The Adventure Begins

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Leaving Korea

I decided to take the thirty minute walk to Ski's apartment rather than take a bus or taxi, despite being loaded down with a fairly heavy backpack. The night wasn't too cold, and I knew I would be cramped up in public transportation enough over the next few weeks anyways. I went up to his apartment, where he was busy finishing the last of his packing, dropped my coat and gloves off, and we proceeded to the bus stop in sweatshirts, despite the freezing cold temperatures and the icy wind buffeting us. The buses were scheduled to come every half hour, so we weren't too worried about it. Of course, the bihourly bus showed up 45 minute later, and we were soon on our way to the airport.

A short while later, Ski and I arrived at Incheon International Airport just outside of Seoul. The great thing about Incheon is its utter efficiency. Even for international flights, showing up two hours early leaves quite a big buffer zone. Although we were late, our friends Sessions and Nicole, bound for Indonesia on an earlier flight than us, were waiting for us in the lobby, drinking some beers. We proceeded to join in, wish each other good fortunes on our respective adventures, and they had to leave shortly thereafter to get through security. Ski and I finished another beer, got our tickets, and boarded the plane a bit later.

We were slightly worried about the next leg of our journey. We had to transfer at Kuala Lumpur in order to get to Phnom Penh, our first destination, but we only had 2 hours to make the transfer. Our arrival didn't ease our minds any, as there was no international transfer area, just 8 massive lines for foreign passports, and 6 empty lines for Malaysian passports. We stayed in our line, keeping our mild panic in check, and finally got through. The rest of the airport was simple and quick. The security check was a joke (I should have been able to assume this would be the case when I read one of the restrictions on the e-ticket - "Guns are no longer allowed on flights to Indonesia"). We ended up having to wait for our gate to open before boarding the plane to Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh - A peaceful city shadowed

by a dark past

After another uneventful plane ride, we arrived in Cambodia at around 9 in the morning. We made our first mistake upon arrival, which was to exchange our Korean Won to Cambodian Riel. $250 worth. We found out over the next several days that Cambodian Riel is perhaps the most useless currency on the planet. Some vendors will charge you a terrible rate for the affrontery of using their currency, and others will completely refuse to take it. They much prefer US dollars, of which we had very few. And even if you are lucky enough to have US dollars, chances are they will give you your change in Riel, which just makes things incredibly confusing until you get accustomed to the system.

Our hostel, Me Mates Place (I had to keep asking Ski what the hell our hostel's name was, because I couldn't figure out if the name was trying to be British, Pirate, or if it was just typical bad English) sent us a driver who took us on a hectic 30 minute ride to the place. Of course, while leaving the parking lot across from the airport, he drove straight onto a stacked pile of bricks which messed up his undercarriage, which didn't do loads to increase my confidence in his driving ability. This was my first experience with driving and traffic in SE Asia, so I didn't yet realize that the chaos happening aorund me was extremely common, and in fact, fairly tame. We got to the place, threw our bags onto the beds, grabbed quick showers, and headed down to the common room a bit after 10am. One of the employees asked us if we would like some juice. A reasonable question given the time of day. However, we had been awake for 26 hours at this point, and we wanted to go explore a bit of this new city, so of course we asked for some beers.

I'm a huge beer drinker, and I try to make it a point to try every new beer I see. There was a lovely array of new beers in the refrigerator for me, and I decided to go for the most popular local brew first, Angkor ("My Country My Beer"). It was pretty good for a cheap basic beer, and a significant improvement over anything Korea has to offer locally (which was true for every beer I had on the entire trip, incidentally).

After that, we toured the city for a while. We walked along the riverfront to the downtown area, and every step closer we got, I realized more and more how different this was than anything I had experienced before. This city had no buildings taller than 6 or 7 floors, and it is the capital city of Cambodia! It started to dawn on me how strange this trip was going to be. In the downtown area, near the river, there are a few temples and palaces. We walked into one open temple, and as we were walking around I heard someone call my name. And it wasn't Ski. I turn around to see a vaguely familiar lump of a man raising his hand and doing a perpetually miserable person's imitation of a smile at me. I scoured my brain for his name, and despite (or because of) the fact that I can still name around 100 of the Pokemon from the first game, it just wasn't in there. Memory full. In our recollections of him, we assigned him a name that perfectly matched his personality: Deadweight.

