Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

For our first depressing event in Phnom Penh our new best friend, Mr. Borith, dropped us off at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S21). The museum is at the high school turned prison by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. This particular prison was where they took anybody suspected of treason, espionage or any other high ranking member of society; they mostly arrested highly educated people or anyone who worked for the government. They would hold the prisoners and torture them until they got information or was sure they didn’t have any and then would transport them to the nearby killing fields.

We opted for a tour guide to take us around the prison and it was definitely worth it. Our first stop was beneath a tree next to a bench where two old men were sitting. The tour guide gave us a brief history of the genocide and this prison’s role in it and finished off by saying that there were 7 survivors from the prison. They escaped as the Vietnamese army was fighting the Khmer Rouge and that the men sitting on the bench were two of the survivors. We had a chance to talk to them with the help of our tour guide/translator. They showed us their scars and described what they went through in the prison. We asked how they can bare coming back to the prison everyday, they replied that at first it was hard, but now they just want people to remember. I nearly cried talking to them.

We spent the next hour or so walking around the prison as the tour guide described the different ways the prisoners were tortured. We saw the cells where they kept the prisoners, the barbed wire, the torturing tools and the blood stains on the wall. While it was definitely a depressing place to be, it was somehow incredible. Walking around knowing that not much more than 30 years ago the city was emptied and this innocent high school was used to torture innocent people leaves quite an impression.