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Published: July 28th 2008
Killing Fields
Mass grave where 110 headless skeletons were found Hi All, I hope you like the blog title 'Wats and Why Nots?' to be honest I had 3 different possibilities and I picked this one out as it was the least depressing of the 3. This blog is all about the week we stayed in Cambodia, it's an amazing country with an absolutely awful history.
My two other title contenders were;
1. 'Shock and Awe' - Shock - the shockingly atrocious history of Cambodia under Pol Pot in the mid-70's to early 80's. His regime killed up to 3 million of Cambodia's own people in the worst possible circumstances - more on that later. This level of cruelty was something you'd expect from the middle ages not just 20 odd years ago, I'm shocked that something so bad happened so recently. I'm sure that history will show that we've learned nothing. We still allow it to happen today as we all sit back, come up with politically acceptacle excuses to do nothing and let the suffering continue - think Darfur, Rwanda and Kosovo.
Awe - the awe part comes when you see and experience the scale, splendour and beauty of the Angkor temples in the north of Cambodia. An area
Holes in the Field
Each hole was a mass grave that held between 100 and 500 bodies 30km x 30km is dotted with massive complexes of temples that mix Buddist and Hindu architecture into a unique Angkorian style. Angkor Wat, the most famous, is the single largest Religious building in the world. The Cambodians certainly had a grand and illustrious past which definitely deserves the awe that it inspires.
2. No country for old men - The strange thing you experience in Cambodia is that there are no old people, absolutely none. The oldest people we saw were probably in their mid-30's. when Pol Pot took charge in the mid -70's, he killed most of the middle-aged people, the old people that survived have since died and now all the country is left with is the children of the day, who are now reaching their 30's and their children. Cambodia must have the strangest demographic profile with 90+% of it's population under 35.
Anyway as far as Cambodia goes there isn't much for the tourist to see; the 'Killing Fields' and S21 in Pnomh Penh (PP) in the south and the Angkorian temples at Siem Reap in the north.
After our torturous boat ride into PP we were glad to check into a hotel, have
'Public Transport' Cambodia
Lots of big piggies going to the market a shower and go exploring. PP is a small town so not too much to see. We only stayed a couple of nights. Our main adventure brought us to the 'Killing Fields" museum. It was here in the 1980's that many mass graves were discovered and about 10,000 bodies are thought to have been disposed of here. There is a large monument in the field stacked high with skulls and then a walk around a few smallish fields. All that remains are dozens of large holes where hundreds of bodies were found in each. Some graves had headless corpses, some were for women and children but most were unknown. There was a tree where the children were beaten to death and another where they hung a large loudspeaker so that the screams and moans of tourture and murder couldn't be heard by the locals. There were no guns used, everybody was tortured and beaten to death, some were even buried alive. It was a surreal experience there, strangely it wasn't as bad as I thought but seeing the peoples clothing scattered on the ground made the experience much more haunting than the skulls in the monument.
Our next visit to
S21 was much worse than I was prepared for. S21 or Secret Prison 21 was a high school that Pol Pot turned into a torture camp and prision in the suburbs of PP. Of the over 20,000 prisioners who entered S21 only 7 survived. I won't go into too much detail. There were pictures of beaten corpses, blood splattered on the wall and exhibits of all kinds of torture weapons and methods on display. The most upsetting thing was the galleries of pictures of victims, these were no criminals or terrorists these were ordinary people. They had the joy and excitement of life scared and beaten out of them. It was easy to see in their eyes that they were petrified and yet at the same time had surrendered themselves to their awful fate, the fight was gone from them. There were many children of all ages who were killed. It was definitely worth a visit but not for the faint hearted.
