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Published: September 10th 2008
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Phnom Penh Aug. 27 to Aug. 30, 2008
Sua s’dei! Hello from Cambodia!
We crossed the border, on our Mekong Delta adventure boat, on August 27th and arrived in Cambodia at Chau Doc (Kam Samnor). Our boat guide looked after taking our money to the border for our visas - $20. each for a one month visa…and we are here! Back on the boat as far as Neak Luong and then we transfer, the 5 of us - Taryn, Christoph, Julia, Al and me - into a mini bus to head to Phnom Penh and our Guest House. Roads are good, paved, and scenery lush and green. Close to Phnom Penh our new tour guide gives us his speech…we can stay in the lovely Guest House which his company recommends for us and he has a list of a few other guest houses. No thank you, we say; we have decided on the Okay Guest House recommended by Lonely Planet: “great rooms and the best backpacker atmosphere off Boeng Kak, Okay is better than okay -it’s a score”. The tour guide looks very distressed that we are not going to his guest house where no doubt he gets a
commission and he assures us we will be in a dangerous area at Okay -but we have heard this is a common threat to tourists and choose to ignore him -and out we get and find 2 tuk tuks for the 5 of us -and off we go to Okay!
They do have rooms for us -hooray! -and the place is busy with backpackers eating, drinking and watching TV. Fun and safe area. Al and I climb one flight to the 2nd floor and settle into a simple and good room for $12. per night. We all meet downstairs for beer and dinner.
Cambodia- population is now about 14 million and Phnom Penh is the capital and the largest city at about 1 million people. It is a young population with 70% of the people being under age 40 and in fact 50% under age 15!! And as we meet or see Cambodian people over 30, we think about how they survived the Khmer Rouge terrors of 1975 to 1979.
And for our first full day in Phnom Penh the 5 of us head off in the morning to The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. These are
located about 14 km. SW of Phnom Penh. It is an intense and emotional experience to be here. About 17,000 men, women and children were executed here by Khmer Rouge soldiers between mid 1975 and December 1978. We walk the paths, read the signs, and see the depressions in the earth where mass graves have been disinterred. All together there are 143 mass graves. Human bones and clothing still poke up from the ground. In the tall white stupa we see shelf after shelf rising up to the top, filled with over 8000 skulls found during excavation at this site in 1980. I place flowers at this memorial. It is an overwhelming tragedy and to think we did not know at the time that these horrors were being committed. Over ¼ of Cambodia’s population was killed from April 1975 to January 1979 - about 2 million people. When did this news become public for us?
We continue on to Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh. This high school was turned into Security Prison 21 (S-21) by Pol Pot’s security forces. It was the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Almost everyone held here was later executed
at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. We walk inside the cells of torture. We see the pictures of so many victims. We read a poem -which we have shared here; the poet gives a sense of what these times were like. We read the lists and lists of all the many many killing fields across this country. Such a tragic history. The entire country is covered in killing fields. How does a country recover from such horrors and move on?
These experiences move us to want to read more and we buy books about this time period -‘The Killing Fields’ by Christopher Hudson, ‘First they killed my father’ by Loung Ung, ‘The Pol Pot Regime’ by Ben Kiernan and ‘When broken glass floats’ by Chanrithy Him. Al and I are immersed in trying to comprehend this tragic past.
The next day Taryn, Julia and I decide to visit and donate to an Orphanage and go by tuk tuk into the country side to “Save Children in Asia” - a learning centre for poor, orphaned or disadvantaged children that provides housing for 11 children and a learning centre for these plus over 50 children from the surrounding countryside.
We stop on Rice Street and buy a 50 kg. bag of rice to donate to the Centre; the price of rice is rising -$1. for 1 kg. We receive a warm welcome from the centre’s director, Samith, and his family and all the children when we arrive. We learn from Samith that they go through 5 kg. of rice per day here. And we learn about the good works being done here and about the visitors from afar who have come and lent a hand. The children are delightful -happy and bright -and we sit in on a part of their afternoon English class with a volunteer teacher from Australia. It is special to visit here. A Canadian set up a web site for them for free": www. savechildreninasia.org if you would like to read more.
We visit the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda; the grounds provide a peaceful and beautiful place to be.
And we see the riverside area and the ongoing construction and rebuilding of this growing city. It is clean and lovely in the centre but as we travel out we see garbage, shanty towns, more poverty.
We decided it is beach time
and Christoph from Austria, Julia from Germany and Al and I decide to continue our travels together and head by bus to Sihanoukville. Good bye to Taryn from NYC. It’s been fun! 😊
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