The Killing Fields

Spent the morning visiting the killing fields and the old Khmer prison known as S21. What an incredible place to see. The first thing you see when you enter the killing field is a monument erected to the millions (somewhere between 1-3 million) that died. It is filled with skulls all the way to the top and at the bottom there are heaps of clothing that were recovered from the mass graves. If this sight isn't unsettling enough, you can walk through the grounds where all the mass graves still exist. Fully excavated, of course, but the holes in the ground tell the story. In Vietnam all the craters were from bombs, but here they were the places that thousands were buried in. All around we were surrounded by fragments of clothing and bone. You cannot walk more than a few steps on any of the paths without stepping on semiburied bones. Truly a surreal experience that everyone should be able to witness. You have this feeling in the pit of your stomach while you are standing there that lies somewhere between sadness and disgust.

After visiting the fields, we went to the infamous S21 prison. This complex was used as a a school until the Khmer Rouge decided it would better serve as a torture/death camp. Notice the barbed wire on the front that was erected to ensure that any prisoners lucky enough to escape their cells, wouldn't be able to commit suicide by jumping. Around 20000 prisoners were kept here and only 7 survived. Just a sad place with many of the cells still intact. Notice that the outsideMuch of it has been turned into a memorial and the walls are lined with the mugshots of the victims. So many kids and young women. Looking at those photos, all those eyes staring back at you from people that were never seen again, so haunting. So sad. So unbelievable that this happened less than 30 years ago. Our driver was lucky enough to be born in 1979 after the killing stopped, but his family was not spared. He lost many relatives to Pol Pot, as did most of this generation of Cambodians.