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Holiday in Cambodia: Day 7, Phnom Penh
Day 7: Phnom Penh I cried today. I get that there are those tourists that can go to a country that has previously borne witness to grand atrocity or extreme human obscenity, who then choose not to go to the worst sites because they can be hard going. I also kind of get those who go to these countries in a sense of mindless oblivion of history and then do their thing (which probably involves only eating at places that advertise a western menu or feature a king, clown, or colonel). I’m not one of these travellers. I feel that I have an obligation to go to these places, to…
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Holiday in Cambodia: Day 5, Battambang
So I have a list, which would come as no surprise to anyone, as every traveller has at least one list: things to always pack, things to avoid packing, 15 ways to be a tight-arse in an impoverished country, and so on. Mine is in response to the frequent question: where would you love to go to or go back to? Being honest, almost everywhere I’ve been to has left me feeling either that I had a really great time, or that I barely scratched the surface of somewhere unique and want to explore more, so I’d go back to almost everywhere I’ve been, if the opportunity arose. Almost. My…
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Say it slowly tour Day 23: Auschwicz-Birkenau
[Warning: opinions may offend] Today I visited the scenes of one of the darkest times in the history of the world. I was led through buildings where, 65 years before me, almost unspeakable acts were committed, where people were worked until they were killed, were subject to cruel and barbaric experimentation, were degraded, tortured and killed. Cruelly, those who were spared this treatment (most of those transported here) were marched off and gassed to death. The tour of Auschwitz took me through rooms of photos and documents, a chamber filled with 2 tonnes of human hair, uncountable numbers of suitcases (including one whose owner was born in 1936 – the…
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Say it slowly tour Day 19: Warsaw, old town, the ghetto
Spent a good chunk of the day wanting to cry. Warsaw hasn’t had the greatest of pasts, and I’m here just in time for the place to mark 70 years since first the Germans, then the Russians, took half of Poland each. I’m in the right month, too. There are a bunch of exhibitions, displays and other informative bits all around the place. Not too surprising, really, given that between 1939 and 1945, the place was practically levelled, a whole lot of people died of very unnatural causes, many more disappeared and most of the population displaced on numerous occasions. Poland got it as bad as anyone during the war,…
