TRAVELMAN in CAMBODIA: What it felt like to visit Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum and The Killing Fields

I do not feel I can write a post about this trip unless it is completely through the lens of my experience. You will not get a history lesson here of the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970’s. Plenty of great books have been written by survivors and historians, and you can find countless web pages detailing this horrific atrocity. They do a better job than me at recounting an accurate history.

Neither will you get a how to guide of visiting these sites. This post is an account of my day, what I saw, what I felt, and what I thought. I hope it gives you a taste of what you’re in for upon your visit.

This is a difficult post to write. It’s not easy finding the right tone. I did not experience these horrors, I haven’t experienced anything that resembles what happened in these places. What happened in these places makes me wonder if hell exists on earth, popping up in pockets of the globe like a fly-by-night terror circus that overextends its unwelcome run. A place that behaves in accordance to its very nature, hell; it dams the innocent, and turns the guilty, the perpetrators, into corporeal demons.

After visiting these sights, I feel as though my life has always been an endless day at a giant water park. I’ve suffered the pain of a long wait to go down the slides, and gotten some water up my nose, maybe gotten a cramp because I went back in the water too soon after eating my ice-cream, but other than that, it’s been fun in the sun. Every soul does not get the gift of life in a water park. I now have a greater sense of how deep the depths of despair can go, and how far above those places I live.

Shit can get real evil. I knew this in an intellectual manner, I’ve seen documentaries, I’ve read books... Being in this place brought the death to life.

In the brief research I did for my visit to the city of Phnom Penh, I came across many postings about the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, also known as S21. It was a high school, a place of learning, before it became a place of unspeakable torture under the Khmer Rouge.

All of these websites showed a similar picture. The typical photo is of a metal bed without a mattress. The bed is inside a small empty room with checkered tiles- Seems innocuous enough. I didn’t know what it represented and why variations of the picture came up so often.

I’m not going to share that photo here. I took one, and a couple more not knowing that it was against the rules. I think this is what usually happens with visitors and thus why the iron bed frame in the empty room is the common photo. Like me, visitors arrive ready to take photos to commemorate their visit. And they do snap pics for the first couple minutes, until, like me, they notice the signs outside the entrance ways that indicate no photo taking or shooting of video. The Museum also has signs indicating that laughing is against the rules. It would be hard to break that last rule.

By the time I visited the third room, I didn’t want to take any more photos. It felt small and shallow to do so. I felt my photos and the sharing of them would somehow disrespect the memory of the victims. This place had too much meaning, the energy everywhere asked you to remember, to learn, and to live with a watchful eye for embers hidden under ash. Embers that weak yet well intended men stoke into a flame. The flame grows into a fire and the men think it will be of use. They think they will contain it, but the fire alway turns wild, burning everything it touches until there’s nothing left to burn.

Innocent men, women, and children were tortured and murdered in these rooms. Tortured on the wire beds on display, shackled to the rusty shackles. A small tin box rested a top each bed. These were defecation boxes. Other rooms had no beds. In these rooms, human beings were shackled to straight iron bars, lined up in rows like sardines. In each room hung a blurry, black and white photograph of the bodies left behind by the fleeing murderers.

Most all visitors buy the audio tour with their entrance ticket. This leaves most everyone walking around in silence, listening, stepping outside to sit on a bench, to sit and process, and sometimes to cry in a quiet place.

Mugshot type processing photos of hundreds of victims are posted on bulletin boards in some of the rooms. One of these boards displayed pics of a handful of intellectuals who were processed and murdered in these rooms. A man in one of the mugshots had a slight smile on his face. Out of the hundreds of photos of the murdered, his was the only with slightly upturned lips. I wondered if he had any idea what was in store for him. I wonder if it was a defense mechanism of denial. I don’t know, but I will always remember that photo and his face.

Toward the end of the tour, outside the gift shop (which I found terribly out of place), two authors sat behind tables with copies of their books on display. They were survivors of the prison and were there to autograph their book and have photos taken with whoever bought their book. I found this to be so strange. I wondered what could possess them to sit all afternoon in a place that brought them such incredible pain. Was it simply financial hardship, or did it help them heal?

I felt like the air around me was heavier by the time I reached these men. I was on my way to becoming numb. My empathy stores were temporarily depleted. I felt serious, as though there was no humor in the world. How can there be with the evil that men do?

So I decided to take some photos, so that I could remember and never forget. I didn’t want to take photos of the memorials and exteriors that visitors were permitted to take. I chose to take photos of the life that grows there. Photos reminding me of the beauty, the elegance, and the persistence of life. I wanted to remember the resilience we possess to grow in the ever-present face of death. The photos in this post represent new life growing where a circus of horrors had once pounded its stakes into the ground. It helped me get out of there with some sense of hope for humanity.

Afterward, we visited The Killing Fields. I stepped on a white rock-like fragment in the dirt of the path. Moments later, the audio tour informed me that bone fragments are still surfacing throughout the fields, including the walkways. It was a human skull fragment upon which I’d stepped.

Everyone in the tuk tuk was numb by the end. It was a quiet, somber ride back to the hostel.

I hope this post didn’t come off as too lofty and pretentious. I’m not used to writing without joking and this subject matter sent me to a dancehall full of fancy thoughts with which to twirl and flirt. Feeling like this makes me wax poetic whether I like it or not because comedy is not an option.

Thanks for reading and enjoy every day you visit one of life’s water parks...

!steemitworldmap 11.5496 lat 104.9178 long What it felt like to visit Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum andThe Killing Fields, Cambodia, d3scr