Chapter 25. Lemongrass Stains - Phnom Penh


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Asia » Cambodia » South » Phnom Penh
August 8th 2007
Published: August 12th 2007
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Thumping on my roof...What?Thumping on my roof...What?Thumping on my roof...What?

The monkeys life on Phnom Penh's rooftops...
Arrival into Phnom Penh from Sihanoukville is not very kind on the eyes, or heart for that matter. A steady stream of southbound ocean containers gives way to ice cube tray buildings of repair shops with a disorganized grouping of unlabeled commodities. Wooden planks span the ditch between the street and side access road. Below the planks is where weeks of garbage settle to remain there for an indefinite period of time. The rotting vegetable matter is biodegradable; one day soon enough the earth will reclaim it. The same cannot be said for the millions of plastic bags and styrofoam boxes strewn about. Since coming to Asia, I have seen trash collection trucks once, in Sihanoukville. Those seriously intent on environmental matters will have to tackle how to educate people not to use their own country as a convenient garbage heap.
The rude introduction to Cambodia’s turbulent and raucous capital is in curious contrast to Vientiane. The outskirts of the Lao capital were not overly difficult to accept, whereas Phnom Penh’s suburbs are a mass of scattered blight. The center of Vientiane is a pointless stream of avenues and faceless architecture…all terribly forgetful. On the other hand, there is a method
ObstaclesObstaclesObstacles

Crossing the street is an artful and risky endeavor. But you actually get the flow of the game after a while...
to downtown Phnom Penh’s madness. Its buildings are in better condition. Shopping is superb, and I dislike shopping. The markets are busy and vibrant. Some parks are wonderfully manicured and trimmed with multicolored annuals. Young men seize open sandlots to play soccer by the Tonle Sap River. Though certainly not available to the average fellow, Phnom Penh’s restaurant scene bursts with diversity; its nightlife options range from ultra chic nightclubs where anything goes to critically acclaimed bars and cafés that would easily blend in to any European capital.
Monkeys are part of the urban composition. They forage on denuded corn cobs and leftover scraps tossed from ¬tuk-tuks, bicycles, and mopeds. Instead of the blaring traffic of screeches and horns to awaken me, two monkeys pounce on the roof of my guesthouse. As I occupy the top floor of the guesthouse, the primates do not pitter patter from roof to roof. Rather they jump and crash on the metal surface at all hours. It takes some getting used to. When I heard the first alarming thump above my bed at three in the morning, I feared thieves were trying to break in by lowering themselves to the balcony. But, no. Two
Wat PhnomWat PhnomWat Phnom

In reverence to Budha...
monkeys were fighting over a stick and a bag of potato chips. I went back to bed, but not before ensuring that the French doors leading out to the balcony were securely locked shut.

Jim has had travelers’ illness since he came to Cambodia two days ago. But it hasn’t quelled the North Carolinian’s positive attitude or inner pride that he has in successfully having come to a part of the world that his friends back home dared him to try. They never thought he’d follow through. From a rural county by the Outer Banks, his outlook on the world is through the eyes of a Southerner whose journeys have taken him only as far away as New England. Cambodia is a big step for him. In spite of his intestinal discomfort, he orders a Khmer curry dish and I join him at his table for dinner. I need to raise my voice a small degree; he has placed his hearing aids away. “What are you taking for the discomfort?”
“I was told to let it run its course.” he said in a deep southern drawl.
“Look, I am no doctor, but some antibiotics will get you moving confidently
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No fun allowed...
in the next twenty-four hours.” I showed him the pills I often take. The small receptacle accompanies me wherever I go.
Jim was relieved, not because I was giving out amateur medical advice. But he had the same prescription I did. It had a calming affect on him. Soon, he thought, this will be over. “My doctor back home, I said to him, ‘Do you have anything I can take if I get sick over there?’ He comes back to me, Rich: ‘Why would you want an antibiotic at all’? I didn’t know what to think then.”
“Man, you need to switch doctors really fast!” I wanted to ask him if the guy was actually a veterinarian, but I let it go.
“But he’s been our family doctor for as long as I can recall.”
“Hey, it’s your insides, not mine. I doubt he knows many patients who poke their necks above the Mason-Dixon line.”
The retiree chuckled. In two days Cambodia has humbled him. He speaks clearly and plainly. He does not try to use too many words. “I have never seen anything like this. People are nice here. Tourists are good to me, too. But so many people
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Unspeakable atrocities...
have nothing.”
Jim is completely on his own, impressive for a man who has never dared to attempt the third world before without a support system. He is unafraid. “But, Jim, I have a question for you. It is a bit rhetorical. They may have nothing, but take a look around at most of them. They do not complain. Stress? They don’t know the meaning of the word. Everyone takes the ups and downs of life in stride. Is it like that in North Carolina?”
“Well…” Jim pondered the question. “People back home worry, but we’re not in a hurry. You know, I received and e-mail from my friends just now. Same old, same old. Plow the field. Watch NASCAR. Get ready for a picnic.” Jim watched the tuk-tuks zip by. Beggars haggle us at our table before they relent and move on to another party. One has one eye and no fingers. A mine most likely blew off all his digits. Though we cannot understand any Khmer, his voice still echoes the tone of past pain. He will not invest any more time in us. “They have no idea.”
“Jim, they never will.”

