The 'Killing Fields' Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We arrived in Phnom Penh and found ourselves starving after the long ride. We immediately went searching for food after we checked into our hostel. We found this a harder task than anticipated. It's not like most of the other touristy places in Cambodia, but the food was super cheap. I ran out of cash so I headed to an atm where I received a couple 100 dollar bills. I thought there's no place I can break this. We ended up walking around a while until we found a Chinese store. Something comparable to an office depot. First one we'd seen. The had pens costing $1000 to dvds for $2. So I bought despicable me just to hang some change. While walking away we got a nice shower from a woman mopping her upper deck and dumped the dirty water over the edge. We spent the evening walking around the city, visiting independence monument and getting a watermelon shake. That night we spent at our friend's hoste listening to live music.
We reserved the same tuk tuk driver who gave us a ride from the bus stop to our hostel to also take us around the killing fields and S21 (prison camp). It was extremely somber walking through the rooms where prisoners were tortured death. Out of nearly 20,000 of the prisoners who were kept here only 7 survived by the end of the regime. To think this was nearly 40 years ago. You really do notice a generation missing from the streets. They city was desolate during the mid to late 70s. Some of the survivors wrote brief stories of what happened during their stay. One who was a painter by trade was told him and his wife were going to teach in the city but were taken to prison instead where they were tortured until unconsciousness set it, then revived, interrogated and tortured some more. Today I went to see the "killing fields" Where around 1/4 of Cambodia's population was murdered under genocide. This all happened nearly 30 years ago. I never even knew until now. I don't think it's something you learn in school growing up. Its crazy cuz you notice on the street there are little to no old people. Basically an entire generation is missing. There are dozens of these gravesites around the country where an estimated 3 million people were killed. If one member of a family was killed then they all were. For this reason they didn't want anyone left to seek revenge. The Khmer Rouge's slogan was, 'To dig up grass you must remove the roots'. There were gruesome before and after pictures of the prisoners. You can see the Cambodian people are still suffering from this

Independence monument

They used barbed wire so prisoners couldn't attempt suicide

Bone fragments still lay in the uncovered graves

Theu placed a loud speaker in this tree and played calming music while killing the prisoners so the blindfolded ones who were next in line would not panick