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Published: February 21st 2009
Phnom Penh
Vietnam - Cambodia BorderWe took a long bus ride from Saigon to Phnom Penh, Cambodia and stayed at a hostel called #11 Happy. I love the names and signs in Asia...they try so hard to make sense, but usually just miss. The other amazing thing is the disorganized organization. We got on and off of our bus 3-4 times at the Vietnam/Cambodia border, taking our luggage off with us half the time. We also had to hand over our passports 3-4 times. We find ourselves constantly wondering, "If someone explained to us what was going on, maybe it would make sense, but still, there must be a better way." Eventually, visas are issued and we're on our way...they always seem to work it out in the end somehow. At #11 Happy, we checked in, ate some much needed dinner, then watched the movie The Killing Fields, which every hostel in Phnom Penh has playing all day, everyday.
Phnom Penh is a cool little town with lots of laid back people roaming around. We woke up our second day in town and had the best muesli, yogurt and fruit ever. It was a big bowl of bananas, mangoes, pineapple, apple, raisins, granola and yogurt...such
Phnom Penh
Stupa at The Killing Fields a deliciously filling breakfast. Then we hired a tuk tuk driver for the day at the cost of $12, divided between four of us, to take us out to The Killing Fields and The Genocide Museum.
A little history: The Khmer Rouge was the communist ruling political party of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. They wanted to eliminate anyone suspected of involvement in free-market activities. Suspected capitalists encompassed professionals and almost everyone with an education, many urban dwellers, and people with connections to foreign governments. Khmer Rouge believed parents were tainted with capitalism. Consequently, children were separated from parents and brainwashed to socialism as well as taught torture methods with animals. Children were a dictatorial instrument of the party and were given leadership in torture and executions.
The movie The Killing Fields demonstrated a lot of this and was good to see before going out to the actual Killing Fields and Genocide Museum, but was nonetheless Hollywood and seeing the real thing was intense. The Killing Fields has a stupa with 17 levels of almost 9,000 skulls of men, women and children who were tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge. The stupa is all glass and is
Phnom Penh
Skulls from The Killing Fields partially open in front to allow the souls to visit their skulls if desired, as it is rare in Buddhist culture to display the dead, but for the sake of history these skulls remain at The Killing Fields. There are huge ditches all over where the people were buried, many of them while still alive, then sprayed with chemicals to both reduce the smell of the bodies and kill off the ones who were still alive. There is a small ditch with a large tree next to it, that contained the bodies of only women and children. The tree was used to smash the babies heads against, then they were dropped in the ditch. Most of the skulls on display have cracks in them from the ways in which they were tortured and killed. There were also the stories of the Khmer Rouge soldiers who attempted to stop some of the killings and their heads were sawed off with a young palm frawn...just sharp enough to saw a head off, yet dull enough for it to take a while. The killings were mostly done with farming tools: hoes, axes, pitchforks, because bullets were too expensive. The children that were killed
Phnom Penh
Mass Graves at The Killing Fields were all children of educated people and therefore considered to be of too high a class and therefore needed to be killed off, so the future of the Khmer Rouge would not be disturbed.
Walking around The Killing Fields was so sad. There are bones and clothes of the tortured that remain on the ground. The site is not even half dug up and has almost 9,000 skulls on display! The Killing Fields flood every year during the wet season, bringing up more bones and clothes each year. We had a guide walk us around and explain the history to us. He was born in 1973, so was just a baby during this period of Cambodia's history. He was left with the elders in his community, but his two older sisters were taken to work on the farms of the Khmer Rouge and both died of starvation. He stressed the fact that to this day, every Cambodian has been in some way affected by the Khmer Rouge.
We left The Killing Fields for the Genocide Museum. On a lighter note, we stopped for lunch and I had a delicious traditional Cambodian meal of Chicken in Green Curry mixed
Phnom Penh
Victims clothes with Coconut Milk with a side of steamed rice. It was delicious! Cambodia is so hot and we are too central for any clean water to swim in. The cold showers are amazing, I can't believe anyone at the hostel would pay extra for a hot shower! So after lunch we walked across the street to the museum where we prepared ourselves for more of the worst. The images were so graphic. Images of men, women and children being starved and tortured. American museums (at least any I've been to) do not show graphic images the way they do here. It is so hard to see, but so eye-opening at the same time. We walked through the museum, which used to be the prison where people were held before being taking to The Killing Fields. Some of the cells still had blood on the floors and walls. The prisoners clothes were in piles at the bottom of one of the stairwells. The history here is so recent and so untouched compared to anything I've seen before...it's mind-blowing. There were mug shots of all the prisoners and so many of them were women holding babies. 14 bodies were found at the
Phnom Penh
The Killing Tree site, the last victims of the Khmer Rouge before they were over-taken. The Khmer Rouge treated their own people so horribly. In that 4 year period, approximately 20,000 people were killed at The Killing Fields alone and there are similar killing fields throughout southern Cambodia. That is an insane number for such a small country. Almost half the population was wiped out by the Khmer Rouge.
After an intense day of history, our tuk tuk driver dropped us back off at #11 Happy and we booked a bus out for the next afternoon, to go to Siem Reap. We watched the sunset from our hostel, while having some much needed beers and wine and discussing the tragedies of Cambodia's recent past with amazement. I have so much respect for these people with what they've been through and where they are today, despite it. We woke up early on our last day in town and went to the National Museum of Cambodia where we saw many busts and statues of Buddha, as well as Hindu gods, and some traditional Cambodian art. We saw The Royal Palace, but decided not to pay the $6 entry fee, which worked out, because it
Phnom Penh
Blood on the floor at the Genocide Museum was closed midday anyway. Cameron and I walked around town for the rest of the morning and found this little cafe, Cafe Fresco, where I had a bagel (yes, bagel, my first one in months!) sandwich toasted, with pesto, halved cherry tomatoes, fresh spinach leaves, cubed feta cheese and olives. Amazing. This is not the type of food you find in Asia, it was Food Dance quality (for all my Kalamazoo friends), and that's a shockingly delicious surprise in Asia, especially Cambodia! So with a delicious lunch in our bellies, Cameron and I returned to #11 Happy to catch our bus to Siem Reap, where we were to be picked up by a tuk tuk driver and taken to #10 Happy. What could possibly make me happier...
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