A few days into our stay in Phnom Penh, we decided to go to the genocide museum. This was where many of the victims of the genocide were tortured and interrogated. We all expected it to be extremely disturbing, as it was. We waited for a guide, whose English was impossible to understand. When we started she took us to the cells first. We saw a bed frame that was torn up, where some were tied to and tortured. Prisoners slept in tiny brick cells on the floor and were chained to the wall. The guide showed us what happened there almost every day. Prisoners were interrogated, even though they had no information. The group running the tortures, the Khmer Rouge, did it because they wanted everyone to restart life. So they killed off anyone with education or said they worked for the CIA. The most common way of interrogating was tying their legs to a wooden post ten feet in the air that was sideways so they would hang upside down from a rope. After they passed out, the interrogator would stick their head in a bucket of disgusting, diseased, old water. Eventually they would wake up.

After that we looked through more of the cells and torture rooms. Sometimes they would yank the victims nails and teeth out. Some were given at least forty lashes a day. The smart ones would make up lies and stories during the interrogation just to stop the torturing. Most that did this, ended up at the Killing Fields. But here only seven of over one thousand prisoners survived, and two are alive today. We took photos with one and bought his book. That was the one of the many disturbing things I've seen on this trip, and more are yet to come.

When I was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, we had a tuk tuk take us back to our hotel from the genocide museum. Of course he tried to get us to book another tourist attraction with him. As I always had in situations like this, I walked away, but secretly listened. It was always so frustrating. I heard the same lines over and over again every time this happened. "Oh, we don't know what our plan is," or "We don't have a schedule. We have to make one." The seller's response to almost all of those reactions was,"You make schedule, you come here, we arrange."

Oh, sorry, "We don't have time to make a schedule," etc etc.

But, my luck had run out and my parents agreed to let him take us to the Killing Fields. The drive was horrendous. It was bumpy and we were swerving everywhere. On top of that there's no laws on how to drive, no rules of the road, and no one bothers with a driver's license.

When we arrived we put on headphones and listened to a guy talk about the Killing Fields. Basically they took people to the fields to kill them. It was weird. They had a collection of skulls and they told you how they killed them. There were lots of interesting stories told by the man in the head phones. The victims were told it was year zero, and that every Cambodian would be equal. Yet, they were worked to death while their leaders ate crackers. They killed anyone with intelligence. They would ask if anyone was a doctor, or an educated person. If they said yes they clapped for them and shook hands. Though later they had their throats slit. The leader of the Khmer Rouge and this genocide was Pol Pot. He had only uneducated workers and favored them. This genocide killed about 1/4 of the population in Cambodia. The Killing Fields were hideous, but not the worst I had seen. The prison where Cambodians were tortured day after day was worse.

Listening to the audio guide and looking at a mass grave