Not nice, obviously, but to come to Cambodia and not visit this site to pay one's respects would simply be wrong.
It's not quite what you would expect either. You walk around beautifully well kept silent tranquil gardens with pretty flowers and palm trees on the well worn paths between little fenced off areas listening to the birds singing. 
Then you read the signs that tell you that this is where the trucks stopped that bought the silent and terrified blindfolded prisoners for execution.... And over here , this is the tree where a loudhailer hung that just played loud monotonous sounds to cover the screams of the dying.
It's not quite what you would expect either. You walk around beautifully well kept silent tranquil gardens with pretty flowers and palm trees on the well worn paths between little fenced off areas listening to the birds singing. 
Then you read the signs that tell you that this is where the trucks stopped that bought the silent and terrified blindfolded prisoners for execution.... And over here , this is the tree where a loudhailer hung that just played loud monotonous sounds to cover the screams of the dying.
And over here was a mass grave where 400 bodies were found. And over here another 160 headless bodies of women and children. And over there, another. and another, and another.
The Area itself only the size of a rugby field, but then they tell you that there is an area behind this, about 4 times the size over which the mass graves have simply still not been excavated. 
And then of course the massive Stupa in the middle. It looks beautiful from a distance, until you see what is inside.
The levels just keep going up and up until you can't see any more.... some are labeled "women between 15 and 25" or "Men aged 30"; others are not labeled at all - it is impossible trying to identify them all. And at the bottom of this tower of incomprehensible hundreds of staring skulls is a pile of clothes, the clothes of the victims in a tiny jumbled heap, like their bodies were piled in the pits surrounding the Stupa. This small pile somehow brings home the reality of the horror more than the skulls; the only belongings of the nameless thousands.
The levels just keep going up and up until you can't see any more.... some are labeled "women between 15 and 25" or "Men aged 30"; others are not labeled at all - it is impossible trying to identify them all. And at the bottom of this tower of incomprehensible hundreds of staring skulls is a pile of clothes, the clothes of the victims in a tiny jumbled heap, like their bodies were piled in the pits surrounding the Stupa. This small pile somehow brings home the reality of the horror more than the skulls; the only belongings of the nameless thousands.
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