Phnom Penh

We arrived in the small airport at Phnom Penh and sought out a tuk tuk to take us into town. I had met an Austrian couple in Ko Phi Phi who recommended the lakeside for a fun atmosphere in Phnom Penh. The view from there is supposed to be brilliant at sunset. We arrived in the rain and I went to hunt down a decent place while Thelma watched the bags. The reality was that this place is probably one of the cheapest areas in town for backpackers. The rooms went for as low as $4 a night and they were about as clean as you would expect for $4. I searched about half a dozen without finding a gem. While searching, I did manage to see the sunset, which was the best part of the area. Although it's called the "lakeside", there isn't much of a lake; more of a swamp. And where there is a swamp, you can be sure there are plenty of mosquitos. There was a constant swarm everywhere I turned. Since we arrived late in the day I managed to secure a picture of the sunset, so I think we got the best bit of the lakeside experience. We sought out accommodation elsewhere in the city and settled on a spot near the central market.

The central market is one of the main markets in Phnom Penh. You can find everything there from live chickens to fake watches, to t-shirts, to electronics. The building was designed and built by the French in an art deco style which still seems to hold up, although it could use a fresh coat of paint. It consists of a central dome and four wings stretching out from the center to form a big plus sign. It looks bigger from the outside than it feels from the inside and I think there may be more stalls outside between the wings than there are inside.

One stall was selling fresh chickens, and I do mean fresh. There was a cage of live chickens in front. If someone pointed at one to buy it, a woman would grab it and pass it to a man though a fence behind her. He would then kill it, pluck it, and pass it back for the customer.

We moved hotels to a much nicer place we had found beside the river. The hotel had only been open for a few days and everything was new. The river side seems to be the best place for restaurants, nightclubs, and eager tuk-tuk drivers. Every day seemed to include a torrential downpour beginning at about 2 or 3pm, which would last for a few hours. At night, little kids roamed up and down the street peddling books at a cheap price. I managed to pickup a cheap Lonely Planet for the rest of my journey. The cover looks exactly like a regular LP, but you can tell that all of the pages have been photocopied. It might not be legit, but it has all the info that I need, and for only about $5. Oh yea, Cambodia has their own currency, but it is not very popular, so pretty much all transactions are handled in US dollars. Even the ATM machines dish out dollars. This makes traveling in Cambodia a more expensive affair than I would have thought. They don't use US cents though, so if you pay $5 for something that costs $4.50, you get your 50 cents of change in Riel, the Cambodian Currency. I'm sure the merchant uses an exchange rate favorable to him as well. Cambodia has had a pretty tumultuous recent history with many different regimes and currencies. Under Pol Pot, currency and markets were not even allowed. The Riel has only been available as a currency since 1994 and I think people are still a bit reluctant to trust it.

A trip to Phnom Penh would be wasted without taking the time to learn and understand what happened to Cambodia under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime that he lead. I must admit that I knew very little of the facts myself before visiting. The recent history of Cambodia is a sad affair of many different powers, both internal and external, struggling for control of Cambodia. Throughout the power struggles, the people were made to suffer horrifically on a scale not seen since the concentration camps of Germany. The atrocities inflicted upon the Cambodian people at that time will forever rank as one of the worst episodes in humanity.

On April 17 1975, what would later be called "year zero", the Khmer Rouge, a rebellion led by Pol Pot, gained control of Phnom Penh. They had been fighting the US-backed military government of General Lon Nol for five years. The people cheered as the soldiers rolled in and greeted them as liberators. Many of the soldiers were just young teenagers and had been fighting with the Khmer Rouge since they were children. The senior leaders of the government were executed and the entire city of two million people were forcibly evacuated to the countryside. No exceptions were made and even the hospitals were emptied. The people were told they could return in a few days and that the evacuation was necessary in anticipation of American bombing. The reality is that the capital city would remain a ghost town for the next four years. The new leaders wanted to turn Cambodia into a nation of peasants.

