Rusty snapped a few interesting pictures as we were traveling. We really liked the looks of the KFC's in Cambodia. Most of ours in Thailand are either in the mall or shopping centers. There aren't very many foreign restaurants like that in Cambodia yet, but the Asian holding company of KFC, The Pizza Company, and Swensen's are here!
We drove to what used to be a longan orchard but was turned into the extermination camp of Choeung Ek of the Khmer Rouge. Between 1975 and 1978 about 17,000 men, women, children, and infants were transported from the Tuol Sleng prison to these fields to be killed.The remains of 8985 people were exhumed in 1980 from mass graves, but 49 of the 129 mass graves have been left untouched.
Many of the bodies were bound and blindfolded, and there was one grave filled with women who were unclothed--victims of many types of abuse before finally being killed. Some weren't even dead when they were buried.
Pieces of clothing still come up to the top of the ground, and it's still possible to find bones and teeth on the grounds.
The Khmer Rouge was concerned about the amount of bullets it was taking to carry out this genocide so they developed other methods of killing in order to save. These tree limbs are extremely sharp and were used like saw blades to cut people's necks. 
For babies they beat them against this tree. That may be quite blunt, but there's just no easy way to describe the horrors that happened here. 
In the middle of the field, they erected a memorial stupa in 1988. It has more than 8000 skulls that are arranged according to sex and age.
The park is a peaceful place now, but that masks the horrors that were carried out here. You have to remember, all of this happened about three decades ago...within the lifetime of most of my readers.Overall the park was really well done. Visitors are given a headset to listen to the audio tour, and you can choose which selections to play based upon how much time you have to spend at the park. Of course if you're interested in history, you'll want to play all of the selections as I did. I think I only missed a couple because everyone else was ready and it was time to go to the airport.
Throughout the Khmer Rouge reign of terror from 1975 - 1979, approximately 1.7 million people were killed although Cambodian estimates are closer to 3 million. Many of the leaders are now on trial--most blaming the Vietnamese for the killings and refusing to take responsibilities for the atrocities they carried out. Most feel that even if they did the killing, it was ok because they only did it to save their own lives.
What should be sobering is the fact that in the world today, a lot of people use this same kind of logic to justify the killing of innocent people all around the world. We have to learn, study, and continue to share the only message that will change people--the message of Jesus Christ.
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