Arrived via Air Asia one bright sunny morning in November on a church missions trip. Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia and is located on the banks of the Mekong River. It has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia.
Once known as the Pearl of Asia, it was considered one of the loveliest of French-built cities in Indocina in the 1920s. Founded in 1434, the city is noted for its beautiful and historical architecture and attractions. Indeed as we toured briefly around the city, French architecture can be seen in many of the buildings.
Phnom Penh is home to more than 2 million of Cambodia's population of over 14 million. It is the wealthiest and most populous city in Cambodia and is home to the country's political hub.
This is the airport in Phnom Penh.
Our first impression of the city - the numerous motorbikes and bicycles were the main mode of transport. 
We started our short tour of PP with a stop at Choeung Ek or Killing Fields which is a memorial dedicated to those who were killed during the Khmer Rouge Communist Regime in the 70s.
Choeung Ek is the site of a former orchard and Chinese graveyard about 17 km south of PP and is the best-known of the sites known as The Killing Fields where the Khmer Rouge regime executed about 17,000 people between 1975 and 1979. Mass graves containing 8,895 bodies were discovered at Choeung Ek after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Many of the dead were former inmates in the Tuol Sleng prison.
Today, Choeung Ek is a memorial, marked by a Buddhist stupa which has acrylic glass sides and is filled with more than 5,000 human skulls. Some of the lower levels are opened during the day so that the skulls can be seen directly. Many have been shattered or smashed in. The following pics tell the grim story in Choeung Ek.
Tourists are encouraged by the Cambodian government to visit Choeung Ek. Apart from the stupa, there are pits from which the bodies were exhumed. Human bones still litter the site.
There is also a museum here with exhibits of tools that were used by the Khmer Rouge regime to torture and kill their victims.
Victims were killed by being battered with iron bars, pickaxes, machetes and many other makeshift weapons owing to the scarcity, and subsequent price of ammunition.
Next stop was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This was a former high school that was used as a concentration camp or Security Prison 21 (S-21) during the Khmer Rouge communist regime. It was here that Cambodians were tortured and held before transfer to Choeung Ek to be murdered.
From 1975 to 1979, an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (some estimates suggest a number as high as 20,000, although the real number is unknown). At any one time, the prison held between 1,000–1,500 prisoners. They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc
One of the tools of torture was this device that was drilled into the victim’s skull slowly.
Chains and shackles that were used to hold the prisoners.
Photos of victims lined the halls.
The above pic describes the use of this pole in the pic below.
One of the rooms where victims were bound and tortured to confess to whatever crimes they were charged with. Even after repeated washes, the blood stains on the walls and floors cannot be totally washed off.
For the first year of S-21’s existence, corpses were buried near the prison. However, by the end of 1979, cadres ran out of burial spaces, the prisoner and their family were taken to the Choeung Ek.
Paintings by former inmate and survivor Vann Nath showing people being tortured, which were added by the post-Khmer Rouge regime installed by the Vietnamese in 1979
Prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured with electric shocks, searing hot metal instruments and hanging, as well as through the use of various other devices. Some prisoners were cut with knives or suffocated with plastic bags. Other methods for generating confessions included pulling out fingernails while pouring alcohol on the wounds, holding prisoners’ heads under water, and the use of the waterboarding technique. 
Below is the Waterboard technique displayed at Tuol Sleng. Prisoners' legs were shackled to the bar at the top, their wrists were restrained to the brackets at the bottom and water was poured over their face using the blue watering can.
Instruments of murder
Out of an estimated 17,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only twelve known survivors. Only four of them are thought to be still alive:
We were fortunate to meet one of them ie. Chum Mey(pic below). The others were Bou Meng, Vann Nath and Chim Math, the only woman among the survivors. All three of the men were kept alive because they had skills their captors judged to be useful. Vann Nath had trained as an artist and was put to work painting pictures of Pol Pot. Many of his paintings depicting events he witnessed in Tuol Sleng are on display in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum today.
Bou Meng, whose wife was killed in the prison, is also an artist. Chum Mey was kept alive because of his skills in repairing machinery. Chim Math may have been spared because she was from Stoeung district in Kampong Thom where Comrade Duch a former leader of the Khmer Rouge Communist Regime was born. She intentionally distinguished herself by emphasising her provincial accent during her interrogations.
Visiting these 2 memorials was a terrifyingly sobering experience and its hard to imagine a time how there can be such gross disregard for human life. However genocides are still happening in certain parts of the world!
I got a better perspective of what the older generations of Cambodia went thru after visiting these 2 memorials. Indeed the scars are still existent in the older people as they are guarded and resistant to change.
The younger Cambodians will be the ones who bring change to this country. Everywhere we went, the younger people love to smile and they are friendly and eager to converse with you in English.
I spent the next 3days in a nearby province of Kampong Speu and came to love the people there. Hopefully i will be able to come back again for a longer trip and explore more of Cambodia!
