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Tuol Sleng - Lost In Time
Caught on camera and filed away, the negatives of photos were kept seperately from prisoner records - hundreds of pictures are posted, their unidentified owners lost to timeThe seven hour or so bus ride to Phnom Penh was totally forgettable and uneventful which was a stark contrast to our recent journey to Battambang - thank *insert your deity here*! So having arrived in Cambodia’s capital unflustered and in good spirits we hired a chatty tuk-tuk driver called Chang (same name as the local beer) who recommended a reasonably priced hotel by the riverside, which we liked, and who insisted that he be our driver for our stay in Phnom Penh, we couldn’t refuse his cheeky charm and irreverent banter - sold. Having overdosed on Cambodia’s magnificent ancient heritage over the past few weeks we needed a change of scene, one of the most common replies to our queries about what to do in Phnom Penh (apart from visiting the Khmer Rouge related sites) was to check out the shooting range. Yep shooting range, every taxi knows where it is, we asked our driver Chang about it and he immediately sprang into detail miming the actions of using guns and grenades then detailing an assortment of armaments you can shoot or throw, rocket launchers were even indicated to us (yet this turned out to be an exaggeration) but it
Shooting Range - Appetite For Destruction
I'l have a small order of semi automatics please, oh and a side of handguns - do ya get ketchup with that? was enough to whet our appetite, nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning eh…
Well our driver agreed to pick us up next morning at 8.30 but when the specified time of departure came and went he was nowhere to be seen, whilst we stood outside our hotel waiting his ‘fellow’ tuk-tuk drivers started telling us that he had been called away on another job for the day and they are to fill in for him… I must admit that I believed them and was willing to get going but Claire was adamant that Chang would not let us down. We were both umming and arrring when our man, to his credit, eventually shows up and starts shouting away the circling predators from (us) their prey. Oh the drama, anything for a fare these unscrupulous drivers, Chang tells us that he has been caught up in traffic on his way over yet he later admits that he had been on the sauce the night before, and as such was a little subdued for the morning, inner city life, inner city pressures.
After a short drive out of town we are heading towards our first
Killing Fields - Facing Death
Skulls piled up in the memorial port of call for the day the shooting range and being a non-violent law abiding UK citizen this was to be my first encounter with proper weapons of war. I’ve seen the films, play acted as a kid shooting my fingers or holding an imaginary assault rifle reeling off a few rounds in slow motion (I still do this on occasion to be honest), owned an air pistol as a teenager and scared all manner of wildlife and have been clay pigeon shooting which I enjoyed immensely using a sporting shotgun, but let me tell you this: automatic and semi automatic weapons are f**king scary. Let me elaborate, we jump out of our tuk-tuk and head over to the shooting range, nothing much is going on at the time and Claire and I appear to be the only ones there, we are handed a ‘menu’ of weapons to fire which details the cost per round, guns are mounted all over the wall some are recognisable, an AK47, an Uzi style sub machine gun and other assault weapons beckon, I only know a few names of guns from video games, music and TV shows. So we are just looking at the
Teul Sleng - Unrepentant
This KR combatant's picture has been defaced, the guy now in his forties is unrepentant of his crimes stating he should be put on trial to teach the world lessons about the regimes atrocities guns, on the wall, looking at the prices, thinking what shall I use, daring to touch them, when RAT-ATAT-ATAT-ATAT we both jump up an around as some guy is loosing a few rounds of an assault rifle into one of the targets down the range, he must be at least 6 meters from us but my ears are ringing and my heart is thundering in my chest. How loud and nerve jangling?
In the UK, unless you are in the armed forces, a tactical response type copper or are some extreme dodgy criminal type where you need a ‘shootah’ to survive you do not come into contact with proper weaponry ever. The shooter turns out to be an American who is used to this sort of thing and proceeds to shooting a larger tripod mounted weapon that packs even more of a punch when fired. Needless to say after seeing someone else shoot the shit we just had to have a go ourselves, and although the very thought of what these things are made for goes against my tree hugging ways a part of me was compelled to see what it was actually like. Between us we chose
the AK47 and an Uzi style sub machine gun, I went first with the sub machine gun and in all honesty it was not really as exciting as I imagined. Yeah its noisy and it sort of pulls up when shooting a burst, but there is a huge difference between watching someone shoot and actually shooting yourself. I can only liken it to when you are driving a car at high speed, you are in control of it, but your passenger is being thrown around and is clinging on for dear life. Shooting the gun was that similar sensation of being in control, when you squeeze that trigger you sort of grimace, scrunch your face up and tense your muscles in anticipation of the noise it’s going to make. Unfortunately my weapon kept jamming after a few rounds and the manager would have to clear it, it kind of interrupted my flow but it was good fun nonetheless. Claire was up next with the AK47 and she seemed to be enjoying shooting that too, and there again as an observer the noise and power thing gets to you as you are not in control of it… do you get what
I mean?
Anyway having realised that shooting these guns was not as bad as first anticipated the manager suggested that we should try the tripod mounted gun and we both agreed that it couldn’t be all that bad. We were shown inside a purpose made firing range (which amplified the sound ten fold) and got set up with this beast of a weapon with a plate sized circular clip attached to the top. Now this is a REAL weapon, ready aim fire… Holy shit, how the hell are you supposed to get used to the noise these weapons create, they literally blow your ear drums even when wearing the protective cans, and the energy it creates not only propels the metal slug at ridiculous velocity towards its intended target but it creates a backwash / mini shockwave that goes through the body so much so that you are almost jumping out of your skin with every shot fired. This scared the bejeezus out of me even when I was firing it, when I was watching Claire firing it scared me even more, to think what the hell would you do if you were in its path. Shaken and
Tuol Sleng - Interogation Room
The tiled floor is shown in all pictures that are of the time and it is still ever present as you walk around more than a little stirred we walked away with a sense of relief from the indoor range, paid our dues for ammo spent and watched open mouthed as a live target was introduced to a young bloke shooting a handgun. A chicken was tethered to a stake and the young shooter was having a barrel of laughs first crippling it then missing often, then scratching it, then finally killing it - I’m not an animal rights activist or a vegetarian, but this seemed a touch cruel - yeh yeh hypocritical me loves KFC.
