05-08-08 Phnom Penh Cambodia: 2130 hrs. In my room. Today was one hell of an experience that I will no doubt have to investigate further. I went to the one of the many “killing fields” in Cambodia today. The one I went to is perhaps the best known and most visited. All there is now, besides the massive tower holding thousands of skulls, is what’s left of the graves bodies were dumped into. The rains have come and moved the soil so everywhere you look, there are piles of partially buried clothes now at the surface. Bone fragments, teeth and buttons are everywhere. I looked down at one point and there was part of a jaw with teeth still intact. In the less traveled parts of the place, I went looking around to find thick patches of vegetation, always growing though bits of clothing, the bodies underneath no doubt enriching the soil. It’s been 30 years and bones remain. I found a bit of blue twine used to bind hands together. There are places where people have put newly found bone fragments, small piles of bones are carefully leaned up against trees and other things. After that I went to S21, the prison where thousands went in and 7 came out. There’s a lot you can read about the place. In some of the rooms you can see one of Ho Vin Tay’s photographs as he found the room years ago, with the decomposing body still chained to the bed frame. The frame is still there and so are the remnants of the blood and body fluids. There’s several rooms of hundreds of mug shots of the men and women who were brought to S21, tortured and taken out to be executed. Why, they even have their own waterboarding device there! It’s how they got people to admit to all kinds of things, just to make it stop. What do you call the people who do this kind of thing? Yeah. I am defintely going to be spending more time in Cambodia.