Suitably depressed we took the 6 hour bus journey to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. Our first quest was to seek out some food so we set off into town for some traditional Cambodian fare. The first
S21 Prison
Barbed wire and Mesh was put up to stop prisioners committing suicide establishment we encountered on Pub St. was 'Molly Malones" a none too shabby Irish pub. My resolve to eat local disappearred when I saw Traditional Fish and Chips on the menu with Tar Tar sauce, after the last few days of eating 'local' I couldn't resist. We got to bed early as we had signed ourselves up for a taxi ride out to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat, which meant setting the alarm for 4.30am. We arranged to share a taxi with Jake and Risa, a friendly Canadian couplewe met in Saigon. It was worth getting up for, we sat and had breakfast by the banks of the moate that surrounds the temple. Then we walked over the bridge and around this glorious monument. The sunrise was amazingly clear and you could feel the place heat up as it grew bigger and bigger in the sky.
Unfortunately photos and my writing about the temple won't do it any justice, it's one of those things that just has to be experienced first hand to be fully appreciated. We went on to Angor Thom and about 7 or 8 other temples. Angkor Wat was the one for me and as usual
Maeve couldn't make up her mind, so its a toss up between the 'Bayon' temple and the Lara Croft temple. Apart from the obvious claim that this is where Tomb Raider the movie was shot, it also has the stranggest trees I've ever seen, they grow on walls and buildings. They look like they have tentacles. One of my favourite trees was where lots of new roots grew like creepers around an existing tree to form a new tree and now the existing tree is dying leaving a hollow core in the new tree, very wierd.
Once we entered the temples we were given shelter from the harrassing throngs of hawkers wanting to sell everything from postcards, t-shirts, food and drinks. This would continue even if you were sitting at a food stall having a beer in an Angkor Beer T-shirt writing your 10th postcard over a noodle soup. Everytime you tried to explain why you didn't need all of the stuff you'd already gotten they'd just ask 'Why Not?'. I'm proud of my self restraint not to tell them to F-off!! When we were at the second last temple a woman with a baby came up to the 2
Molly Malones
Cambodia's Munster Supporters Clubs'
First and only member girls with a baby and tried to sell it to them, 1,000 Riel or about less than a Euro. We were agast and just as the girls were about to start giving out to the woman she burst out laughing saying 'joke, joke, very good joke'.
We got back to the hotel about 1pm after a good 8 hours of walking and climbing and it was quite warm 33-35C. We arranged to have a 'Pub St. Pub Crawl' with the Jake and Risa. After some food, a shower and a snooze we headed off to Pub St. and had a great night. There are about 14 pubs on Pub St., which is quite short. It's a cool area with pubs, shops, restaurants and galleries. It's gives off a really chilled out buzz with music wafting around everywhere. Anyway we made it to about 8 or 9 of the 14. The drinks are pretty cheapo and a lot of fun was had by all. The girls even mannaged to have a couple of 'Lara Croft' cocktails in the Red Piano, which were officially launced in that pub by Angelina Jolie herself. We got home at 2.45am not bad after being up
at 4.30 the morning before.
The next day we chilled out; we got up late at 11.30, by which stage the day before we'd already 7 hours of exploring under our belts. We decided that after 5 weeks of hard core travelling it was time to head to the Beach. It would take 2 days of buses and boats to get to Koh samui in Thailand, unless we splashed out on flights which would get us there in extreme comfortr by 1.30pm the next afternoon. That's exactly what we did, after our boating and busing experience from Vietnam to Cambodia we thought we deserved a bit of comfort and it would save us losing 2 days in transit.
Later that day we were actually offered a baby for 1 Dollar by a lady, whilst children around her ate scraps off of people plates in restaraunts. Cambodia is a desperately poor country so any western face is always seen as a possible solution to their problems. This can be very frustrating for any western tourist as you'd like to help but you can't possibly help everybody and refusing people on the street make you feel like a right sh*t. The
other part of it is that eveytime a local comes up to you, you know that somewhere during the conversation they'll just ask you for money. You always have the feeling that's all they're interested in, so its very hard to try to get to know the locals as they are not as genuinely interested in you, as you are in them. These are probably the worst parts about travelling in Cambodia but it shouldn't put anybody off going there just something to be prepared for.
Cambodian Men 5/10
Cambodian Women 5/10
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