Anyway, with the lyrics ‘Guns don’t kill people, Rappers do…’ (GLC) rattling in my brain we jumped back into the tuk-tuk and were happy to hot tail it out of there and be on our way. Our next destination was to be the infamous Killing Fields, now I’m not going to go into a huge biopic of Pol Pots insane ideas, or major detail about the Khmer Rouge and how it pulled a culturally rich and forward looking country into the stone age, for that I would suggest
Khmer Rouge Wiki . However as Cambodia’s most recent darkest memories are now turned tourist attractions it is hard not
Tuol Sleng - Rules
Please take time to ENLARGE this picture and read the disturbing rules to comment from a westerners eye on the seeming madness of one despotic leader’s extreme vision that championed radical communist theory and spawned what has been described as the most lethal regime of the 20th Century. These policies included the despoiling of immeasurable national treasures, anti-intellectual idealism that erased artistic and religious freethinking, promoting the humble farmers to a position of power over their fellow countrymen - this proletariat were responsible for the day to day operation of the forced labour camps dealing out punishments, executions and starving prisoners that resulted in an a estimated 1.5 million deaths. 1.5 MILLION DEATHS - this happened in my lifetime albeit I was too young to remember in any detail, the name Pol Pot was certainly still being banded about on TV as I grew up, but Cambodia could have been on the moon as far as I was aware. You realise once here of the effect these horrific years had upon the whole nation, the young, old, everyone has a tale about war, our driver Chang reluctantly informed us of his parents demise at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and as we got closer to the memorial site you could see
Tuol Sleng - The Horror
This picture was taken just after the Khmer Rouges fall from power, the same room as the picture above featuring a decaying prisoners body left hastily as the prisons guards fled he was visibly distressed at the prospect of coming here (something he must do on a regular basis with all the tourists - painful though it must be life simply goes on). Claire got some flowers for us to take along to the Killing Fields memorial that has been erected to pay respects - a three storey glass clad tower that houses the skulls of the victims that have been recovered from the mass graves that litter the site. Walking around is a very poignant and solemn occasion that pulls all your heart strings, from the tower of skulls through the field which looks like a bomb cratered battleground where victims bodies were thrown into makeshift mass graves. An unimposing tree is signposted as being where children were whipped and beaten before being killed; another ‘magic tree’ tells you it had speakers hung from it constantly playing loud music to drown out the cries and screams for mercy - truly dark and unsettling. We made our way around, our driver paid his respects too, and then we were on our way - enough for one day.
Next day we set off again, Claire wanted to visit a famous
fortune telling monk who gave out water blessings that she had read about in some magazine article, Chang had done his homework and had located where this fellow was based and so we headed out to get blessed. The monk took his time arriving, although to be honest we did just turn up at the temple without any prior warning, we sat around with a handful of the faithful who were also waiting for him to arrive and attempted conversation with them, one lad could speak a little English so we passed the time getting to know each other. The monk eventually arrives, splashes some water around, mutters and chants some stuff, Claire pays her dues and comes away spiritually recharged and ready to go. Next stop for the day was the grisly S21 prison camp, otherwise known as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and what a haunting and spine chilling place to visit. Out of the two KR sites this and Killing Fields, the museum had the most impact on me, this is mainly due to its extensive gallery of mug shots, each picture showing a scared or desultory inmate photographed with ID number to be catalogued and processed -
Tuol Sleng - Brothers In Arms
Kids between the age of 10-15 were made 'combatants' by the KR and put in charge of the prisoners - dealing out violent punishments these kids became evil and sadistic torturers (note the tiled floor) where processing means torture. The evil that was carried out here is in your face, extreme graphic images are shown by the place where the atrocities had taken place giving you a ringside seat at the proceedings. Cramped cells with rusty food trays, chains, manacles, torture devices that look bizarre backed up with illustrations to provide insight into how they were utilised, beaten up metal bed frames sit stark in interrogation rooms and the old tiled floor is omnipresent throughout surrounding you and reinforcing the sense of being there, the atmosphere permeates your skin and crawls into your psyche - an extremely powerful place. For detailed information check out
Tuol Sleng Wiki be warned - it’s a harrowing read. Visiting these two major sites seriously takes it out of you, I was totally dumbfounded by the brutality and barbarity of this regime similarities are obviously drawn to the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz but the difference from my perspective is that it all occurred whilst I have been alive - its current to me. Unfortunately cycles of hatred, ethnic cleansing, genocide won’t go away the most recent example taking place in Yugoslavia, the heart of civilised Europe, every neighbouring country turned the
Tuol Sleng - All The Lonely People
There are row upon row of boards filled with pictures of ex-prisoners other cheek and more terrible atrocities were carried out in the name of politics and religion - nothing changes.
Well on that down beat note I bid you farewell, we needed a break after all this emotional overload and where better to get your soul replenished than by the beach, luckily Cambodia has an extremely fine coastal town called Sihanoukville that caters or the R&R that we both required.
So until next time folks
O_o
Ps. my next blog is gonna be real short
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Excellent blog entry - you have obviously worked hard to present this.