Idle inane chatter for a bit. Deadweight was a leech, but an unprepossessing leech at first, so we tolerated his essential blandness. Then, in the span of about 5 minutes, he proceeded to bomb several photos, casually dismiss every country as inferior to India (where he had spent a lengthy period of time), and tell me that he thinks he would rather confront a bear than a bee. I'm allergic to bees, in a pretty bad (i.e. potentially fatal) way, and I would take a whole hive of them over a bear. I've outrun enough bees in my life to know I have a better shot with them than trying to escape a bear. A BEAR.

He wanted us to go have lunch with him and see another area, and we were able to extricate ourselves from his illustrious company by taking a tuk-tuk (motorcycle driven cart, the best way to get around town) to a site he didn't want to visit: Tuol Sleng Prison Genocide Museum. Also known as S (Security Prison)-21, this former high school on the outskirts of town was used from 1975 until 1979 by the Khmer Rouge regime as a torture prison for intellectuals. They took professors, doctors, artists and other academics to the prison to interrogate them for information, which in turn led to untold numbers of false confessions, and forced incriminations against family and friends. An estimated 17,000 prisoners were interrogated and tortured here, and then taken outside of the city to the Killing Fields where they were killed with a blunt object (as bullets were too expensive and in short supply) and put in mass graves. Only 7 prisoners are known to have survived S21.

The prison itself has 3 main buildings. The entire area is surrounded by razor wire. In the courtyard there are 14 stone coffins, and a wooden scaffold used to hang prisoners upside down and dunk their heads under water for extended periods of time. There were also signs that dictated the rules of the prison, any violation of which resulted in either lashes or electrocution. The first building had one or more beds in every room, some of the torture devices scattered around the floors, and a picture of a victim on the wall. The second building had some of the tiny individual cells the prisoners were forced to sleep in, as well as the larger communal sleeping rooms where everybody was chained to the same bars together. The whole balcony side face of the building is blanketed in what used to be electrified barbed wire. The third building was the primary interrogation area for the more important prisoners. Some awful things were there, including an old water boarding chamber. The last thing before you leave is a room with two huge cabinets filled with skulls.

After this thoroughly depressing tour, we silently made our way back to town. We walked around a bit more, then ended up in a restaurant for some food and drinks. We drank at several places on our way back to the hostel, and walked through the vibrant street markets selling any number of fruits, vegetables, live seafood, and raw meat (enchantingly speckled with buzzing flies). A bit later, we went out to try and find a club we had heard about from various locals. It was in a very different part of town, and I had to rely on my directional skills to navigate us there. The path took us through some incredibly sketchy areas where the Cambodian slumlords delved too greedily and too deep. We finally arrived in the area. We saw a huge open beer garden area, and decided that it couldn't hurt to have more alcohol before entering the club. It was pretty empty except for a couple lively stalls near the back corner. We soon found out why. I asked for too beers, and the proprietor inquired, "Small or pitcher?" Now... I don't take too kindly to small beers, so I just decided... hell, why not pitchers. I got the two pitchers, and had my most pleasant shock of the day when the vendor requested all of $3 for said pitchers.

Ski is not normally a beer drinker, so I commend him on his efforts during the trip to open up his palate beyond gin and cheap tequila. We finished our beers, and headed to what turned out to be a nearly deserted club. Finding no entertainment there, and having been awake for approximately 42 hours, we decided to head home for the last time by way of a downtown kebab stand Ski had seen earlier. We journeyed to the riverfront street, and made our way north to the hostel looking for kebab. Upon reaching the main street before ours, we realized we must have missed it. I suggested settling with something close, but Ski was at his most determined, and insisted that we go all the way back downtown to find kebab. We did the whole trip again, finding no sweet kebab-related succor. We ended up at another guesthouse, which was run by a foreigner (Canadian or American I believe) and got some decent, if relatively overpriced food. After this, we went back to the hostel for the night and caught up on some much needed sleep.

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Phnom Penh is a pretty quiet, lazy little city. It was a great place to start our trip, with a bit of touristy stuff and important cultural and historical sites blended perfectly with a relaxing area to have a few drinks.

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Photos

Cambodian countryside
Children washing dishes in the countryside