...the killing fields is this relatively small plot of land about 15km from the city center of phnom penh where tens of thousands of cambodians were killed during pol pot's terror regime in the 1970s. its hard to describe. the land is small in comparison to how immense and intense it felt. when you look out onto the landscape, its just like tons of indentations in the dirt with lots of green, beautiful grass covering them. these indentations are the mass graves of all the tortured prisoners. they would just stack hundreds/thousands of bodies in the graves. when they exhumed one grave, in particular, they discovered bones but no heads..the prisoners had all been decapitated. there was a separate monument, the architecture was similar to their temples here and it was just glass cases of skulls...even though they cleaned them and everything, the stench was totally undeniable..i started feeling kinda sick after that.
after the killing fields, we drove back to town and went to the s-21 prison where these prisoners were detained before being taken to the killing fields. from my understanding, it was mostly just an inquisition/torture center. we were allowed to go into the cells and they had left the beds that prisoners were kept on along w/ the torture instruments used on them. on the walls, they enlarged photographs taken by the Khmer rouge of their victims. in the upstairs rooms, there were rows and rows of hundreds of face portraits taken by the khmer rouge to document the prisoners followed by rows more pictures of these prisoners being tortured. these were all pictures taken by the khmers to document their torture. it was just unbelievable.
i just told jason to take me somewhere happy after this tour, we went to this market and got some shaved ice and steamed corn. still now, when i'm sitting poolside, i can't shake this nauseating feeling....
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