Killing Fields and S-21 Cambodia

A few days ago we arrived in Phnom Pehn, the capitol of Cambodia, and also the location of the Killing Fields and S-21. A little on Phnom Pehn first, this place is N-U-T-S nuts!! We arrived at 10pm after a 7 hour bus ride. Greeted by trash, tons of cars, vendor after vendor of stalls filled with crap... Quite the opposite of the little island that we had just arrived from. There are tuk-tuk drivers waiting at the bus stop to shuttle us to some guest house that they get money off of or to some guest house that they have pictures of but look nothing like when you get there!

We decide to go to a place called "No problem" guest house. We are greeted by two 16 year old boys who immidiatly tell us that if we want to score any drugs that theirs are the best, and can't we tell by the way they are acting?...hmmm....it's late, we are tired, and the room is ok..so we decide this place will be fine to crash in....12 am I am awoken by what I first think is the fan oscilating above our heads, but soon realise it is the rats in the floor squeeking and scampering around...at first in my imagination they are all over the floor, about the crawl into bed and rummaging through our stuff. Luckily, they are only in the floor and walls, not on!

10 am after 3 hours of sleep, we head off of the Killing Fields which house many many skulls of innocent Cambodian people who were captured and killed by the Khmer Rouge for either being beautiful, handicapped, educated, female...whatever excuse you could come up with besides being plain, obiedient, and willing to sacrafice anything about being an individual.

The skulls are piled high in a stupa, on the floor is clothing that washed up from the mass graves. This humbeling stupa is lined with shrines and people offering flowers and insence to give respects. The story is bone chilling and extremely sad. As we walk around the fields we are told by signs to watch your step, and to not step on the mass graves. Walking around the fields where people were forced to work, wait 3 little girls ready to steal your camera and beg for 1.00 for 20 mins. wow. This place really pulls at your heart strings.

After that we are taken to S-21, an old high school where people were kept in rooms and tortured. The torturing is showed in some pictures and paintings on the walls. The torture devices all rusted and sitting there open on the mattress in the rooms which you can walk into.

Some of the torture includes tying up the hands behind the back with a piece of wood, then hanging them from the bars behind their back (located in the high school that were probably used for physical eduacation). Once the person passes out because of so much pain they have thier head stuck inside a vat of waste and other foul things, in order to be woken up and tortured more.

It is really hard to believe that people can acually treat other people with such a lack of compassion and inhumanity, even if the person they are torturing is their own family. The overwhelming chaos of Phnom Pehn is really a place that takes a while to digest,and only a couple of days is needed to have your fill.