We arrived in Phnom Penh from Saigon and met a couple from Leeds enroute who we shared a tuk tuk with to a guesthouse called Sunday guesthouse. We went for a walk in the local area and like true Brits decided to go for a drink. We stumbled across a bar however it was the weirdest bar we had ever been in, They served Bubble tea (A South East Asian Favourite) which consists of cold flavoured tea (which is more a cross between slush puppy and a milkshake) with small jelly like balls floating around in it. Very weird! We then headed back to the guesthouse were we had dinner and watched a film about the Killing Fields which we visited the next day.

We headed off to the killing fields and although we knew it would be an emotional day we did not realise how hard the day would hit us. After walking around the killing fields and going in the museum where we watched another video we then went to the S-21 Prison located near by. This was very moving and we would encourage all to read our brief outline below on the Khmer Rouge Regime as well as researching abit yourselves. It is a truly horrible tragedy and visiting these places will remain with us forever.

Overview of the Khmer Rouge Regime

The Khmer Rouge regime was the Cambodian version of the Nazis. Led by a man called Pol Pot the Khmer Rouge regime controlled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. They believed in extreme communism and set about a mass genocide of anyone deemed to be intelligent or have a skill along with anyone connected to the former or foreign governments. Any of the above's families were also brutally murdered as it was feared that they may oppose them at a later date, this included children of any age.

The killing fields were where they took all the victims to be murdered and dumped in mass graves. Around 300 victims were transported here on a daily basis over the 4 yr period indicating just how many people lost their lives. Some of the mass graves were found with the victims naked and headless whilst most of the others found had various signs of torture such as broken bones, scarring to the skull, decapitation and other terrible things. Torture was used as they believed the bullets were for wars and they did not want to waste them. They also used torture as a means to scare others into conforming. There is a tree known as the baby smashing tree which was used by the Khmer Rouge to kill small babies. They did this by smashing the babies skulls repeatedly against the tree before discarding them into the mass graves. Another form of murdering the babies was to throw them in the air and catch them on the end of a Bayonet. This torture was sometimes acted out in front of the parents.

Chao Ponhea Yat High School located in Phnom Penh was an impressive 4 building complex that was seized by the Khmer Rouge and transformed into a high security prison known as S-21. This was where people were held and tortured before been transported to the Killing fields. Like with the Nazis every prisoner was photographed on arrival with a number badge, they transported people from all over Cambodia here to either torture or enslave. As slaves they were kept in groups and if one of the group failed to comply to any of the rules (one of these been to not cry whilst being electrocuted) the whole group would be killed.

In total nearly a quarter of the population of Cambodia was murdered during their Reign. It took until 1999 to take the leaders to trial however Pol Pot who was under house arrest died the previous year meaning he was never held accountable for this tragedy.