During the end of the 1970's there was a cruel communist party that took over Cambodia called the Khmer Rouge Regime. From 1975-1975 they murdered and tortured over 3 million people. I have to be honest, during my time in high school and even college I had never even heard about this happening. I started to hear about "The Killing Fields" while I was traveling through South America from other travelers who had just arrived from SE Asia. I didn't fully understand what happened during this time period until I arrived in Phnom Phen, and actually read and experienced The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng (former Khmer Rouge S-21 Prison...blog to come).
At this point of my world trip I was traveling with my friend Howard from Brighton, England. When we arrived in Phnom Phen, the first thing we did was hire a tuk tuk to drive us around the city the next day. We rented a driver for $10 US Dollars for the whole day. We couldn't believe it was that cheap. Hiring a tuk tuk driver is the best way to see the city, because the drivers where everything is and how to get there!
One of the first places that we visited was the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. This memorial center is a site where they found around 130 mass graves of bodies. The Khmer Rouge Regime would take prisoners from the S-21 Prison (where they tortured them) to "The Killing Field" where they would execute their prisoners. It is a place where you experience first hand how terrible things were during the Khmer Regime.
There were already other tuk tuk's there with visitors that had already entered the grounds. The admission price was $3 Us Dollars. Once you pay the first thing you notice is this huge Memorial Charnel that you can see in the first picture above. It was huge. The closer and closer that I got I noticed that there was something unique about this memorial. I finally realized that the whole Memorial is filled with SKULLS that they found while they were digging up these massive graves. I had never seen anything like this in my life. After walking up to the memorial and just taking a look around the grounds I then realized what actually took place at "The Killing Fields."
After viewing the memorial you are led to a section that has huge boards describing what actually took place here. I didn't take a picture of all of it, but in the back of my mind I was thinking to myself what type of people can just kill innocent people for nothing. Then I came upon a section that describe what Pol Pot had done to young people to change their minds so that they didn't have any emotions:
At this point of the tour I already started to get a weird feeling about this place. It is a hard feeling to describe, but it was almost like I was starting to feel the evil that this place represents. After reading the rest of the boards describing what took place here I walked around the grounds where they found the 130 mass graves. The remains of the innocent had been dug up, and removed from the grounds but the huge holes in the ground still remain. The memorial had other spots marked like a killing tree. Where they would just beat children to death. Crazy stuff. After being in this site for about 20 minutes I was ready to go. I was getting too depressed. To check out my video on youtube video of the mass graves click this link: http://www.travelingbug.org/travelingbug/2008/08/the-killing-fie.html
I learned a lot by visiting the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. This place is a must see when traveling through Phnom Phen.
