What people do to each other

You can't really come to Cambodia without coming face to face with the reality of man's inhumanity to man. You could try to come & just see temples & monks; if you just spend a couple of days at Angkor Wat maybe it would even be possible to escape without a glimpse of the horrors this country went through just a short time ago.  But that would be doing yourself, and the millions of people that died either from US bombs or at the hands of the Zkhmer Rouge, a disservice.  I admittedly haven't visited any of the holocaust memorials or museums in either my own country or my 2nd home (Germany), and maybe I should. But that happened a generation befor I was born, and the devastation here happened entirely in my lifetime, while I was a happy-go-lucky teenager & young adult, apparently fairly oblivious to it all. I think that makes it feel more ominous, & makes me feel more shame for not paying attention.
If you spend any time at all in this country, you will be forced to see the damage, or hear the stories.  Every local you meet inevitably mentions it; not because they're proud or whining, but because it's an unavoidable part of each individual's story.  Ask them where they grew up, they may say an orphanage because their parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Ask if they have a big family, the answer may be, "no, all dead." Walking to dinner, the beggar you pass and try not to look in the eye has no legs, because they lost them to a landmine.
So we went to the Tuol Sleng museum, a former primary school that the Khmer Rouge turned into their main center of torture, known as S21.  The 1st building is fairly tame; dorm style rooms filled with boards full of photos of the inmates (just their arrival mugshots, nothing scary).  Though the volume of photos was sobering, and the number of little children sickening, it was a soft start. In the next building, though, you see original cells built from wood or bricks, and more photos of the dead and tortured, these not sparing your breakfast or the victims' dignity or suffering.  It was brutally hot that morning, so I could barely breathe as I walked from 1 room to the next, feeling  sick of looking, guilty for wanting to stop, guiltier still for having been worried about prom dresses and football games while it was happening. And not least, angry & frustrated by the knowledge that much of the power in modern Cambodia is held by men with Khmer Rouge connections & history.  Even Hun Sen, the current prime minister, was part of it.  It's a scenario all too typical in the developing world - the most horrific butchers are tossed out and replaced by their henchmen who "only followed orders," left to rule unopposed. The international community tolerates them because they're externally non-threatening, have no real resources, and aren't spreading any undesirable theology.  The populace tolerates them because they're at least the "devil you know," & because opposition can get you killed.
We used the heat as an excuse to not travel on to see the "killing fields," but it really had more to do with being maxed out on disgust.