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Published: April 26th 2010
My eagerness to experience Cambodia could hardly been described. The Lonely Planet describes visiting the country as an adventure as opposed to a holiday, there was the feeling that I couldn’t possibly know what to expect. Cambodia’s ancient history was glorious, ruling what now includes Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. This age led to the construction of the Angkor temples, another “Eighth Wonder of the World” which I was really excited about seeing. More recently, Cambodia has been to hell and back with the legacy of civil war and, worse still, the Khmer Rouge’s years in power still at large. Until recently Cambodia was one of the poorest 20 countries in the world, the countryside remains littered with landmines. Many of the Khmer people today will still have vivid memories of a brutal regime which we in the west learn so little about. This was apparent when getting the bus from the border to Siem Reap. Off our main highway were dirt tracks leading to villages. Wooden huts built on stilts (to cope with rainy season) lined the way. It seemed like a purely agrarian place.
Maybe these impressions have something to do with why Siem Reap surprised me so much.
$1 a night
Mattress, mosquito net. What more do you need?Siem Reap is a city that is effectively used as a base camp from which to explore the Angkor temples. Driving in, I was amazed to see a plethora of five star hotels and luxury resorts. Even the backpacker district looked relatively smart. We found ourselves a very lower budget hostel - an amazing $1 a night! For this we got a mattress on a bamboo platform, a mosquito net, a roof, a place to deposit our valuables and a shared bathroom. Who needs walls and a door anyway? A fan would maybe have been appreciated, but I couldn’t complain at $1 a night. We arrived at around 8pm, so we had a bit of time to check out Siem Reap. Once again I was surprised by the development. The aptly named “Pub Street” was crammed with decent restaurants and nice bars, although it was still nice and cheap. Cambodia offered me beers for 50 cents throughout the trip. However, we barely paid attention to this and got an early night after our journey. It was over 36 hours since we’d left our hostel in Vang Vieng and we had to be fresh and raring to go the next; we
were going to see Angkor Wat.
Cambodia is so proud of Angkor Wat. It’s the emblem on their flag, it appears on their money and at the border there is a model of it welcoming you. Siem Reap actually translates to “Siamese Defeated” from when Cambodia successfully defeated the Thais and so claimed the region of Angkor back. I had no idea how huge the Angkor complex is. It’s most famous temple is Angkor Wat, but that was merely the focal point of a city which some people estimate may have once supported up to a million people. With our day tickets we were only ever going to see the most famous and important sights, but it is possible for tourists to get lost in the place for a week. Many do. Instead we bought out day ticket for $20. During our tuk-tuk ride there we went past many minor ruins and under a few ancient archways. Set in the jungle, the whole area looked like the sort of place where you’d find Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. Indeed Tomb Raider was filmed around Angkor. Our first stop was the Bayon temple. It was huge, with faces carved into
the rocks. We were able to wander around there for a long time and check it out fully. There was no sort of historical explanation behind anything which could have added to the experience but these were quite incredible places to get lost in.
Our second stop was Ta Phrohm. A great battle was taking place between manmade wonder and nature, with enormous tree roots ripping apart sections of this temple. In similar fashion to Bayon, there was little description with anything so we just allowed ourselves to get lost in wonder once again and climb over a few ruins at times. After this it was time to see the famous Angkor Wat. It was by far the biggest and best maintained of all the sights, with lots of awesome carvings all up the walls and loaded with statues. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime managed to leave a mark here too. Many statues had been vandalised, with lots of Buddha’s decapitated to ensure that the people would be worshipping Pol Pot and nothing else. We got to climb up to one of the towers and look out on the awesome countryside and ruins below. From here we
were left with one more sight; sunset at Phnom Bakheng. It sounded like such an awesome idea. After our climb up, it was a bit of a disappointment. Firstly you have to get there early for a good spot, but once you’re up there all you can do is wait. I was expecting to see the Angkor complex stretch beyond me in an incredible panorama, but in reality you could see Angkor Wat in the distance and not so much else. Then imagine our disappointment to see the sun disappear behind a thick layer of cloud at 5.30pm never to be seen again. It couldn’t take away from a great day in magnificent surroundings. It hasn't escaped me how little I've written about Angkor and how utterly inadequate my words are to describe the place, so I've uploaded lots of pictures. Just imagine the surroundings for a full day.
That night we had the chance to relax in Siem Reap a little more. It is devoid of its own sights; however the local people have done a remarkable job of making fit the bill perfectly for backpackers. It’s full of markets, decent places to stay and it has a
massively relaxed atmosphere about it. You can buy week long tickets to Angkor, and I can see why people do it. Siem Reap is the perfect place to unwind after a day’s sightseeing. I imagine the near future is bright for this small city, if not Cambodia. In reality the entire place felt a world different to the Cambodia I expected, with the only sign of its recent history coming in the form of landmine victims playing local music together on the street for local charities. That evening we wondered back to Pub Street and had an amazing Mexican meal for $5 before meeting, by chance, 2 other exchange students from CityU; Graham and Tosh. We went for a few drinks in “Angkor What?”, Siem Reap’s original tourist bar. By far the most expensive day on my trip, coming in at just under £40!
The issue with Siem Reap is that if you’re not seeing Angkor, there isn’t so much to do. The next day we ended up by a swimming pool which was nice, but we didn’t really do anything. One thing worth of note, I tried some tradition Khmer food loaded with 10-15 cloves of garlic. I
thought it was delicious, which proves the theory that you can never too much garlic. We looked around the market at night. I felt largely disconnected from the country’s recent history so I bought “First they Killed my Father”, the memories of a 5 year old girl who survived the Khmer Rouge regime.
The next morning we had our bus to the capital, Phnom Penh. I was rather nervous about Phnom Penh, largely because every traveller we met in Siem Reap who had been largely came back with negative comments. It was supposed to be a large, unclean city which lacked the safety and relaxed atmosphere of Siem Reap. At the same time, I was excited. I felt like the Cambodia I’d seen so far was a world apart from the reality of modern Cambodia. I read my new book most of the way; the descriptions of villages and Khmer living appeared to be entirely accurate today. Events written in the book took place from 1975-1979. 5 hours later and I was making the same observation about Phnom Penh too.
Our first impressions of Phnom Penh matched up to the reports we’d heard from other travellers. I’d heard
of a side to tourism in Cambodia that involved activities such as shooting animals at ranges and going to drug dens in slums. The Lonely Planet even spoke of child abuse related to tourism, and throughout Cambodia there were signs telling us how to report such activities. It all seemed a world away in Siem Reap. Just setting foot in Phnom Penh, it somehow made more sense. Our tuk-tuk towards the hostel area went through areas a little rougher around the edges than any destinations I’d been to before. We arrived at our lakeside hostel. It sounds so romantic, but the lake was not in the slightest bit beautiful and was surrounded by slums. We upgraded on Siem Reap significantly by paying $2 for the night. With that we got a door, 4 walls, a fan and a bathroom! It didn’t take us long to realise that this particular hostel was also seconding as a brothel and a drug den; the first thing we did after checking in was book our bus to Sihanoukville for the next evening.
That did mean we had a full morning and a little extra in Phnom Penh. It was to be a day
as unforgettable as tubing in Laos or looking around the temples as Angkor, only for entirely different reasons. We were to visit the Killing Fields in Choeung Ek and the former Tuol Sleng prison now turned genocide museum. I’ll give a brief lesson on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. During the civil they were a communist party backed by the Chinese. During this civil war which overlapped with the Vietnam War, 2 million refugees fled to Phnom Penh. When the Khmer Rouge finally won in 1975, they had their ideal of a pure, communist agrarian society. Cities were considered evil and corrupted with western influence. Dates were reset to year zero, currency was abolished. Cambodia effectively went back to the stone ages. Many died on the road after the forceful evacuation of cities. Once set up in rural villages, they were forced into effective slave labour to produce rice. Vast amounts of this rice and other products, however, were not back given to the population but sold to China in return for arms with which to fight the Vietnamese. Anybody considered a threat to the Khmer Rouge regime would be arrested and inevitably executed. This included the entire educated
class, including doctors and teachers. Speaking a foreign language or having glasses would be enough for you to be viewed as a threat and hence killed. Minorities were persecuted too, as were all religions. If you’d ever heard any information that went against the official party line, your life was in danger. Through a mixture of famine, disease and this brutal repression about 2 million Khmers lost their lives, over a quarter of the population.
After a lengthy tuk-tuk out of town we arrived at Choeung Ek. The first thing to greet you upon entry is a large Buddhist stupa made to commemorate the victims of Pol Pot’s regime. It’s only as you get closer that you realise that it is in fact filled with layers of excavated human skulls, bones and clothes. As you walk around the excavated mass graves little is left to the imagination. There was one sectioned off area where you could see pigments of bones and teeth left behind. You see rags remaining in the majority of mass grave. There are signs informing you which tree had been used to hang loudspeakers from to ensure that the executioners couldn’t hear their victims’ screams and
which tree was used to beat children to death. There seemed no limit to the horrors that took place at this place, with over 8000 bodies exhumed although that is not the end of it. I could write more. This was just one Killing Field; they are littered throughout the country. Any remote place in rural Cambodia could feasibly be a mass grave. A small museum here has been built giving a small run down of Khmer Rouge policies and the most important figures. None of the men responsible have yet been brought to justice, trials have only just begun. I could hardly believe what I was reading when I saw that some key Khmer Rouge figures have since defected to Cambodia’s modern day government. Could there be a greater insult to the people of Cambodia that some of the men responsible are still running their country? The government have been responsible for building memorials and encouraging both domestic and foreign tourists to pay their respect. Allowing themselves to mix with Khmer Rouge officials massively undermines this good work.
