Two days ago we arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and yesterday we had a full day to ourselves to explore the city.

Since we only have limited time in Cambodia, and we heard all about the history of the Khmer Rouge, we dedicated the entire day to learning and understanding what happened in the years of 1976-1979.

We first went to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It's not the typical museum you would imagine because the museum itself was the very grounds of the detention centre where 20,000 people were tortured for confessions.

It used to be a school for children but converted into a detention centre for prisoners. And it is only one of the few detention centres in the country....

It's unimaginable to think that we were walking on the grounds where so much of the horrors occurred. With an audio guide in hand, we walked and listened, read the exhibits, saw the photographs and learnt what the Khmer Rouge did to their own people.

I didn't take many photos, in fact just 3, out of respect for the dead. But these two were some that caused me to gasp.

Building D, where there was so much barb wire.

A closer look.

The soldiers added it because a man jumped from the top floor to commit suicide. They wanted to prevent more from happening.

It's pretty sick. Because in the other buildings, they did other things to cage their people up like animals.

It was here when I realised that the Khmer Rouge had been accepted as the legitimate party for Cambodia in the UN till 1991. Nobody had realised till then that they had committed so much atrocities. Sweden was one country that had even supported the Pol Pot regime because they had believed the propaganda they were shown when their delegates visited the country. They refused to believe the "exaggerations" of torture by the party and even accepted it as necessary for the party's rise to power. Even the US, Australia and other major Western powers accepted them as the party for Cambodia. It was insane how the whole world was deceived by Pol Pot and his cronies.

And I just couldn't understand the idiocy of the whole regime. It's freaking senseless. All the killings.. all the deaths.

After 4 hours at Tuol Sleng, we headed to Choeuk Ek Killing Fields, 15 km away from the city centre where they killed the prisoners held at the S-21 centre, which was the original name for the detention centre at Tuol Sleng.

This was really hard to imagine because through the audio guide, they said soldiers smashed children and babies on this tree. A man who once stumbled on to it saw brains and hair stuck to its trunk...

You can see the many bracelets people hung on this tree and other graves in remembrance of the innocent lives that were taken.

Many of the mass graves dug up.

We could still see remnants of clothing and bones there ya know? It's... too surreal.

But the fields are now a place of peacefulness, with birds chirping and greens surrounding the area. Hard to imagine the screams and cries of the people, not so long ago - 30 years back.

No wonder the Khmer leaders were only prosecuted recently and the trial still ongoing.