Phnom Penh Tour Of Death And Despair

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Due to some tight scheduling, we were forced to fly in and out of Phnom Penh and sadly had to short change the city in terms of time. Thing could have been worse though... we could have been on the PMT flight that went down in Southern Cambodia after leaving Siem Reap (we flew PMT from Hanoi to Siem Reap just a few days earlier)!

In subtle ways Cambodia defied many of my expectations, but it could be that I simply didn't get to see enough of the country. On the whole, the poverty was not as overt or extreme as I had expected, and in I found Phnom Penh to be a lot more Westernized than any of the major cities in Vietnam. More English speakers and English signs, more western restaurants, clubs, etc. I'm guessing that the communist system is the main reason that this sort of thing is less prominent in Vietnam, and I have to say I miss the foreigness of it all. Things are only going to get ratcheted up another notch when we get to Thailand. While there were indeed more beggars in Cambodia (a large portion of which were obvious land mine victims) the vendors were not as aggressive and haggling over price didn't seem to be as much of an issue. In Vietnam I always felt that the first price I was offered for anything from a T-Shirt to a Taxi ride was inflated by a minimum of 500%, while in Cambodia it seemed to start at a pretty reasonable level (we had to pay a whopping $2/person for our accomodation, which had a nice lounge and a great view of the lake, by the way).

Most of our only full day in Phnom Penh was spent learning about the grim history of Cambodia in the 20th century. We started a few kilometers South of town at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. This is the largest of countless sites where the Khmer Rouge regime carried out their policy of extermination on the country's intellectuals, professionals and anybody who simply misspoke, disobeyed a mundane order or who had capitalist ties. This was done as part of the Year Zero social "experiment" in a effort to "wipe the slate clean" and re-boot society as an agricultural empire. Estimates place the death toll somewhere between 1.7 and 2.3 million people dead as a direct result of Pol Pot's rule between 1975 and 1979 in a country with a population of less than 7 million. You can still feel a palpable anger in the voice of anybody you speak to on the subject over the age of about 30. The site is currently marked by many mass graves and a towering memorial made up of 17 levels, each and every one filled with with human skulls unearthed from the site. A chilling experience.

Continuing the tour of death and despair we stopped at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Musuem. Once a high school, the site was converted to a death camp by the Khmer Rouge (know as Security Prison 21, or S-21). Every single prisoner was documented on arrivial, and the walls are now lined with haunting mug shots of the poor souls who we kept here before being sent to certain death at sites such as Choeung Ek. Of a total of 17,000 prisoners who passed through S-21 while it was in operation there are only 7 known survivors, not surprising when you see the evidence of torture and generally abhorrent conditions that people were kept in.

On a less somber notewe also had time to check out the collection of sculptures at the National Museum as well as the Royal Palace, the highlight of which was a 90kg Buddha made from solid gold and encrusted with gargantuan diamonds. We topped off the Cambodian experience with a great dinner at the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) where we had some great food and took solid advantage of their happy hour. All in all, Cambodia was a mixed bag of emotions and certainly somewhere I would like to return to in order to explore further... I just wouldn't fly PMT again!

Next stop: Thailand

Mike

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Photos

A Physical Reminder
Skulls in the commemorative stupa at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek

Grim History
At the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek

Faces of S-21
Haunting faces staring back at you from the mugshots that line the walls of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Luxury Suite
A room for prominent prisoners at the S-21 prison. Most others were kept alone in 1m x 1.5m cells, or in leg irons in a larger communal cell

Foreign Correspondents Club
Classiest dinner to date