Photographs on this page are graphic in nature. Viewer discretion advised.
This tourist sight is located in Phnom Penh. For tourist information about Phnom Penh, go to Phnom Penh Travel Guide. To prepare for a trip to Cambodia, read also the Cambodia Travel Guide.
Choeung Ek is the best known site of the Killing Fields, the place where the Khmer Rouge regime executed about 17,000 people, between 1975 and 1979. Choeung Ek was formerly an orchard and a Chinese graveyard. It is located 17km south of Phnom Penh. I visited it with some friends in 2002, a few months before I founded AsiaExplorers. In 2008 I revisited the site. We visited the mass graves where the bodies of over eight thousand victims of the Khmer Rouge atrocities were discovered. Many of them were inmates from the Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh.
There is a strange memorial in Choeung Ek. It is in the form of a memorial stupa, and what makes it unique is that it houses more than five thousand human skulls. You can view the skulls neatly arranged by age, through the acrylic glass display of the stupa. Walking through the mass grave site, we could easily come across bone fragments. The place feels surreally serene, and I was more overwhelmed with curiosity than a sense of death and horror. I did take some photographs in Cheong Ek, and am showing them here, with the ulmost respect to the victims, but feel the necessity to showcase this particularly brutal chapter of Cambodian history, that we may all learn never to repeat history.
Photos at Cheoung Ek Killing Fields
Hut with bone fragments of mass grave at Choeung Ek.
Tree where children are beaten to death.
Bone fragments on the ground near my foot.
Mausoleum of Skulls at Choeung Ek.
Skulls at Choeung Ek Killing Fields.
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AsiaExplorers is researched and written by Timothy Tye. Reasonable care is taken to check and verify the accuracy of the content. AsiaExplorers disclaims responsibility for any inconvenience, mishap, injury or death resulting from following the tips and advice provided directly or indirectly by this website. All pages may be printed out for your own personal, non-commercial use. You may use the information on this website on your blog or website so long as you place a dofollow link back to the page in AsiaExplorers where it appears. Photographs not credited to a third party belong to Timothy Tye and may not be reused in any form unless you are first given permission. Write in to inquire if interested. Third party photographs are governed by their respective licenses. To contact Tim, write to the following email address:
