We arrived in Phnom Penh yesterday and after sleeping through much of the day, we woke up early and set off on our sightseeing in Phnom Penh.
We hired a tricycle taxi to take us to & fro the Choeung Ek genocidal center for $20
The Choeung Ek genocidal center is a 30-40 minute drive from Phnom Penh city
Since the roads were dusty, we wore masks
The legal age for riding a motorcycle in Cambodia is 16. I didn’t ask this kid how old he was.
Many new buildings in Phnom Penh have signages in both Khmer and Mandarin… so you know easily who is funding much of Cambodia’s new developments
Cambodia People’s Party is the ruling party in the country
We were out of city limits by now
The village roads we were passing through were far from smooth
Kids were all set for school at this time
We finally arrived. The trike driver said he would wait for us at the parking lot.
We bought our entry tickets. It costs $6 for one person with the audio guide. You save a little if you bring your own pair of earphones/headphones.
These audio guide devices have two 3.5mm jacks so you can connect two headphones to one device. Only downside is that two of you will have to walk closely together.
You go about the tour by making stops at sign boards with numbers on it. That building in the back is the Choeung Ek Monument and I’ll go there later.
When you reach the next point, you press the corresponding number and the voice over narration continues. For example, this is the point where victims from prison camps were brought by trucks to be executed at Choeung Ek
The audio guide voiceover was narrated by a male survivor of Choeung Ek. You can’t help but imagine the horrors as he describes them… even though all you see now is this
Victims brought here were usually killed immediately but as the number of prisoners increased, many who had to wait were kept in detention camps (the drawing they showed looked more like a shed). The average execution rate was 300 per day but when the Khmer Rouge guards couldn’t kill them all, some were kept in sheds to be killed another day.
The chemical storage rooms were used to store DDT (the infamous pesticide), which was poured over the dead bodies for two reasons — to get rid of the rotting stench and to kill off anybody who wasn’t fully dead
That houses the movie hall, where they show a short film about the Khmer Rouge and what went on at Chuoeng Ek
Inside they had some photographs and exhibits. The above summarizes the Khmer rouge ideology.
We would return to the movie hall later. But you can’t help but wonder as we now watch chicken graze these fields… just how many bodies are buried underneath it.
The audio guide even tells you how Khmer Rouge guards used that part of the palm plant, with its sharp edges (the white arrow) and how it was used to slit the throats of prisoners
It looks all serene now
This was the grave where prisoners of Chinese ethnicity were buried
The audio guide has many optional stories visitors can listen to and the narrator even encourages you to sit down, take a break and listen to them
Back then, the villagers outside Chuoeng Ek knew little of the horrors that were taking place inside
This was just one of the burial grounds where piles of bodies were dumped
Some of the bones and teeth retrieved from the exhumed bodies
The burial ground to the right was used for headless victims
This burial ground was used for women & children. They were mostly buried naked.
And this is the infamous “Killing tree” — where babies were smashed against and killed
Why were babies killed? Well, because Kang Kek Iew or Comrade Duch (he oversaw the infamous prison camps), believed killing the children would prevent revenge attacks. For example, after Khmer Rouge soldiers would execute a key male figure, they would then arrest his wife and children… and execute them as well. The movie hall has exhibits detailing the horrible acts of Duch. Believe it or a not, Duch was only sentenced in 2010.
It was now time to enter the Choeung Ek memorial, first constructed in 1988
This is what it houses
Each level of skulls is classified by ages of the victims. You also have a level for victims aged 40-60 and victims under 20.
The Khmer Rouge had different ways to execute prisoners. Some were killed with a bullet to the head, some were stabbed in the head, beaten with iron rods… among other tools. Imagine being bored using the same technique that you come up with some much needed variety — to murder someone :/
After visiting the memorial, my girlfriend and I went to the movie hall to watch the 15-minute short film. NOTE: No photography or recording allowing inside the movie hall.
These are the timings
I’m not putting up photos of the exhibits and displays detailing Duch and the atrocities committed under his command at these “Killing Fields”. In fact, no amount of words can do justice to actually hearing the narration from the survivor. The audio guide is really well done and if you plan to visit the Choeung Ek genocidal center, I highly recommend you opt for the audio guide. It may not be the ideal place to visit when on a vacation but this is the closest Asia has to something like Auschwitz (the infamous Nazi concentration camp where over a million Jews were killed). You also have to remember, unlike the Nazi era, the Khmer Rouge killed over a million of their own people between 1975 and 1979. That’s not too far back in time.
The audio guide is available in various languages
With that, we were done with our tour of the Killing Fields. The Choeung Ek genocidal center is one of two stark reminders of the horrors committed by the Khmer Rouge during their reign. Our next stop would be the S21 detention center — where victims were held and tortured before they were brought to Choeung Ek to be executed. That will be the next post.
