A recent talk with @PaulPavlinovich about general dark tourism sites, just reminds me about few essential sites of dark tourism in Cambodia. I feel sorrow just to go and visit these places, sometimes even sick coming back. But like Paul mentioned, we must treasure these places for a collective memory of why war is horrible and such mistakes should never be repeated.
Long time ago, when I met westerners, I was surprised they don’t know about Cambodia unless I told them you heard of the Killing Fields? They nodded and said yes. So, this is where I came from. But I don’t want people to know Cambodia from that perspective. I want people to know Cambodia as for more beautiful things like:
- The most beautiful beaches such as ‘Koh Rong’,
- The country that has beautiful temples such as ‘Angkor Wat’ or ‘Koh Ker’,
- The country of ‘Tom Raiders’,
- The country of marvelous ‘Royal Ballet Dance’ or
- The country that has a vibrant ‘Phare Circus performance’, or
- The best ‘rice country’ or
- The ‘most friendly country’ in the world,
- The best ‘pepper country’ or
- The best ‘silk product country’…
Dark tourism, (known as black tourism, thanatourism or grief tourism) is the type of tourism activities that are associated with death or tragedy. Those activities involve visiting various sites or experiencing that of:
- Dark exhibitions,
- Dark dungeons,
- Dark resting places,
- Dark shrines,
- Dark camps of genocide,
- Dark disasters (holocaust tourism, disaster tourism, grave tourism, cold war tourism, nuclear tourism, prison and persecution site tourism. Destinations of such can be found in here
Cambodia is also in the list with the notorious Killing Fields (maybe surf for the Killing Fields in Youtube to watch how they portraited this). We had suffered the dark side of the history – about 40 years ago. The so-called Khmer Rouge (who used Red Scarf all the time with black suits) ruled and is responsible for an auto genocidal era from 1975-1979. Throughout the country, about 3 millions of Cambodians were killed in this civil war - scholars, leaders, people from all walks of life were here. They were tortured to deaths, died of hungers and died of false accusations and so on. It was throughout the country but the destinations where highlighted in here are the tortured centers where mass graves are seen with so much evidences (got no heart to take photos while visiting - too much).
The major dark tourism sites are located majority in the capital Phnom Penh, where people were more educated and civilized, then were evacuated from the city, to rural areas, tortured to death in the prison. Those destinations (categorized by province) include:
- Phnom Penh: Tuol Sleng – S-21 prison memorial museum, The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek (very sad - must not visit them together)
- Siem Reap: Landmine Museum - showcase of guns made into statues
- Oddar Meanchey: Pol Pot’s cremation site in Anlong Veng & Ta Mok’s house (the last place where the KR leaders escaped to)
- Takeo: Kraing Tachan Security Center located at Kraing Tachan temple.
- Preah Vihear: Choam te site, along the border of Preah Vihear and Thailand – still landmines
Above photo is a series of events. Look here for bigger size and clear image.
It has been about 40 years but seems very recent and people that lost their beloved ones can never forget it. They cannot even bring themselves to talk about how horrible it was.
Notes: all these places are accessible by the people with disabilities - as they are parts of their losing. Many of Cambodian people with disabilities are the result of wars. A part from foreign visitors, locals also visiting these places.