ride south of Siem Reap. Although the poverty is still evident here to a certain extent, Phnom Penh is very much a modern metropolis and feels very far removed from the laid back scene in Siem Reap. About 15 km outside of downtown Phnom Penh you find the Choeung Ek Killing Fields. During the Khmer Rouge genocide of the late 1970s, over 17000 civilians were tortured at the S-21 security prison and then taken to the extermination camp at Choeung Ek. 
The victims were bludgeoned to death and buried in mass graves. Once the killings had finally ended, the remains of 8985 people were exhumed from over 80 mass graves, some of which contained upwards of 400 battered and beaten bodies.
This is the Memorial Stupa, a tower that holds
over 8000 skulls that were exhumed. The skulls are arranged by age and gender and are literally piled from the base of the tower all the way to the top.
You can enter the Stupa and get a close look at all of this. It’s really eerie to stand inches away from a massive tower of human skulls. I’ve witnessed some unnerving images in the Holocaust museums in Jerusalem and Washington, DC, but seeing so many skulls, many of which were exhumed from the remains of young children, was still pretty chilling.
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