Cambodia, Killing Fields

Arrived by bus from Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Penh, Cambodia with a successful boarder crossing and managed to avoid an on-bus scam. A guy walked on board asking to see our Covid vaccination status. He said we’d need physical printed copies to show police else we wouldn’t be able to cross - e-copies/ apps would not be allowed. Having read countless online articles about boarder crossings in Cambodia, the number one rule is to ignore everyone unless they are official boarder control. I could see this man selling SIM cards prior to boarding the bus so figured he was not official. Anyway we ignored him but others did not and ended up paying a small fee to him so he could print their covid passes ready to show police ahead. Long story short, he never returned and there were no police. It’s a real shame the bus company let him on board to cause evident disruption but I suspect they may have been in on it too.

Only a quick stop in Phnom Penh but we really wanted to see and understand the terrible history suffered by Cambodians in the 1970’s under the Khmer Rouge regime. I’ll leave the detail out of this one but in short over 3 million Cambodians (men, women and children, commonly entire families) were executed during a 4 year period between 1975-1979 out of a then population of 10 million. We visited one of the largest prisons in Phnom Penh (S21 prison) that used to be a school. Here, over 18,000 people were tortured then killed on site or sent to be killed in the killing fields. Of the 18,000, 8 survived of which 3 were there on site during our visit! Hearing about the prison and the acts that were committed through our guide was very difficult but vital in understanding the atrocities that happened in the not too distant past. It fact photos show a disturbingly small single digit number of key individuals behind the movement standing trail in modern day courts. Unbelievably, the trials of the Khmer Rouge regime only began in 2006 and were finally concluded last year - incredibly disturbing in its own right!

The following day we visited Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. This is one of the largest of the 19,000 killing fields scattered all over Cambodia and linked most directly to S21 prison. So many mass graves were excavated in this particular killing field, one of which uncovered over 450 victims in an area no more than the size of a large driveway. Again, I will leave the detail out but this killing field was a must visit to understand the incredibly dark history of Cambodia.Read more