One site not on the archaeological itinerary was the Tuol Sleng Museum. But a visit to the former high school left a profound appreciation for the endurance of Angkor monuments and the resurgence of the Cambodian spirit. The three-story structure housed Tuol Svey Prey High School until April 1975, when students were forced from its classrooms. The Khmer Rouge turned its halls into Security Prison 21, where it interrogated and tortured some 20,000 people before sending them to the infamous Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Today, the sunlit walls are covered with photographs of S-21 victims.
Display cases hold remnant torture tools.
The last chamber displays a searing wall-size map of Cambodia made of human skulls and bones. Stark, shocking and powerful, this simple structure stands as a reminder of the atrocities under Pol Pot s regime and a hope that it is a relic of the past. Setting the stage for our Angkor exploration, Jeffrey Riegel, a professor of East Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley, led the group through the National Museum of Cambodia. The terra-cotta structure, constructed in 1917 in traditional Khmer style, houses a significant collection of bronze and stone statuary, dating from A.D. 540. through the Angkorian period of the 13th century. Mr. Riegel pointed out bronze rain drums and the Torso of Durga, a seventh-century piece often compared to the Venus de Milo.