorised Sampans to visit Evergreen Island, where a lot of the local vegetables are grown. We walked past field of lemongrass, Elephant grass used as cattle feed, bananas, papaya, coconuts and mangoes among many other plants we didn’t recognise.

Fish farms line the river

House are typically built on stilts because of annual flooding

 

 A 95 year old woman who lifes nearby

Papaya trees loaded with fruit

We were then taken across the river to Tan Chau town where we watched a woman making straw mats on a loom then were taken on a cycloped ride through the town to a temple of a religion, Cao Dai, created in 1926 in an attempt to bridge Taoism, Confucianism and Christianity.

A barge filled with rice about to be taken into the rice mill.  The rice husks will then be transported away to be used as fuel. 

  

Inside the Dao Cai temple and a cute rubbish bin

28 October Sa Dec

 After lunch we sailed another 3 hours upriver to Sa Dec, where we again went ashore to visit the market and a famous house. 

The market has both seafood and other live produce as well as fruit and vegetables. 

   

  

Catfish.       and     frogs

Huynh Thuy Le House Sa Dec

  

October 28 Cai Be

 We woke to a beautiful morning in Cai Be. 

After breakfast we were ferried to the first Catholic Church in Vietnam,  built by the French in the 19th century. 

 

Cai Be Church

We then  visited two places that made rice wine and venom based medicines as well as growing pythons for their skin and their fat which is made into ointment

Python in a cage

Snake skin purse

Popping rice to make candy