Advertisement
Published: December 5th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Cambodia is a beautiful country with an awful history.
I had been mentally preparing myself for bullet-ruined walls, residual bomb craters, any sign of the horrors that passed here late last century. Instead, I saw farms, forest, cows, kids, bikes, and more bikes.
The roads are pretty rough. Our "6 hour bus ride" from the 4,000 islands to Phnom Penh turned into more of a 12 hour marathon. Everything from extremely bodgy short cuts to the inevitable wait for 30 tourists to have a meal and visit the loo at one place.
The ride began with a long-boat trip across the Mekong to where our minibus would depart from. There weren't enough longboats, which took a while to sort out. Seemed like some kind of mass-exodus from Laos that day.
The border crossing was pretty fantastic. Our minibus took us down a fairly horrific dirt track (leaving the well-graded wide road far behind). After an hour or so of jungle and potholes we came to the Laos border control office, a little wooden shack in the trees. We then walked the few hundred metres to the Cambodian side, which was another little wooden shack alongside a larger wooden
building where visas are actually issued instead of just stamped. Some fairly furious Germans were complaining about having to pay extra twice. This is true border country and paying official "bribes" seems to be par for the course.
Without too much hassle we all got through and finally everyone was getting onto the next bus when we realised we were 4 seats short - out come the plastic chairs for the aisle, accompanied by complaints of "but I paid $30 for a seat not a stool" which were easily ignored.
The bus... we arrived at Stung Treng to cross the Mekong and have our first Cambodian meal. We waited about 45 minutes for the ferry to arrive, loaded up the bus and several other vehicles and suddenly the ferry was stuck on rocks. after some shifty manoevering we were finally off the rocks but the tugboat had forgotten to attach itself to us so we went drifting unhurriedly down the Mekong while the boat zoomed off upstream. We just narrowly missed crushing a fisherman and his longboat into the shore. Tegan and I amused ourselves and the local kids by taking the opportunity for a jam. The kids
amused us by pulling fairly cheesy pop-star poses in response to the sight of a camera. "photo, photo!" one kid had the longest fingernails I've ever seen on anyone apart from Chinese monks.
Back on the bus after waiting about an hour for a meal that didn't actually arrive. The bus grew more and more excruciating but I did meet a lovely Spanish girl and discuss the contradictions of modern anthropology for a while.
Finally we pulled in to Phnom Penh at midnight, and were whisked away to a guesthouse pronto by an obliging tuktuk driver.
When we awoke the next morning we discovered we had been sleeping in a room over the edge of the Green Lake, Boeng Kak.
The morning sun was glorious on the green water hyacinths and distant temple. Ahhhhhh and we're not on the bus anymore...
We set out at a leisurely pace to explore. First we had to make sure Tegan's bankcard was still working - no problems here, just the bodgy Laos ATMs I'm sure. We visited the amazing National Museum, a stunning building - a fusion of colonial and Cambodian styles, filled with relics from Angkhor and other
ancient cities. We also made it to local art haven Meta House to catch a screening of Wong Kar-Wai film "Days of Living Wild" which was shot mostly in Hong Kong and nicely familiar. Today's Phnom Penh is busy and bustling compared to the sleepy Laos experience. The roads are broad and there are lots of trees, the pavement is broken and dusty but everywhere you look there is a smiling inquisitive face and probably someone trying to sell you a book about Cambodia's history.
Sadly the next day was a bit of a waste of time for me - my belly finally toppled by some kind of bacteria or perhaps an adverse reaction to my anti-malaria medication? Tegan was left to explore on her own, and occasionally bring me new rolls of toilet paper.
Finally recovering enough to keep a meal down the next day we set out to explore the Royal Palace. Taking it pretty slowly, we checked out the sumptuous decor and fairly incredible gilded accessories to everything.
Today we left early for the gruelling pilgrimage to the Killing Fields and S-21. At first arrival at the Killing Fields we are greeted by a huge stupa containing shelves upon shelves of human skulls, some of them labelled in rough categories "Female 15-20 years", "Male 20-40 years" and all of them tragic. We offered flowers and incense, left among the thousands of paper cranes.
The mass graves uncovered here in the 1980s have never been refilled, and remain as grassy bowl-shapes in the field. Most of the buildings have been removed, except for the kiosk which now hosts a guide to the site. It's pretty grim.
We next visited the notorious S-21, or Security Prison 21, which saw approximately 20,000 detainees during the war, only 7 of whom survived. This place is truly horrific, and the simplicity of its preservation is even more heartbreaking. Unlike Hiroshima, with little left to preserve but the atomic dome, this was an actual institute for methodical torture and murder. There are cells left intact with iron-framed bed, shackles and a single photograph of the victim as they were discovered. Most of the people who were found in S-21 after the Khmer Rouge left had their throats slit. The rooms are clean, but you can easily imagine the blood and desperation.
Downstairs in the final building there is a series of paintings by one of the seven survivors, displaying methods of torture and execution used at S-21. The paintings are kind of clumsy but there's something about that which renders the subject even more horrendous.
There are photo displays. One with portrait or mug-shots of each victim, which goes on seemingly forever. Who'd have thought a regime which brutally tortured and killed its prisoners so thoroughly would keep such a record? There is a very heart-breaking photographic display upstairs which covers some of the lives of those who worked at S-21, why they joined the KR and their thoughts on it at the time (2002).
"We didn't have a choice. What could we do, they would kill our family too".
Advertisement
Tot: 0.211s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 9; qc: 56; dbt: 0.1545s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb