newkidontheblock wrote: ↑Sat Feb 06, 2021 11:07 pm Went there twice. The second time, a few years ago. It didn’t seem as gritty and scary as before. Is it just old age playing tricks on me? Of course, the ‘abandoned’ hotel on Bokor didn’t seem as scary as before either. Missus used to watch S21 from her kitchen window every day.

I've been there so many times I couldn't count. I was absolutely shocked the first time I went there more than 20 years ago. Since then loads of friends and family have been through and I often find myself showing them around. It doesn't bother me at all now, I think of it the same way I'd think of any formal penal institution. The Tower of London, Kilmainham Jail etc. What isn't really explained too well is that S21 was the central prison for the security system, and a major proportion of the inmates were Kampuchean Communist cadres and their families caught up in purges. A large proportion of Division 703 who were tasked with running the prisons ended up incarcerated themselves and dead. It's main importance is the amount of evidence that was left behind. Boueng Trabek high school was used as a prison for Cambodians who were encouraged to return from abroad, many were exterminated. Yet that school just continues on and somehow doesn't have the stigma of Tuol Sleng. Nowadays unruly prisoners in provincial prisons are still locked up in the same sort of iron cuffs attached to a long bar. Prisons were always shit here, and a whole lot of prisoners died from Corvée labor building the original road to Bokor. The whole country is covered in ghosts.