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Published: January 18th 2009
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Killing time in the Killing Fields
The capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, has a way of growing on you. All of the high speed hustle and bustle of Bangkok, minus the high rise buildings, plus a higher ratio of motorbikes to cars. It’s not a beautiful place, but it’s a place of intense emotional feeling. From stunning Buddhist temples to depressing monuments to genocide, one morning tuk-tuk ride took us on an excursion into the deepest chasms of human nature.
Our driver, Lee, had arranged to pick us up at 8:00 a.m., so we would have enough time too see some sights before our 12:00 bus ride to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat). Arriving promptly at 7:50, we were awakened by knocking on our door and broken English.
“Jake! Jake! Are you up? Time to go! We go Jake!”
Little did Lee know, we had a wonderful experience with “Roy the rat” that night. Our room was a rickety shack built on stilts and a platform above the Bueng Kak lake. It was a cool little backpacker spot, just dirty as all hell and slightly infested with rats...
…3:00 a.m.- Meg elbows me in
the jugular. “Jake! There’s a rat in our room!”
Oh boy.
Considering our last experience with the alien bedbugs, a little rat nibbling on a cube of cheese seemed insignificant at that point. I got up, found my trusty Maglite, and low and behold- no rat! It was under the floorboards (of which you could see the water underneath through the cracks). Meg couldn’t understand how I could just blow off the fact that the squeaking of a rat that was reverberating through our room like a bullhorn. “Trust me, a rat is far less likely to crawl on your face than a bug,” I said in a comforting manner. She didn’t buy it. I received more high elbows to the noggin than an aggressive hockey player that night… Back to Lee!...
Our first stop was the Killing Fields. A mass grave of an estimated 17,000 Cambodians who were killed during the fanatic Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1978. An estimated 1.6 MILLION were killed during the whole period. The nation has yet to fully recover from this atrocity, and seeing these places was critical to understanding the depth of Cambodian history- exemplified by
its current state of constant recovery and struggle to cope with globalization. (I recommend renting “The Killing Fields” at Blockbuster to get a hint of what it was like in Cambodia under the maniacal Pol Pot authority). In a nutshell, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, overthrew the government and wanted to start a new society. One that was absolutely void of freedom, and consisted forced labor to create a profitable rice exportation industry. He killed anyone who wasn’t “pure,” he fed them one bowl of rice a day, and claimed that 1975 was “year zero.”
At the killing fields, you could feel the eerie presence lurking around the ditches and mounds of this God forsaken place. And the monument housing the 9000 skulls? Yeah, much like a circus fire, it was intense. Seeing a skull staring at you with a blunt impact through the frontal lobe tends to stick with you.
Next stop was the Tuol Sleng Museum. An elementary school that Pol Pot turned into a prison that acted as a detention/torture/execution center. One hundred prisoners were executed her per day. Remarkably well preserved, some of the cell floors still had visible blood
stains. The pictures on the wall were truly gut wrenching. I found myself being thankful for being blessed with the life I’ve had.
Lee brought us to the bus depot and we were off to Siem Reap. Before we got off the tuk-tuk, we wrote our names on a piece of paper and Lee contacted one of his buddies to give us the royal treatment. A sign with “Welcome Meg Jake” and an eager driver awaited our arrival in Siem Reap. During the six hour ride, our bus stopped at a local market, where women were selling fried tarantulas and many other strange insects. I had to try one, given Meg and I are huge fans of “Bizarre Foods” on the travel channel. I went for a cricket. Kind of dry, not too flavorful. I’d eat another. Someday. Meg was chased around the parking lot by an evil little girl wielding live tarantulas that were a good four inches in diameter.
Siem Reap turned out to be our favorite town in Cambodia so far. It had a very majestic feel to it, being the home of the mighty Angkor Wat temples. It was old meets new here. Across
from the “old market” was a westernized street of restaurants and pubs and the traveler atmosphere was relaxed and fun. Super cheap food stalls lined the streets. Our place was a stall on a curb that sold 50 cent smoothies and one dollar meals like sweet and sour pork fried rice, vegetable noodle soup, etc… Perfect for the budget travelers, especially the ones who get five dollar rooms and sleep with the rats.
We did, however, splurge on a fifteen dollar room and it was like five star treatment. The dollar really goes a long way in this part of the world, and Cambodia is no joke when it comes to shoestring travel options. In the morning, we got a tuk-tuk and negotiated a price for him to drive us to and around Angkor Wat… all day! His name was Mr. Pibb. A fine gentleman that wheeled us around the temples, from 9 a.m. until sunset, cost us a whopping twelve dollars. For private transportation, a quasi guide who waited for us as we walked around the different temples and jumped to attention and strapped on his helmet the second we walked out, for about $1.20 an hour.
I almost felt bad, but Mr. Pibb seemed very content with his cool twelve bucks. We surprised him and threw in a three dollar tip. His eyes lit up like a schoolboy on Christmas morning. That was pretty gratifying, I must say. Thanks Mr. Pibb., wherever you are.
The temples of Angkor were an experience like stepping through the pages of a history book, into a glorious era of devout artistry and religious festivity. In the hallways, next to the relief carvings, you could almost hear the celebratory voices through thousands of years of enduring legacy that these solid rock temples have endured. The temples were built by Khmer (the long-established word for Cambodians) kings between the 9th and 13th centuries. The temple Bayon was my favorite. With 216 colossal heads staring at you, the feeling of somebody watching you is highly present here. Ta Prohm was a close second. The trees are overtaking the architecture, which creates a real visibly metaphorical cycle: man conquers nature to build, and nature fights back to destroy. In this case, the destruction is breathtakingly beautiful. The roots look like something out of a story book and their sheer might is put
on display like the eternally flexed muscles of a monster, digging into the ground. Angkor Wat is the grand daddy of them all. Fortified walls surround the famous spires and central tower. Inside the walls is an insane 800 meter relief carving that wraps around the whole structure, depicting the “churning of the ocean of milk.” The builder used this shrine as his funerary temple dedicated to Vishnu; the carving is exquisitely detailed, representing churning of the sea to extract the elixir of immortality. This guy had the right idea. His immortal legacy lives on, and then some.
We hung out in Siem Reap for a few more days just because we liked the feel of the place. We found an awesome rooftop pool on a hotel, who let us in for a couple bucks. I write this from Phnom Pehn; we had to come back here on the way to our next destination… Saigon a.k.a. Ho Chi Min City!!! Otherwise known as NAM!
Ah Kuhn and Lee Hai
(Thank you and goodbye in Cambodian)
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