We negotiated with the taxi successfully--we agreed on a good price, and he didn't get mad. He wanted $5 to take us to the prison and return to the hotel. We offered $3, and he said $4. I said $4 and we stop at the supermarket also. Everyone was happy and had fun.
The first thing we noticed about the school/prison was that it looked exactly like the schools we teach at every day in Thailand. It's hard to believe that this was a place that was not filled with the laughter of children but the painful cries of people who were being tortured and killed.
The guards were very particular about the prisoners not being able to commit suicide. The barbed wire was put in place to keep people from jumping to their deaths. They were forced to be stripped search every day to make sure that they hadnt hidden anything that could be used to kill themselves. Even with all of this in place several prisoners were successful in committing suicide.
Some of the prisoners were kept in solitary cells. They barely had room to lay down on the floor, and they were still shackled to the wall. Whether they were shackled in community cells or individual cells they were without mats, mosquito nets, and blankets, and they were forbidden to talk to each other. The windows were kept closed to muffle the cries of the prisoners so that the neighbors outside would not know what was going on. You can still see blood stains on the floors.
The rooms with the metal beds were torture rooms. They would force the prisoners to confess to whatever charges were brought against them. The metal ammunition boxes were used for toilets.
The Khmer Rouge kept records of their victims through pictures. You can tell what year the prisoners were incarcerated by the identification number or lack thereof. So many of these were just young kids, but they were considered to be enemies of the communist regime.There were very few survivors as the Khmer Rouge quickly finished off the rest of the prisoners as the Vietnamese brought down the regime in 1979.
The man in the middle of this picture actually survived his imprisonment at Tuol Sleng. He was talking to some of the visitors.
After we left the prison, we stopped by Lucky Supermarket for one last shopping trip. When our driver pulled out some foreigners were passing by and said we needed to buy a newspaper from this little boy. I have no idea why I decided to take advice from other foreigners, but I did want a newspaper. So I'm trying to find the money to pay the little boy. I didn't understand what he said, but I saw the price on the front of the newspaper so that's what I gave him. Then a lady came over telling me I owed her 200 Riel (which is only a few cents), but I didn't want to pay her. So I tried to give the paper back. She got upset and walked away, but I guess she wasn't so upset that she was willing to give up the sale. I don't usually tick people off, but I guess I was really on a roll this trip. 
After that stress I needed to go back to the hotel and relax. We checked out and sat down to enjoy our Dr Peppers and to wait on P Nung to come and pick us up for our afternoon outing.
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