An Afternoon of Smiles and Sunshine

Monday, December 21 - It’s no secret that Cambodia has a dark past. The number of people tortured and killed in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime rivals the Jewish holocaust of Nazi Germany. And no visit to Phnom Penh would be complete without making an effort to learn about this tragedy.

There are two sites that we knew we were going to have to visit, even though it was going to put a damper on our day.

We started with a 20 minute tuktuk ride out to the Killing Fields – one of many sites outside the city limits where Khmer Rouge soldiers killed and buried tens of thousands of people in mass graves. There were more than 120 mass graves at this site alone, about half of which have been excavated and the bodies disinterred. The bones and skulls have since been moved into a stupa – a traditional structure used to honour the dead – constructed on this site in the late 1980s. Inside the stupa, we saw level upon level of skulls and bones on display behind glass. It was heart-wrenching. The site is so sombre – with people just wandering in silence, reading the few signs describing the horror that was done at this place. It’s not a pleasant thing to see, but it’s important.

Even less pleasant was the Tuol Sleng museum. This used to be a school, and its four buildings were taken over by the Khmer Rouge and used as a prison to house and torture the victims who would all eventually wind up in the Killing Fields. The site is now a museum, left much as it was in the days of the Khmer Rouge – with makeshift cells of wood and brick, iron beds, shackles, and implements of torture still on display. What’s worse is the photos of the thousands of victims, all of whom died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. You can look these people directly in the eye and know that, after that photo was taken, each individual was mercilessly tortured and killed. It’s horrible to think that humans can be so cruel.

Once we finished the tour of these two sites, we were both pretty wiped out. But it was worth the visit, and even without these photos, it’s not something either of us is likely to forget any time soon.