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Border to Cambodia was a trip. We got off the bus, got our exit visas stamped, $2, walked to the Cambodia H1N1 check (which they forgot to do to mine anyway) $1, though you could pay with 3 currencies, USD, kip (Lao), or Riel (Cambodian), and about 100 yards to the Cambodia customs hut. There they realized our outgoing visas were stamped for a day too late, sent us back the 200 yards, where the first guys changed the number with a pen in 2 secs per passport, and sent us back.
Then it was pretty easy going. A few more nickel and dime chanrges, but for less than $40 I was across.
Bus to Phnom Penh was uneventful. Got in and met up with a Canadian guy I'd seen in passing on the bus to Vientiane. Actually from Waterloo-area, only an hour to B-lo. Discovery of this led to the beginning of 5 days of States/Canuck-bashing - a lot of fun for us and completely bewlidering for anyone else listening.
Found a nice cheap hotel and some great food. USD are accepted everywhere here, so I didn't have to change any currency, just got it back for
Memorial Stupa at Killing Fields
filled with bones, skulls, and clothing fragments from victims exhumed from the graves <$1 transactions, now floating around in my pack as keepsakes.
Phnom Penh is the capital city, and was much nicer than either Bill or I had expected. Nice restuarants, ate my first western food of the trip, and some swanky themed bars right on the water. Definitely a cool place to hang out in for a couple nights.
Early the next morning we arranged a day-long tuk-tuk to tour the Killing Fields and S-21, two historic sites preserved to remember a brutal, recent revolution in Cambodia. Pol Pot rose to leadership in the Khmer Rouge which overthrew the existing government in 1975, afterwhich he vowed to end foreign "corruption" of Cambodia by cutting it off from the outside world, eliminating intellectuals (even glasses-wearers), and emptying the cities "the focal points of evil". He forced his countrymen to remote areas to farm huge quantities of rice in an attempt to establish the country as a modern agricultural state.
Thousands died in transit, too weak to make the journey, and a series of crop failures caused many forced-farmers to starve. In typical fascist style, Pol Pot was super paranoid, interrogating "subversives" at every turn, forcing confessions under brutal torture,
including suspects' spouses and children. After "information" was extracted, all were sent to the Killing Fields, a former Chinese graveyard about 25 minutes south of Phenom Penh were all were executed. As the country's economic and political situation deteriorated, Pol Pot became increasingly convinced of internal subversion within the Khmer Rouge, and sent many of his lieutenants to S-21 as well. Sound familiar?
For weeks victims stuffed onto truck would arrive daily, be kept just overnight until there was sufficient labor to march them to pits and execute them. Really uplifting stuff. About 20,000 died there, only a small percentage of Cambodians who died under Pol Pot's rule, but these people had a really unfortunate last year, going from S-21 to the Killing Fields. In all, about 200,000 were executed by the KR, and their policies caused an estimated 1.4 - 2.2MM more from things like disease and starvation.
S-21 was a high school that had been gated with razor wire and turned into a prison. The classrooms on the ground floor held a metal bed frame and shackles. That's it. Upper floors held groups of prisoners and in some sections tiny cells were carved out of the
Mugshots of victims
Oddly enough, record keeping was excellent. Every person processed in S-21 was photographed. former educational spaces. Some of it was pretty graphic, so I'm picking and choosing what to throw up here, but it was a pretty chilling day.
Luckily Pol Pot's regime lasted only 4 years, but a lot of damage was still done. While many Khmer Rouge leaders arrested died in prison, Pol Pot lived out his life in house arrest, dying of old age in 1998 - we thought it was remarkable no one offed him without official proceedings, but many top leaders are still free, awaiting trial for war crimes later this year and next.
Worth the trip, but tough to leave with an optomistic view of humanity.
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