We weren’t finished yet. As our tuk-tuk headed through Phnom Penh my head was swimming. I’d by this stage already
Me in an entrance
I was beginning to fancy myself as Indiana Jones by this stage. got through the majority of my book and had been painted a fairly vivid description of life under the Khmer Rouge. Just looking on the streets of Phnom Penh I couldn’t avoid the thought; anybody aged over 40 will have memories of losing parents, brothers, sisters and friends. Following this, we had to descend into the hell of Tuol Sleng Prison. Once again, little was left to the imagination. Gruesome pictures of prisoners, mug shots of all who entered the prison with varying emotions of despair, fear and pride. Tiny cells with stains still on the floor, rooms with torture implements. The barbed wire installed to stop prisoners committing suicide. There was a cruel irony that before the Khmer Rouge took control of Tuol Sleng, it was a secondary school. Outside former climbing frames had been turned into torture mechanisms. Classrooms became mass cells. There was information about the different classes within Khmer Rouge society, memories from survivors (only aged in their 40s) and quotes taken from the Khmer Rouge itself. One memorable quote was “It is better for 10 innocent people to be arrest than for 1 traitor to walk free.” I’ve studied the Holocaust and
Stalin’s Soviet Union at school, but somehow reading about these things doesn’t affect you the same way. Coming face to face with these evils is hard to take. The recent nature of everything only made it hit harder. I remember visiting some dungeon on holiday with my parents when I was younger. Can’t remember where, possibly Warwick castle. It had been built in the Medieval Ages, and it was possible to look back on it as uncivilised dark days before people knew about standards such as the Geneva Convention. This place seemed just as uncivilised and brutal, and it was barely over 30 years ago. The entire exhibition was pitched perfectly. In the leaflet it spoke about making the young generation and outside world respect the victims of the regime whilst attempting to ensure than no individual like Pol Pot emerges in the future. It was brutal and graphic, but not needlessly so and certainly not without reason.
As we were driving through Phnom Penh again, I realised how harsh my original judgement of the city had been. In 1979 it had been a ghost town, and had to be rebuilt by broken families returning with the trauma of
5 unbearable years. We drove past their independence monument, their tastefully decorated boulevards; we saw markets, one involving an entire street selling brake lights and indicators. People were making a living in the city and getting on with their lives. There are apparently some very modern shopping districts and the riverside area is meant to be becoming very fashionable. I think I could have spent another day there, although I maybe would have moved out of the hostel/drug den/brothel. The people seemed friendly too. “Are you English?” “Yes” “Lovely jubbly!” Del Boy is clearly a popular figure in Cambodia. One restaurant owner that evening gave us free bottles of water to see us off on our bus journey. It saved us around 20p each, but it was beside the point. It brought a smile to our faces when the man with less than us who had been through so much was still capable of such a gesture with a smile on his face.
This was the same restaurant that had a page on the back the menu with suggestions of what to do in Phnom Penh, such as going for a few drinks at the swanky riverside district, seeing
the Royal Palace, watching a local football match at the “Olympic Stadium” and trying out some of the markets. In hindsight, I probably regret writing it off so quickly on arrival, especially as I was to spend three days beaching afterwards, one of which could have very easily been spent in Phnom Penh. I would however advise on staying away from the lakeside backpacker area if you want to stay clear of seriously seedy, creepy places. Having been to cities in India, Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka and China, I can honestly say that no place has had the ability to give me an instant chill like the backpacking district in Phnom Penh. Splash out on a bit more money in the classier tourist district if you plan to visit.
Cambodia’s recovery from Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is far from over. I said that anybody aged over 40 would have memories; in reality there are very few. The Khmer Rouge would kill entire families to avoid the rise of a vengeful generation, and surviving adults would be unwilling to bring a child into such an evil world. A very unskilled workforce was left behind after education was abolished
and the country was wrapped in fear and mistrust. From my experience with the Khmer people, they’re already well on their way to getting over this last problem, but the legacy will live for a long time yet. The Khmer Rouge didn’t fully surrender until 1998 and they left land mines throughout the country. Many tourists like to donate books, pens and food to orphanages of which there are many, largely due to parents coming across a mine whilst farming. Hopefully future generations will put the whole messy chapter in the history books where it belongs, but the shoots of recovery are still very young.
It was time to move on and lighten up and as our bus left Phnom Penh I was looking forward to a couple of days relaxation in Sihanoukville before giving Thailand a proper chance in Koh Chang. To plagiarise the Lonely Planet, I’d seen “Two faces to Cambodia: one shiny and happy, the other dark and complex”. I won’t ever forget either.
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Pete Hamborg
non-member comment
Nice entry
This is a powerful and moving blog entry Rob. Your writing has come a long way since your time in India. Loved the Thailand entry too. Pete