Can't afford a European vacation this summer? Do what our contributor Claire Duffett did: Explore Southeast Asia instead.
After travels through Thailand and Vietnam, we visited Cambodia. Though all three countries can claim their share of strife, Cambodia is still reeling from its trauma. The country struggles to recover from the 1970s genocide of millions of its citizens.
For better or for worse, the sites where the Khmer Rouge committed its worst deeds have become heavily trafficked tourist sites--and revenue sources--for Cambodia. At Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, right in the Phnom Penh city center, visitors can walk around the grounds of the former S-21 prison where more than 15,000 were held captive, tortured and murdered.
In 1976, the Khmer Rouge converted a high school into a prison, transforming classrooms into cells. Its floors are still stained dark, from the blood of tortured prisoners, and their photographs now posted on the walls of the former torture camp. Kaing Guek Eav, aka Comrade Duch, ran the prison, and he now faces criminal charges at the ongoing international war crimes tribunal.
About 15 kilometers outside Phnom Penh is Cheung Ek, the notorious "killing fields." Most of the thousands of citizens sent to work at the agricultural slave camps died within two months. Only 12 are known to have escaped. Today, visitors walk over sloping hills (mass graves) where human bones poke up from the dirt. Skull-filled catacombs line the grounds. The proximity to such inhumanity is certainly horrifying, but it's also an important place for those interested in understanding Cambodia.
Related Stories:
· Southeast Asia Field Trip [Jaunted]
· Cambodia Travel coverage [Jaunted]
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