When it comes to crossing
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The dead do speak, even in silence...
streets in intense traffic without the aid of a cop or a crosswalk, I made my bones in Rome. But Phnom Penh is a whole new game. Steams of puttering mopeds disregard pedestrians. It is best and only fair, therefore, to disregard them. Same goes for large SUV’s and tour buses. Make sure you give them a few inches when trapped in the middle of opposing traffic. Show no fear. The mopeds will go around and might scrape against your thighs. After three or four close calls, it is like riding a bicycle. You get a feel for it and instinctively know when it is a worthwhile risk to lurch forward in front of one pickup truck and behind a Toyota sedan. It is a reality-based video game. But in this version, you only get one life. Use it wisely.

Scores of lit candles seven inches in diameter and as tall as four feet from the ground decorate Wat Phnom. Perched on a hill overlooking Norodom Boulevard, it is the legendary founding place of the city. It took on greater importance when the capital moved from Angkor in 1422. ‘Phnom’ means ‘hill’, ‘Penh’ translates as ‘creator’. The central wat reeks of sweet incense. Golden Buddha statutes divert the eyes away from the dozens of other representations of the man-cum-deity. A family of three arrives to pray. They sit in front of the candles in view of the largest Buddha statues. The elderly father takes out a prayer book and inserts a small wooden rod in it to call up a passage at random. He recites the lines and his wife and daughter repeat them several times. Their feet point away from all the statutes, towards me, as I am seated in back of them with my back against the wall. All the while, monkeys patrol the green grounds, as do guards. The human security presence makes sure that all foreigners pay a fee to reach the temple complex and shrine above.

In the late afternoon hours before darkness, Phnom Penh locals take a seat on the retaining wall above the Tonle Sap; it discharges its flow into the wide mass of mighty Mekong about a kilometer away. Families read to children on plots of green grass. Some picnic where it is clean enough. Parents show off their newborn in carriages. Eight men occupy a large open area of asphalt and kick to each other a shuttlecock, à la a hackeysack. Each player volleys the heavy shuttlecock with a cracking “Thwack!” from the soles of his shoes, but behind the back. They attract a few dozen onlookers and mesmerize them with superb coordination and body control. For some unknown reason, the police break up the jovial makeshift game. One self-important young officer is very enamored with the sound of his voice as he yelps orders through a cracked megaphone. The public ignores him, but the players scatter in search of a spot where they won’t be disturbed. Though disappointed, the afternoon respite on the river shows a lighter, less hectic side of Phnom Penh, one in which people do enjoy each other’s company and casually ignore the day’s travails.
In only one day I have become immune to the traffic in Phnom Penh. I now accept it as normal. I no longer refuse moped rides from complete strangers, although I know they will abandon me at the first hint of a collision or problem with the police. The police look the other way when they are visible at all. The markets tempt me to invest in personal electronic gadgets that cost a fraction of what I would have to outlay at home. Vendors hawk bootlegged CD’s BMG and Sony haven’t even considered releasing yet. DVD’s of Disney films and other major studios are out on the market at two dollars a piece. I am interested in the videos about Cambodian history and take the risk of buying three at a discount offer. I learn when I play them in my room that the image quality is better than acceptable. Imperfections are few. The sound is free of disruptions. I chose wisely this time, but let the buyer beware.