The entire population was turned into forced laborers. All effort was focused on producing rice. Many died of disease or starvation. Anyone thought to be an intellectual was taken away and executed. Having smooth hands or wearing glasses may have been all that was needed to implicate someone. Families were broken up and marriages were assigned. Children were encouraged to spy on their parents and report any unusual activity. If someone asked too many questions, they disappeared over night, thus preventing and discouraging any communication throughout the country, even in one's own home.

Many people who disappeared ended up in Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng Prison, otherwise known as S-21. S-21 was originally a high school, but was converted into a secret facility for the detention, interrogation, torture, and execution of its prisoners. All of the prisoners were photographed, their accusations documented, and their confessions written down. Among the 14,000 prisoners that passed through the gates, only 12 survived. If a prisoner survived his or her torture, he or she would be taken to the Choeung Ek killing field about 13 kilometers outside Phnom Penh.

Bullets were not to be wasted on those who arrived at Choeung Ek. The prisoner would kneel over a mass grave and the executioner would hit him or her on the back of the head with a farming implement. Babies were beaten against trees before being thrown in the grave. In all, nearly 400 killing fields and 200 prisons have been found throughout Cambodia. No one knows for certain how many people died under the Khmer Rouge, but some estimates have it between 2 and 3 million, roughly one third or one fourth of Cambodia's population at the time. These deaths were due to executions, starvation, disease, or exhaustion from overwork.

Vietnam finally invaded and took over in 1979. They were to rule for 10 years until the cold war ended and with it their Russian support. More skirmishes followed and all the while, the Khmer Rouge soldiers were regrouping in the jungle. A new democratic form of government for Cambodia was born in the early 1990s with the UN acting as mid-wife. Pol Pot died mysteriously shortly after his capture in 1998 and by the next year, the Khmer Rouge was no more.

The Tuol Sleng Prison (S-21) has been turned into a museum and the Choeung Ek killing field is now a memorial. Thelma and I visited both and were fortunate enough to have guides who could explain everything to us in English. It is a very sobering experience and hard to comprehend how such a travesty could be inflicted against ones own people. Everyone in Cambodia who is older than me was directly affected by the Khmer Rouge. The older generation tend to not talk about it, but our S-21 guide was willing enough to recount her personal experiences.

The other shocking aspect of it was how recent it all was. Until Pol Pot's death in 1998, people lived in fear that he might return to power. There are still Khmer Rouge officials who are part of the government today. Even the prime minister, Hun Sen, used to be a Khmer Rouge soldier. War crime tribunals have yet to begin and some Cambodians even feel there would be bad karma if criminals were executed. The persecution of intellectuals resulted in a serious brain drain for Cambodia. There weren't even enough lawyers left to institute a tribunal if they had tried.

Pol Pot was educated in Paris and re-educated in Beijing. His "Super Great Leap Forward" was a replica of Mao's plan, whom he had befriended in Beijing. Sadly, no one had told Mao that his "Great Leap Forward" was failing and Pol Pot left Beijing just as impressed by it as Mao. Was Pol Pot just bent on securing absolute power for himself, or did he genuinely believe that China's system was the new world order and therefore the best way forward for his people? He died without ever explaining himself, so we may never know.

Pol Pot renamed Cambodia to Democratic Kampuchea (DK). One thing I have learned is that if a country spells out the word "democratic" as part of its name, it is probably anything but. The Khmer Rouge cut off Cambodia from the outside world and sought to re-educate the children while exterminating the older generation. Bonds between husband and wife, parents and children were broken. If he had been successful, eventually the entire population would never had known anything except life under the Khmer Rouge. I was reading George Orwell's "1984" at the time, and the similarities were breath taking. Discovering the history of the Khmer Rouge was probably the most heartbreaking part of my entire trip. The world allowed it to happen and even recognized DK with a seat at the United Nations. I would like to believe that something like this could never happen again, but I doubt that those living in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea would share that belief.

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