We visited the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh and the nearby Cheuong Ek Killing Fields. It's impossible to do justice to these places in words. The flowering vegetation has added an ironic beauty to the Killing Fields, but like most cemetaries, it actually seems right in the final resting ground for over 20,000 men, women, and children. A stupa was erected to commemorate the victims. The inside of the stupa is stacked with shelves upon shelves lined with human skulls excavated from the mass graves.
Trying to comprehend the brutality of the Khmer Rouge boggles the mind. The regime executed over 2 million of their own people out of a country of 7 million during 1975 - 1979. This has had a profound impact on the population of Cambodia. 50 percent of the population is younger than 18 years old. The country is recovering, but it is still plagued with problems. Poverty is apparent throughout the streets of Phnom Penh.
Tonight we visit the temples of Angkor, built between the 8th and 13th centuries. Siem Reap had a population of a million people during this time, while London had only 50,000. It's remarkable what kind of changes a country can go through.
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