I arrived in Phnom Penh by boat from Chau Doc; I found myself a hostel and started looking around for things to do. I will be meeting my family here in Cambodia, but before that I wanted a day to see the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng toture prison. For those not familiar with Cambodian history, the Killing Fields/Tuol Sleng are remnants of the Khmer Rouge's brutal occupation of Cambodia in the late 70's. The communist Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 and set about transforming Cambodia into the ultimate Communist haven. There'd be nothing to do with money, the people would work the land, everyone would love one another in the greatest country known to man. And how do you go about building such a paradise? You do it by killing everyone that disagrees with you. And so it was that the Khmer Rouge rounded up and executed the Cambodian educated class, the doctors, the foreigners, anyone that looked smart or could prove troublesome to the new regime. The rest of the population worked like slaves in the fields, literally worked to death with starvation and disease everywhere. I forgot the official statistic, but something like 25% of the population were killed by the Khmer Rouge. That's not a small number, and when the Khmer Rouge fell from power in 1979 the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng prison were preserved.
So first up is the Killing Fields. This would be where most of the captives were killed. The center stupa shown below serves as a focal point, with the remains of some victims inside.
Boxes filled with skulls stacked upon one another.
Close-up view of the skulls inside.
Each visitor was given an audiotape, and you could listen to different recordings as you came to different points in the place, like the sign down below. The recordings would explain everything about the specific site.
See the patches of dirt, fenced off from visitors? That's where most of the executions took place.
Ground looks a little uneven, due to the mass graves found before with dozens of bodies inside.
Sign from one of the mass graves.
This is one of many spots where they had remaning pieces of bones and clothing; you could still see parts of them here and there, poking up from the ground.
Ok, so that was very depressing. So why not go visit something equally as depressing, like a visit to the S21 Tuol Sleng prison?
Originally built as a school, Tuol Sleng was eventually converted into a torture center for the Khmer Rouge.
Building A, with torture cells inside.
Steel bed frame with shackles.
The gallows outside building B.
There were many photos like this, showing all the victims at Tuol Sleng. Men, women, children, whatever; the Khmer Rouge spared no one.
Building C. Note the barbed wire along the sides of the building.
Typical room with individual cells.
Monument erected in the center of Tuol Sleng.
So that was a very informative first day in Phnom Penh. Later I will be meeting my family in Cambodia, should be more pleasant.