I know I know, I'm really behind in my log. For a quick recap, I've spent the past 4 days in Siem Reap, Cambodia, the city where Angkor Wat is located. (Angkor Wat, the temples in Tomb Raider and Mortal Kombat movies?). I spent 3 days exploring the largest temple complex in the world, as well as visiting a real floating village and a landmine museum founded by this incredible individual that made me feel absolutely disgusted to be an American (as America is one of the largest producers of landmines in the world, next to China and Russia). But more on Angkor Wat and the landmine museum later.

Now I'm in the capital city of Cambodia in Pnomh Penh. Today, I went to S-21, a formery primary school that was turned into an interrogation center by the Khmer Rouge. Out of the 16,000 that went in, only 7 survived. The rest were sent to the Killing Fields nearby. I visited that as well, and saw the stupa that they create, piled with the skulls and bones of victims. During the Khmer Rouge reign, they figure approximately 15 - 25% of the population was killed; estimates range from 700,00 to as high as 2 million.

I took pictures at S-21 as well as the Killing Fields; the more photographic evidence there is that something like this occurred, the less people can deny that it happened.

What was remarkable was that the Khmer Rouge kept meticulous records; they took pictures of every single person they brought into S-21. Despite the fact that some of the victims knew exactly what they were getting into, some of them were still smiling for the camera.

I'm still digesting the enormity of it, and what I think about it. I'm not quite sure yet. The Killing Fields was interesting in that Cambodians have a different concept of reverence. While I was there, children from the nearby school followed me around the whole time, asking for money. At the same time, there were kids swimming and playing in the stream that ran right through the Killing Fields. A guy slept in a hammock while his chickens ran around the fields, pecking for insects. While the site wasn't scattered with bones like it was a few years ago, there was this one tree that had bones piled inside of it, along with scraps of clothing from the victims and incense being burned for the souls. The chickens were pecking among the rags and bones, and no one came to chase them away. But I shooed them off.

It is a protected site; they asked foreign tourists to pay $2 USD as an admission fee, though I'm sure that none of it goes to the protection of the fields.

What do the Cambodians think of their recent past? Most seem to just want to look forward and concentrate on the future. 70% of the current Cambodian population is under the age of 30, a fact which is clear when you walk the streets of Cambodia. Almost everyone who remembers the reign of the Khmer Rouge was either a member or a victim; no one was left on the sidelines. Friends against friends, family members against family members. How do you deal with that?