Dark history but happy people (and pizza)

Asia » Cambodia » South » Phnom Penh
April 17th 2006

Published: January 15th 2007

Edit Blog Post

Waderlusting

River life

I guess our boat was "express" compared to them...

Koh Kohn

After a hurried farewell to Earth, I was on the ferry back to the mainland, and after a lot of confusion, I was on my way to Koh Kohn (Thai/Cambodia border). I didn’t even know anything that was going on, and I was to only non-local traveler in the van. It turned out, that all I needed for my safe delivery to Phnom Phen was a flimsy little white paper that had a number and the words “Phnom Phen,” which had been given to me by the Thai travel agency I had used.

Getting to Koh Kohn, the border town in Cambodia, and finding my prepaid guesthouse was a disaster, and I was super paranoid to the “dangers and hoodlums that lurked in the streets,” which was my scared American perception of the whole country. Late in the evening around 9:00, the van dropped us off at the Thai/Cambodian border, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I just followed the four other ladies who got off the van and walked through a fence; and we were suddenly in Cambodia. Just like that! They negotiated with a nice young taxi driver who was

How's the powder look?

Chenelle and I cruising on our moto through the streets of Phnom Penh..

touting for riders at the border along with other taxi drivers. We were on our merry way to a guest house and then he asked, "Do you have a visa?"
Me: A what?
Him: A visa. You need that to be in Cambodia.
M: No
H: You're in the country illegally!
M: Uh-oh. What am I supposed to do?
H: We gotta go back to the border and get a visa.
M: How?
H: I'll help you.

When we got back to the border, he asked for my passport and disappeared into the dark. And I never saw him again. Can you imagine if that really happened? Cause it didn't. 😊 He took my psssport into a building and came back and asked me for some money. Then he came back w my passport and a visa! I was no longer a smuggled foreigner. Then we reached a guesthouse, and when they said it's going to cost $--, I told them that I had paid for an all inclusive ticket from Bangkok to Phnom Penh which included a night at the border town. They were like, "Huh?" So I fished out my little paper that had been solving all

I guess the French wasn't all that bad

Beautiful French colonial architecture backdropping the daily chaos of Phnom Penh

my problems along the way until then, and they said, "Oh! That's another guest house." So the taxi driver took me there and helped me check in. Then he took me to eat at some total local, hole-in-the-wall, grubby restaurant. Then we went to an outdoor bar to watch cheesy live karaoke-style singers. Not just one, but two such places! I think this is considered the sophisticated thing to do here, so I rolled with it. He awkwardly tried to make a move on me while we were by the moonlit river (how was I supposed to know that’s what he meant by a “cool place”), but I somehow made my NO very clear. And shortly after, he was peeing behind the tree on our "first date," and I knew that that was the end of his game.

Phnom Phen

The next morning, a van picked me up at the guest house and I was off to phenom Penh. On my busride from Koh Kohn to Phnom Phen, I met a Canadian named Chenelle, who had formerly been an English teacher in Pusan, South Korea. We've been rooming, traveling and partying together ever since.

Let me

What a smile

Sweet girl we met while waiting for a guy to assemble the bamboo train...

detour back to this bus ride. I think that some of the greatest travel stories take place while in transport because you never know what to expect! There were several people in a van just driving along, and suddenly, half of us were dropped of at a fork in a dirt road—not even a hug or good-bye from the driver, let alone information as to what will become of us. We were just standing there humming to ourselves when a raggity van cane and picked us up and we began our three-hour journey to Phnom Phen. Naturally, this isn't our own exclusive ragging van; it's a community transport van, so we pulled over every so often to pick up locals. Plus one here, plus three there, plus a chicken here, and plus seven here and next thing you know, we're a full-fledged party van. A three row van packed with almost twenty people! One of the guys had the van door open and was hanging outside b/c there was just not enough room for passenger #20! Talk about car pooling to the limit! I realized our van was nothing when I saw another packed van, where the driver was sitting

Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum/Security Prison 21

Only thirty years ago, this was the location of the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, where thousands of men, women and children were killed and only seven people were found alive. The little doors are classrooms, which were converted to individual or mass prison/torture cells.

on top of someone! I'm guessing they were pulling a 25-passenger maneuver. The drive was nice in itself because we passed by many villages, and received countless welcome waves and hello's from the children. I noticed during the drive that in rural Cambodia, everyone just chills out on their hammocks. I don’t think even Southern California can complete with their definition of “laid back.” But this drive had a profound effect on me. And I guess it had something to do with seeing these happy people in the middle of nowhere and with nothing. For a capitalist this was quite shocking and beautiful to see. It is a lesson that will stay with me forever. What Opera calls an "A-ha" moment.

Meeting Chenelle made me feel safer in a city that had "Missing" posters posted at guesthouses. Our place was in the Boeng Kak (lake) area, and we stayed in a lakefront guesthouse for $4 a night.

The first place we went to was the Tuol Sleng Museum, which is a museum displaying the atrocities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a force that took over Cambodia from 1975 to 1979,

Even following these rules meant death...

...it was just variations of torture if you broke any of these rules.

in which nearly 2 million people were tortured and killed--mostly those who were educated, and even those who simply wore glasses or spoke a foreign language; men, women and children. It was Pol Pot's vision to turn Cambodia into a peasant dominated, agricultural nation that could eventually produce the most rice in the world (according to my understanding). All those who weren’t tortured and killed were taken to the fields to harvest and farm. :: My moto driver in Battambang (a city SW of Siem Reap) was 20 years old during the Khmer Rouge and he told me of the atrocities he endured and lived through, and how he contemplated suicide on many occasions. The incomprehensible reality about this part of history is that it's really not even history... it's modern day events. I was born just three years after this brutal genocide and it's mind-boggling how something as radical as this could have taken place during the late 70s ::

The front entrance gate of Tuol Sleng Museum is enough to make one turn around and leave, as it is cluttered with amputees and people with physical mutilations begging for money. This museum was originally a high school,

Evolution of the bus?

The hustle and bussle of Phnom Phen. Chenelle and I missed getting into the palace by 10 minutes! Argh! I guess rules do exists in some places here.

but in 1975, it was taken over by the Khmer Rouge and turned into Security Prison 21, otherwise known as S-21. Upon inception, it turned into the largest detention and torture center in the country and was the site of thousands of inhumane torture and deaths. It is said that during the early half of 1977, an average of 100 people were murdered each day. Brainwashed children who were taken from their families were mostly the keepers of the prison, where they would threaten and beat the prisons-- their own elders. Having brains that absorb new information like a sponge, young children had been completely reprogrammed to have no remorse for the adults.

Most of the people who were detained there were later taken to Choeung Ek, an extermination camp otherwise known as the Killing Fields, outdoor mass graves where about 9,000 skeletal remains were found, most of whom were beaten to death to save bullets). I skipped out on going to the Killing Fields because honestly, seeing the prison chambers via classrooms, torture devices/illustrations, skulls, personal accounts, and the photographs of the thousands of innocent men, women and children who were killed, was enough to extinguish any desire

Bamboo Train

This was the "bamboo train" we rode in Battambang, which is merely a two wheel axals, a wooden plank made from thin wood strips and a motor. It goes faster than trains, so if we see a train coming, we have time to take apart the bamboo train and get off the tracks. Great safty precautions, eh? On our ride, another bamboo train was coming from the opposite end, filled to the max with about 15 kids armed with powder. Yikes, is there reverse on this thing? (These were the kids who gave us a life...REALLY sweet girl)

to see more. It's just about the most devastating and depressing place I have ever been. I wanted to take pictures but I couldn't bring myself to do it because I didn't wnat to have visual memories of being in that painful place. I felt really sick the entire time I was there, and I was forever left with the images of the hundreds and thousands of identification pictures that were neatly arranged on large boards. When I looked into their dark, blank eyes, I wondered what that unknowing victim was thinking as they were having their photo taken.

