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Published: August 22nd 2010
Pedophile Beach
Why I hated the beach at Sihanoukville
Sihanoukville (8/16 +8/17/10)
Phnom Penh (8/18 +8/19/10) For my final four days in Cambodia, I stayed in two different cities, the first of which was a beach city called Sihanoukville. I wanted to stop here because it was the last official U.S. battle of the Vietnam War (even though it was in Cambodia). I learned three things in Sihanoukville :
1) There is no memorial or museum to commemorate the last battle (or any battle) of the Vietnam War
2) I am not the oldest solo male traveler. There are a whole slew of them here; all white and middle-aged or beyond
and...
oh yah...
3) They're pretty much all paedophiles.
I have renamed Sihanoukville--paedophile beach.
John and I sat on the beach the first day and were unable to relax and enjoy the surrounding area. We were constantly accosted by scores of people selling a variety of services. Most of these vendors were teen and pre-teen girls.
What made it even more disturbing was the man next to us who purchased many of these services. At one point he was surrounded by eight girls who were grooming, massaging and feeding him, while others sat at his
At S-21 prison
The prisoners were chained to the floor in small, cramped cells in a former school complex lounge chair making and selling bracelets. Turns out he was the first (and only) American Vietnam War veteran I was to meet on my trip. I lost his audience when I told him how disgusted I was with all the child prostitution.
We didn't return to the beach.
The other alternatives in Sihanoukville were bars. In addition to perverted old dudes, the area is flooded with 20-something Abercrombie models looking to get drunk and hook-up. I don't think one of them even owned a shirt. It was like spring break, Cambodia. So the bars were half-filled with these kids and the other half filled with...
yep, you guessed it...
local hookers.
John and I felt very out of place in Sihanoukville. Luckily, we ended up meeting two very cool English girls, Rosie and Lucy, who just wanted to chat, laugh and kick our ass in pool. They saved us from the attention of the hookers and we saved them from the horny guys.
My final stop in Cambodia was the capitol city of Phnom Penh. From here I would visit S21 prison and the infamous Killing Fields. In both places, I was once again reminded how
Shrine at the Killing fields
In the windows are skulls of the exhumed corpses truly cruel and inhumane human beings can be to one another.
In the 1970s, while the U.S. was secretly bombing Cambodia, civil war was erupting and dividing the country. The victor was an extreme communist regime called the Khmer Rouge. To call them brutal would be an understatement.
It amazes me to think a government like the Khmer Rouge could exist in my lifetime. Their goal was to close off Cambodia from the rest of the world and create a classless society of farmers and workers. To achieve this goal, the Khmer Rouge killed all Cambodians who were wealthy, educated and of mixed ancestry. They also imprisoned, tortured and killed anyone who was on the other side during the civil war. It is estimated that a staggering one-quarter of the population was killed by the Khmer Rouge.
During this time, the people lived in constant fear. They were forced to be either farmers or laborers and had all private property taken away from them. It was actually illegal to show emotion, sing, eat food that was not provided by the government, practice religion, and in some places, glance to the left or right when walking. Money was
The killing fields
holes which were once graves completely abolished. Government spies enforced these laws and any accusations led to imprisonment and/or death.
Unfathomable.
I visited S21 (a.k.a. Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum), the most famous of these torture prisons. Ironically, S21 was formerly a school. During the late seventies, the classrooms were converted to tight cells and torture rooms. The parallel bars in the athletic field were used to torture and interrogate. I walked through the wooden and brick cubicle-cells and saw photographs of the victims before, during and after their tortures and murders. Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept meticulous documentation of their auto-genocide.
I then went to Choeung Ek, the location where the prisoners were taken and executed; their bodies buried in shallow mass graves. We know this area as the Killing Fields. Today, huge pits are all that remain of these burial sites. The bodies were exhumed and the bones placed on display in a windowed shrine on the premises. The eeriest part was finding teeth and bone fragments in the dirt that had surfaced from the latest rains.
It was a haunted place.
I know I feel haunted after visiting there for just one day.
So what would it
Tree at the Killing Fields
where babies were held by their feet and beaten to death be like to have that as my history?
On my last night in Cambodia, following an uneventful visit of the Royal Palace and silver pagoda, I reconnected with John and Christine and we discussed the haunted land of Cambodia. We wondered what it was like before the bombings and civil war; before Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Perhaps the ghosts that now reside here rattle chains of poverty and despair; their gruesome howls echoing prostitution and paedophilia.
Boarding the plane and flying away from Cambodia was was like an exorcism; though I will never be able to purge the experiences and understandings that now lace my soul.
Nor would I choose to.
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Leslie Bianco
non-member comment
Cambodia
..... jesus. I can't even imagine ...