The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh

29 January, 2014.

There is something strange about the tuk tuk and moto drivers merrily touting the Killing Fields or the S-21 Genocide Musuem as if it were a trip to see Disneyland, but both these sites are must do visits for most travellers to Cambodia, ourselves included. In some ways it could be seen as a welcome sign that just forty years after the monstrous Khmer Rouge regime, the country and its people are moving on. It would be foolish though to think its been forgotten, as so many Cambodians lived through it, and one day reliving the details is bad enough, never mind a lifetime.

It's the horrendous truth that hundreds of Killing Fields were found right across the country, and many more may never be found as they lie buried forever in the jungle. These were sites where so called opponents of the regime were brutally executed, as many as twenty thousand mass slaughters in each one. Victims were the wealthy, the educated, artists and bankers. Many more were simply viewed as non supporters of the regime. Their families were murdered too so that they could never seek vengeance, ' to kill the grass from growing, one must also kill its roots' was one of its leader Pol Pot's favoured slogans. 

Choeung Ek, around an hour by tuk tuk from the city ($25 hire for the day)  has been designed as a remembrance site for all the Killing Fields in Cambodia. In truth, there is very little to see here as the buildings used were torn up as soon as the Vietnamese army freed the city. And that's no bad thing. Life has symbolically replaced death, and the mass graves are now overgrown with grass and plants, and surrounded by trees. 

On arrival you are given an audio set and headphones and eye witness stories are relayed to you at clearly numbered stations. It doesn't take much reflection to understand the horrible reality of just what happened and to what scale. As a national tribute a tall tower memorial has been erected with over a dozen levels of skulls displayed behind glass. After you've finished the tour there is a small but excellent museum with more stories and images of the Khmer Rouge regime, if you can take any more.

I'm not going to lie to you it's tough going. You'll be ready to recharge when you leave, and there's a good choice of cafes right outside with the freshest of coconuts to drink from, you'll need it, because next up for us and most tourists is a trip to the former prison camp Tuol Sleng, or S-21 as its also known.

This is a former school that the Khmer Rouge used to interrogate, imprison, and torture Cambodians. Ultimately many also died here (as graphically shown in numerous harrowing photographs) even before being transported to the killing fields in their truck loads. The cells have been left as they were the day the city was liberated. Some cells barely big enough to lie down in, hardly any ventilation from the sweltering city heat, kept behind makeshift cell walls, as many as 20 cells in classrooms built for 20 students. Prisoners wore forced to wear iron leg shackles at all times. It's the photographs that really tell the gruesome truth. Hundreds and hundreds of them. 

After half a day on these two sites, it's difficult to contemplate what to do next, it seems unthinkable to go out and take in more of the happier sights in the city. But that would be disrespecting just how hard the friendly and smiling locals have come in rebuilding their lives and their fine country. The tragic four years of Pol Pot's regime should not be any one's lasting memory of Cambodia, because that would be a crying shame.