Choeng Ek & S-21

My first 24 hours in Phnom Penh were... eventful. We started the day by driving out to a military training base which doubles as a shooting range. I was quickly quietened when I tried to haggle on the $40 fee to fire  an AK47, in a place like that you aren't really in a position to bargain. Nobody told me either that I was meant to line everything up in order to aim the thing, so there I was pretending I was Rambo soil flying everywhere... and then my 30 bullets ran out.

(hardcore posing with other random gun)

This high was sobered when we went onto the Choeng Ek killing fields. A chilling experience, if the stupa filled with skulls does not stop you in your tracks then perhaps seeing shreds of clothing still buried in the ground only just visible where the rain had washed the soil away will. The atrocities that took place here a mere thirty-odd years ago is unbelievable, what's shocking is that it isn't being taught in schools, I had never even heard of what had happened here until I started planning the trip. What makes it even more real is how alive it still is, our tuk-tuk driver, Peter, was ten when the Khmer Rouge stormed Phnom Penh, before he was the son of a doctor and lived in a lavish house, now he is in his fifties and doesn't know how he is going to support himself or his family as his eyesight is going and he soon won't be able to drive. His father was amongst the first to be killed as, being a doctor, he was an intellectual and thus seen as a threat.

The experience at Choeng Ek was followed up with a visit to Tuol Sleng, or S-21. A secondary school that was converted into a prison and torture centre by the Khmer Rouge, the floors are still stained with blood and a musty slightly sour smell still lingers particularly in the dark claustrophobic cells that were built within a classroom. The blackboards still show the ghostly chalk strict prison rules, in Khmer and French. Hundreds of mugshot style photos of the victims now stare at you from the walls, their faces gaunt, their eyes pained. There was something disrespectful about gawping at the iron beds, some people taking photos of where others were tortured and eventually died. I did have the opportunity to meet the sole survivor of the prison and forked out $10 to buy his memoir. How he can manage to sit at that place after all this time is a wonder. After a harrowing and sombre experience we got into the tuk-tuk quiet in our own thoughts, when Peter decided that the easiest and quickest route out of the area was to drive through the S-21 courtyard, revving past a group of American tourists and the sole survivor with no remorse whatsoever.