After I left the museum, I couldn't help but look the Cambodians differently, knowing that they all have a part or tie to this horrendous past. It's crazy to see forty, fifty, sixty or seventy-year-old people around the country knowing that each one must have their own tale to tell, with each story having their own gruesome variation.

Unfortunatly, my last night in Phnom Phen was not the greatest. We were cooling ourselves down with several Angkor Beers for happy hour and eating the "Happy Herb Pizza" --the waiter asked if we wanted "happy pizza" or "happy happy pizza"

One, two, three...

This is the rest of her posse. I was saying the common photo phrase, "One, two, three..." and they took it as some signal to pose with one, two or three fingers

and we opted for the former. After this experience next time I will get "the pizza." Per a local's suggestion, Chenelle and I went partying at Heart of Darkness, a clubby shady joint crowded with sin, foreigners, and local prostitutes. I was having fun, drinking cocktails and then WHAM, I passed out cold. I hardly remember a thing. Later when I awoke, I was in a hospital. Two guys in the club helped Chenelle take me to couple hospitals b/c the first one didn't have a doctor. Anyhow, I ended up at a local clinic that charged me $80 for "extensive care": $5 per hour of laying on the hospital bed, $10 for vitamins, $2 for the bottle of water they gave me to drink, $10 for an ambulance ride back to our guesthouse (we were in a dark deserted street with obviously no taxi's, tuk-tuk's or moto's). But thanks to my "frugal backpacker ways" that I had recently be schooled on by Chenelle, I negotiated and paid $50-- Maybe it was the pizza, maybe the drinks, maybe a rufi… who knows?

Battambang

My cheeks hurt from all the smiling I did in Battambang. When we were

Cute kids

Chenelle and I got lost looking for a handicraft store that benefits disabled Cambodians, but we did stumble upon these adorable kids who were thrilled to see themselves on the digital camera

there, we rented two moto drivers to take us around town. We got bombarded with baby powder all day and it was so fun! At one point, Chenelle and I got into a heavy-duty powder fight with some adorable, local kids. We looked like geishas after they were through with us. After the rowdiness settled down, I drew little powder hearts on their arms (faux tattoos) and they were so delighted, I had a line of them waiting for them. I bet I was the talk of the village that day. 😉

When I bought my ticket to “Express Boat” ticket to Siem Reap, I never knew it included a 2-hour truck ride with about 20 locals/travelers and chickens on the truck bed-- which would be totally illegal back home, but everyday stuff here. I was scared at first that the truck would topple or that we would be thrown off the truck, since we were driving on unpaved, dirt roads, (adults were sitting along the truck bed walls and children and chicks were piled in the middle), but was a predictable memorable experience. If this sitting arrangement wasn't exciting enough, it was on unpaved and severely

"Would you like it happy, or happy-happy?"

"Just kinda happy please" said the weak-sauce. Happy Pizza is not for the faint (like me)

BUMPY roads, with tree branches whacking us along the narrow road—cutting one woman on her nose. Anyhow, from there, we took a 6-hour boat ride in a river that was so shallow that we got stuck in mud every 15-30 minutes, and workers had to get in the 2~4 feet deep water to push the boat. But the view was amazing, seeing river life-- the families, daily lives and homes of the locals. The river has homes all along it, and most homes are on the river, on a raft-like foundation. There were kids swimming in the river, women washing clothes, people taking baths, women collecting cooking water... it was quite the sight and shock (for sanitary reasons). And all throughout the ride, kids would run out of their homes and giggle and wave.

I'm in Siem Reap now and going to the Temples of Angkor the day after tomorrow, so that should be quite the fun. Angkor is the national pride of this country, as it is on their flag and national beer! I'm staying at a nice hotel (cleanest since I got here) with Chenelle b/c my dad knows a hotel owner in Cambodia. It’s a nice