Phonm Penh, Cambodia

I will be honest I didn't know anything about the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, Tuol Sleng (S-21), The Killing Fields and such before I arrived in Cambodia....Oh wow did I get a history lesson. I want to know more. I look forward to borrowing books from the library...oh good lord really??? Excited about learning??? history??? borrowing books...who am I??? But really if you don't know anything about Tuol Sleng (S-21), and/or The Killing Fields I highly suggest you do a quick google search. There is too much to even try to explain.
We went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21 prison camp). It was formerly Tuol Svay Prey High School before it was taken over by Pol Pot's forces. Here is where Cambodians were detained and tortured before being marched 15 kilometers away to Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields). At Toul Sleng Genocide Museum we got a tour guide for the afternoon so we could learn more about what exactly we were seeing (there were torture devices, photos of hundreds of victims, and the small little jail cells).

The next day we ventured to The Killing Fields. This was one of the hardest things for me to see. There was a stupa filled with over 8000 skulls of the victims they dug up from the mass graves. Not only that but seeing clothes littered around and our guide informed us that there are still bones below us and if we looked closely we could see some. Did you know that during the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979 Cambodia lost about 1/3 of their population?

Afterwards we headed to the largest clock in all of Cambodia, Wat Phonm (in which the city was named after) and saw a bunch of monkeys!!!