Before coming to Cambodia I must admit i didn't know too much in regards to the history and politics surrounding Cambodia, i'd heard of the killing fields but wasnt sure what they were all about and what went on... but after visiting Phnom Penh for a few days and visiting a few sites it really was a sad but amazing history lesson.

After our our ride up the Mekong by boat from Vietnam into Cambodia, we arrived at our guest house at around 2pm and the five of us Me, Finchy, Sandra and the two Ozzy guys Sam and Scott decided that as we were only hanging around 2 days and one night, that we would go straight to the famous S-21 prison in Phnom Penh which was walking distance form our diggs. Basically the S-21 prison was formally a school, and during the reign of the Pol Pot and his geocidal Khmer Rouge regime 1975-1979, they turned this school into a torture prison, and from here they would take the victims to the killing fields where they would torture them further before killing them. We were at the prison for a good few hours and it was so spooky and horrible to think that the rooms we were walking through, were the same rooms that the innocent cambodian civilans were tortured and killed in, some of the rooms still had the actual beds in and shackles where the prisoners were killed. What made it even worse was to read how brutally tortured they were and how they were killed, it really did put a lump in your throat at times as we walked round reading some of the stories, and all this happened less than 40 years ago which is unbelievable!! So after a good few hours walking round to get the real history of Cambodia, we decided to go and grab some cambodian street food which was a 2minute walk from our guest house, we sat outside and had stir fried rice and washed it down with a few local beers... we didn't stay out for long as we were getting up early the next morning to go to the Killing Fields.

The killing fields of Phnom Penh were a 30 min tuk tuk ride away and this is one of the sites where the Khmer Rouge brought a lot of the innocent civillians to, to torture some more before killing them and buring them in mass graves! A lot of the time the people who were brought here were made to dig there own grave and were burried alive, and the way they killed the women, babies and children is far to sick to even write about! After the Khmer Rouge were forced out of Phnom Penh in 1979, the cambodian goverment found the killing fields and in this one site alone discovered over 100 mass graves containing over 30000 victims. So they excavated many of the graves and forensic teams and set about trying to identify the bodies as there was so many family's who had no idea what had happened to there loved ones. The bones of the victims were then put in the new glass tower which was built in the 80's, this was built purposly to house all the bones of the victims so there spirits would no longer be underground any longer. Much like the S-21 prison we visited the day before, it's so unbeliveable to think what went on here and how stuff like this was allowed to go on up until the 80's! After visiting the killing fields we didnt have too much free time as that afternoon we were catching our bus to Siem Riep to see the temples of Angkor, we didnt spend a lot of time in Phnom Penh at all but what we did see whilst we were there was a brilliant history lesson as to what went on in Cambodia during this time. x