Phnom Penh and Killing Fields and S21 Prison Tours

My driver arrives on time at 10am. I must say here that the agreed price was $20 USD to visit both places but I also had to pay entrance fees at both places. I did check online and this was comparable to what was being offered.

First stop is the killing fields which is about 8km out of town but I enjoyed the drive.

This monument is filled with skulls and other bones that have been retrieved from around the site.

This experience was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. You get headphones and recordings that you listen to as you walk around. There were some groups that had tour guides but I think that the head phones were really good because you get extra stories and music to listen to as well … adding to the whole experience.

Most of the buildings are gone from the site because they were raided during the time of extreme poverty following the Pol Pot Genocide. Three million people were murdered during this time which is one quarter of the total population. Those that were left were starving and mostly displaced from their homes … they took whatever they could to survive.

What is left is peaceful gardens and signs where buildings used to be that describe the horrors that went on there.

What I saw today was many sombre people walking in the gardens listening to their personal headsets. There is a lake and many places to sit and think about what you are listening to.

Some things I will not show you because I think that it is personal choice as to whether you want to see these things. Other things like the skulls and the mass graves I feel ok about sharing. I am not saying that any of it is ok and I feel particularly disturbed that this happened during my lifetime.

Next I went to the S21 Prison, also known as Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. This is more central in the city and the site was previously a school.

Again this place used personal headsets to tell the story as you walked around the various parts of the site.

This place was mostly a place of torture where they tortured people until they signed incriminating documents for crimes that they never committed.

On the audio they tell of many stories including one of a New Zealand man who was held there and also murdered. It was not only Cambodian people who were caught up in the tragedy.

There was a whole block of rooms with torture beds. There was also very graphic photographs on some of the walls that showed what they found when this place was discovered.

There were a lucky few that were found alive at S21 after the torturers had fled. I do not feel good about saying that they were lucky as I am sure that they suffered from being here … but they had their lives and many did not.

There were many photos of victims here as everything had been very documented at this site. I am just showing a couple of what I saw but there were photos of men, women and children. More than 18000 people were killed at this site. Some for being intelligent, wearing glasses, being teachers, being government officials … they wanted to kill off anyone that might go against their cause.

When they came here they lost all identity and just became numbers. It was only when they were killed that they were cross referenced with their names.

There was also a prison block with cells.

The image above is on the wall at S21, Toul Sleng. I found it very moving. The skulls form the country of Cambodia and the Mekong waterways are depicted in blood. There are also many graphic images here but I am choosing not to show them here.

When I got back to my hotel I had a local dish for dinner … Chicken Loc Lac. It was served with a pepper sauce and was very nice.