Who has visited the Killing Fields?

HI etoile73, I have been to Cambodia twice in the last 9years. In fact, I just got back from my second trip last week. I have visited the capital Phnom Penh, where the S21 prison is. I have been to that place. I think I was more touched, disgusted, horrified, saddened, etc. when I went to S21 than when I visited Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. I think it was all more 'in your face' at S21 than at Dachau (although Dachau was a tough visit too). Yes, anyone going to Phnom Penh SHOULD go to this prison.
I have also been to Siem Reap and spoken with people. However, most people are still reluctant to say too much as the wounds are still fresh. Basically, there is a generation missing in Cambodia. There aren't so many people around who can say they were born in the mid '70s.
One of my best friends was a Cambodian refugee who's escaped, with his family, from Phnom Penh to Thailand on foot, much like Dith Pran, when he was a teenager. He has never told me much about his experiences and I don't ask.

I visited Phnom Phen in 2008 and it was a real eye opener. I only spent a few days there but managed to get around most of the sites.

First we went to the shooting range; there were all sorts of guns you could shoot, AK 47’s, M60, handguns etc. This was the fun side of the trip but I’m happy I did this first as the other tourist attractions were really shocking and I felt really guilty afterwards for using the guns.

The second site I visited was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, this was an old school converted into a prison where thousands of people were killed. You get to walk around the school and see all the old classrooms with blood stains on the floor and bullet holes in the walls where children once played. The old swings were converted into some form of gallows / rack device for the prisoners. From the outside it looks like any other school but when you get inside and start reading all the signs and looking at the pictures it’s very distressing. The people who ran the person kept hundreds of records of the people who were kept there, hundreds of Polaroid pictures were on display most of which were all killed.

The third site I visited was Choeung Ek, it was a former orchard and was one of the sites where people were killed (one of the Killing fields). There is a large stupa (building) with hundreds of human skulls pilled up inside which is really upsetting. As you walk around you see lots of pits and human bones sticking out of the ground, I even found some teeth. There was one tree with a sign that read something like “Chankiri Tree used to kill children” this really shocked me.

Sitting outside these sites you still get to see the locals who were injured during the regime, they were all begging for money. There were lots of people with arms and legs missing, plus lots of people with deformities from the chemicals the Americans used in the forests around the Vietnam / Cambodia border – agent orange was one that springs to mind.

I would compare the sites to what we have in Europe remembering the atrocities from the WW2, I would image Auswitch is very similar. Basically I think everyone should visit all the sites, I visited Cambodia before seeing this film and I didn’t really know much about the history of the regime and conflict, I came away wanting to find out more about what happened in the country.

I've visited Cambodia many times since 1999 and have been to the S21 (school turned prison museum) and killing fields. the country is making great strides (though at times it can seem like an NGO-land. . . with virtually every business a non-profit helping people recover (not that this is a totally bad thing). While there is still a lot of corruption (anytime a leader has been in place 30 years, ya gotta question authority) but things are looking up. . . there is peace and stability and modernization is coming slowly. . . volunteers are welcome and it's not a bad way to spend some tourism dollars or vacation time.