Cambodia ain't for wussies

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Cambodia's a sad place to be. First, it seems that everyone works really hard to just eek out a living. They work long days and have hardly any equipment to help them. They harvest rice by hand with metal scythes, still use cows for the heavy lifting and transport, and wash clothes by hand. The roads outside cities are often rutted like the moon and you have to zig zag about on a motorbike to avoid being swallowed up in a pot hole. And everything, even in the city seems to be covered with dirt as a result. There are a few places in the cities that are looking up but most are run down.

But all of that is not that bad. What's really terrible is the genocide the people endured during Pol Pot's reign of terror under the Khmer Rouge. The day before Christmas we went to Tuol Sleng (S21) prison in Phnom Penh where they took people to be tortured. They would round up people who they thought were enemies of the revolution here and torture them into confessing their supposed crimes. And they made them write biographies so that they could round up all of their family and have them killed too. There are bulletin boards with pictures of the thousands of people who were brought to S21. Only 8 people ever managed to survive. They estimate between 1 to 3 million were murdered. Nobody has ever been tried for these crimes but this is finally in process. Most of the ring leaders have already died.

If the prisoners didn't die at the prison they took them to the killing fields where they were forced to dig their own graves. Then they lined them up on the side of the grave and hit them over the head with a hoe or other sharp instrument to kill them. Or they might just bury them alive. There is a tree there where they smashed babies and small children against a tree to kill them. It's unfathomable how people could be so impersonally brutal. It didn't inspire much of a feeling of "peace on earth and good will towards men." Afterwards I wished that I hadn't seen all of this.

But that is thankfully in the past and people can look forward to a better future. That's difficult though as there is a constant trail of people with deformities, amputated limbs, mothers with young children and debilitated old people who ask for money. All you can do is help out the ones who are the worst off. We've bought some kids food because we don't want to buy their trinkets and encourage more of the same.

We went to a beach with dozens of beach side restaurants and bars. But you felt almost obscene trying to enjoy the place as there were so many people in states of misery begging for money. Toby wasn't dealing well with it and we wanted to leave a day earlier than planned but had to stay until our laundry (washed by hand of course) was ready. I don't know how in the world Toby is going to be able to cope with India.

But on the up side, I would tell everyone that they should visit Angkor Wat. It is the most amazing batch of ruins I've ever seen. We've met some people who argue for Machu Pichu but Angkor Wat is the mac daddy of temple ruins IMHO. And there are moments near the end of the day when people in the country side come out and swim in ponds and relax in the evening cool. It's absolutely lovely then.

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Photos

Ancient temples near Battambang
We've been to Angkor Wat before, the greatest ancient temples I've seen to date IMHO. So we only stopped to see these less exciting ruins since they were close by with a local guide we hired. Nice guy and a hard worker. Wish I could hire him at home. Too bad we can't cherry pick our immigrants. :)

Monks in Battambang
Our guide told us that the different colors don't mean anything. Funny that they create a color coordinated queue.

Muddy fisherman
We stopped to take a picture of the sunset and this little boy showed us his catch - an eel and a small fish. His mother probably has a heck of a time getting the mud out of those clothes!

harvesting rice by hand
Imagine how you'd feel after a day doing this. Ugh!

sticky rice cooked in bamboo
What "green" food production! The rice is cooked in these nice biodegradable cups so no washing pots and pans. After cooking, the outter charred bamboo is cut off and feeds the fire to cook the next batch of rice. The rice is sold in the same biodegradable packaging. The rice is flavored with coconut and it's super yummy.

rice paper production
This woman makes round rice paper by hand for use in spring rolls.

fish paste processing
Fish paste is used in many Khmer recipes and we stopped into a place where they process it. They remove heads and fins from these fish and then put them in large vats with salt for a minimum of four months. The fish goo is then removed from the vats and a woman chops it up finely with a couple of cleavers. Jeez, would love to buy her a food processor for Christmas! Oddly, the finished product doesn't smell that fishy unless you put your nose up to it.

they are "supposed" to drive
on the right hand side of the road but we think that it's only a suggestion. The picture speaks for itself. Yeah, there are some scary moments riding in a tuk-tuk in the traffic of Phenom Penh.

