The Killing Fields

Day 3

17 layers of skulls in various conditions
 indicating method of murder

A Tuk-tuk driver we met yesterday offered to take us outside of the city to the Killing fields for $15. When we went down for breakfast he was waiting 1.5 hrs early. We loved the trip under a shaded roof, watching all the traffic pass us and almost hit us but gracefully missing us everytime.  We spent a lot of the trip laughing and praying to Allah, Jehovah, Buddha and all the other Gods we thought would help.

My travelling companion

bones & teeth of victims

Immediately upon arriving at Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre a solemn mood descended upon us. It reflects the most barbaric, cruel crimes committed by the ultra Communist Khmer Rouge Regime during 1975-1979. Here 20,000 people including foreigners were executed and tortured. 129 mass graves and 8000 human skulls have been excavated and categorized by age and gender to bear testimony to such horrific crimes. The skulls are displayed in a memorial Stupa to honor the spirits of the victims here and up to 3 million throughout Cambodia where 25% of the population was obliterated.

 Children were killed for fear they would grow up to seek revengence for what was done to their parents by holding them by the ankles and bashing their heads to save on ammunition.
Teeth are visible along the base of this tree.


bones, teeth & clothing fragments mark the horror





clothing exumed and cleaned from mass graves




Pedicure amongst the food stalls



Our  driver waited in the heat and then took us to the Russian Market back in PP to get our minds off the horror of the Killing Fields.  There we shopped for silk, hats, exotic foods I would never eat but made for some great photos.

no ever escaped from S-21

Then we went to Tuol Sleng museum, formerly a high school that was taken over by Pol Pot security forces and turned into a prison for the elite, intellectuals, religious leaders and anyone who did not follow the dictators rules.

Known as Security Prison 21 (S-21) it became the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Over 17,000 people held here were taken to the killing fields. The prison is full of photographs of each person, man, woman and child, with hands tied behind backs and legs shackled before and sometimes after torture. 

Our guide with one of only 2 remaining survivors of the prison

 We hired a guide here who was 12 years old at the time of the take over. She was sent to work in the fields for 20 hours a day, and would only receive 5 spoons of rice if she worked. She was separated from all family and was not allowed to speak to other slaves in the fields. She said she survived on eating roots and insects when the soldiers weren’t looking. She was so sleep deprived she would have given up food just to sleep. She has been working at the museum for 20 years, having to relive the horror everyday.

Tuol Sleng claimed an average of 100 lives per day, only 7 prisoners were alive on the day the Vietnamese army liberated Phnom Penh in 1979 and they only survived because of their skills, one of whom was a portrait painter.  We met Vann Nath, whose paintings of scenes of torture and brutality he witnessed are now famous. Post Khmer Rouge he was a soldier in the Cambodian army battling some of his tormentors along the Thai border. It was only after 1993 when he felt safe enough to paint his memories.  When he started he was shaking and unable to speak but he had promised his fellow inmates that if anyone survived they must tell the story.

At the end of the day we paid our tuk-tuk driver double what he asked and the smile we got was worth it. He followed us for awhile asking for another day but we are not on a schedule so difficult to make a plan. 

  We were soon surrounded by the street children again and after Deb tookthem into a store to buy them a drink we were very popular. She said choose a drink, when 1 child went for a litre of milk so she could give some to her sister and Deb said okay, they all got litres and were unbelievably grateful and happy. It was especially rewarding when one little girl sat in a chair in front of the store and started guzzling her milk.


This is Bai, one of the book sellers and a companion.