Vishnu
This sculpture of Vishnu would look just like an Egyptian pharaoh if he had one foot forward and only two arms.

one of many amputees
And this guy doesn't have it nearly as bad as many others we've seen.

skulls dug up from killing fields
Their kept in this pagoda as a memorial.

area around the mass graves
of "the killing fields"

Tuol Sleng victims
Can you imagine? How could anyone kill mothers and babies?!

Mormons
Man, these guys leave no stone unturned do they?!

Phenom Penh National Museum
This museum was really beautiful (and clean!)

Royal palace Phenom Penh
Actually, I'm not sure if this is a picture of the actual palace. There are many buildings in the complex and they all kinda look alike.

Silver pagoda
There's a floor made of silver tiles inside and an emerald Buddah. We thought the green Buddah looked like it had been made of old Coke bottles instead of emeralds though.

Sunset over rice fields
The countryside can be quite beautiful.

Lake side sunset in Phenom Penh
Is that an iconic shot or what?!

urinals
I understand that men in a restroom don't have any privacy but this is a bit ridiculous, don't ya think?

Cambodia-Vietnam friendship monument
Strange to see machine guns in a friendship monument.

Baguette
You know you're in former French Indochina when you see baguette for sale everywhere.

young trinket vendors
We bought these girls breakfast instead of their bracelets.

local transportation
And I thought flying coach was bad!

Comments

[paul Zikmanis]

Nice transport
I like the local version of the British double decker bus. Good for sight seeing! Toby, I think I would have a tough time with Cambodia too. But you guys buying food directly for kids is the best thing you could do. All we can do is donate through some charity, then half of it goes towards administrative costs and blah blah blah. Spend 20 bucks for me on some kids, I'll pay you 40 when you get back. Better yet give a kid 20 bucks to put a stick in the spokes of the lead mormon. Whoopie! The shot of the kid with the eel is the best one I've seen so far. That says it all about the people (happy despite everything) and the situation. Paul

[Todd]

Cambodia
I've wanted to go to Cambodia since reading Stephen T. Asma's "The Gods Drink Whiskey." He says that being in Cambodia is like being on hallucinogens, in that you're faced with continual sensory overload. I felt that way in northern Vietnam at times; for instance, going through a town which was entirely black with coal dust at dusk and lit up in a second floor window were brightly colored bridal dresses on display. The contrast was disorienting. Asma, a Buddhist professor from Chicago, I believe, was in Cambodia because the genocide was so complete that it wiped out their native Buddhist traditions. They were importing Theravadan Buddhist knowledge from abroad in an attempt to rebuild their culture. The mind rebels at the thought of killing on that scale. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to be seeing the fallout of that genocide up close . Hang in there.

[Jack]

re: amputees
The amputees you see are probably victims of unexploded ordinance, known locally as UXO, from the US-Vietnam war. Have you seen any shell casings used for flower pots, banisters, stairs, etc.? The first time I was in Laos I was too scared to go off-trail.

[Jack]

Re: harvesting by hand
Harvesting rice by hand wouldn't be hard work is not for the high heat and humidity. I sweated about a quart in four hours once. Worse is handling the grain before it has been pounded. It sheds tiny, sharp filaments like fiberglass pieces. I feel all itchy just recalling it. I wonder if Cambodian rice fields harbor cobras, as Lao fields do.

[Kris]

Vietnamese Friendship, etc.
The Vietnamese army moved into Cambodia to stop the Khmer Rouge killing. Hence the machine guns in the frienship memorial. Ten million landmines were left in the ground at the end of the war. From Wikipedia: "UNICEF has designated Cambodia the third most mined country in the world, attributing over 60,000 civilian deaths and thousands more maimed or injured since 1970 to the unexploded land mines left behind in rural areas. The majority of the victims are children herding animals or playing in the fields. Adults that survive landmines often require amputation of one or more limbs and have to resort to begging for survival." Other snipets from Wikipedia: "In 2006, Transparency International's rating of corrupt countries rated Cambodia as 151st of 163 countries of their Corruption Perceptions Index." "In 2005, oil and natural gas deposits were found beneath Cambodia's territorial waters, and once commercial extraction begins in 2011, the oil revenues could profoundly affect Cambodia's economy."

[Kris]

Monk colors
Forest monks (who live in monastaries in the forests) usually wear brown or reddish brown robes. City monks wear saffron robes.