All other factors being equal, I often take the first presentable option I stumble upon in a new town. Phnom Penh has no shortage of guesthouses and budget hotels. Nevertheless, I, like others, race to find a temporary place to call home. The hunt for a room is done with blinders on; we see and hear nothing but what pertains to accommodation. Stress builds until a bed is secured. All other priorities take a back seat. I pound pavement and stalk out every sign that indicates a bed is there. I first look at the side of the building. Are there air conditioner units? If not, I move on. Does the place look like it will remain upright for my entire stay? Do the nearby streets look like Mogadishu? These are all factors I consider. One hotel offered a worn out chamber with ripped up carpeting for thirty dollars. I kindly told the concierge improvements were needed. He replied with a shrug of the shoulders.
I have settled on a room three floors above what I was sure to be an Australian bar. The flags and memorabilia on the wall surely give that impression. Historically, living above a bar has been a bad selection for me; it is too easy to take root downstairs knowing I am already home. My room at the Rose Bar and Guesthouse is just wonderful, save a few soap streaks here and there. My daily climb up three stories brings me past dozens of beer cases and assortments of liquor bottles in the hundreds. Furthermore, my refrigerator works wonderfully. I avoid the urge to window shop among the cardboard boxes and head downstairs for the first time since checking in. I pop down one hour after the doors opened to collective shrieks of Khmer-accented “Helooo’s” in my direction. In front of me is a staff of eight or nine very young and attractive Cambodian girls (some completely covered, some not) all waving at me. Not prepared for the sight of such beautiful women all at once, I step back totally startled. Where am I? What I thought was a beer pub for thirsty travelers is in fact a gentlemen’s pub, or hostess bar. Single or temporarily single men come here for a little extra attention they just don’t get back in Baltimore or Stuttgart. Three tall and slender ladies polish glasses when I walk by. They wink at me. As I make it to the door, I cross paths with the Mamasan, an older women who directs the girls on whom they should concentrate their efforts and how to keep the men happy in their company. She shook my hand and acted very politely.
“Hello. Welcome to Phnom Penh.”
I gazed at the woman. “Thank you.”
“You customer here now, yes?
“Well, I’m not sure. I have a room here.” I pointed to the ceiling.
“Oh good, You like it here. Girls very nice to you. If you like a girl, you tell me. I fix everything for you.”
“OK, thanks.” I originally intended to make the Rose Bar my last stop for the evening, one last nightcap before going upstairs. I’ll honor my initial plans. This is going to be interesting.

I don’t exactly remember what we were watching. It’s hardly the point. The two heavier and older Australians to my left at the bar had just finished their lunch. I had just ordered mine with a club soda. A loud voice came from over our left shoulders. Besides being clearly American, it was the kind of voice that unnecessarily rips through a room. Even if far away it is impossible to disregard because of its volume, especially brutal if working in an enclosed office environment. Most of the times those who project their voices do so unknowingly. It is like being an ad hoc part of a conversation you’d do anything to avoid.
He had already grabbed his take-out lunch and stabbed in his pocket for a cigarette. He tapped one of the Aussies on the back. “Naw, man, if you’re not good with it, you know I’ll just step outside. I respect you, man.” The young American chummily rested his forearm on the bulky man’s back, starving for attention. “I’m glad we got to run into each other, you and me. I’ll smoke outside.” It was of no consequence. There is no smoking ban in Cambodia. Ashtrays occupy a corner of every table in the restaurant. Practically nothing is banned in Cambodia for that matter.
Neither one of the pair reacted. They just stared forward at the flat screen projection screen and hoped he would go away. The wavy-haired American was undeterred. So cocky, he was in love with the sound of his own boisterous voice. He shuffled over to pay his bill, though one of his orders had not arrived from the kitchen yet. Two Khmer girls tended to him, both very pretty. Few ladies work behind an ex-pat bar in Cambodia unless they’re very good-looking. The meal arrived in a box and one handed it to Mr. Wonderful, who had already reclined as far back as he could on the barstool. She handed him his meal, to which he properly replied in the local vernacular, “Aw Kohn.” Thank you.
The girl took his excellent diction as a possibility he spoke much beyond the polite phrases travelers like me memorize form a pocket dictionary. She asked, “Ah, you speak Khmer, no?”
“Sure I do!” Then came the unexpected and unthinkable. Only someone from the most rural counties of Redneckville could have uttered what fell from his lips. He went into a ten second staccato imitation of what the Khmer language sounded to him. Without giving it a second thought, he let out a series of alternating and repeating up and down tonal “chings” and “chongs” for the girls. “Ching-ching-chong, chong-chong-ching….Ching-ching…Chong. Chong…ching-ching-ching-chong…Ching-chong.” I was in disbelief. Rosie O’Donnell would have been proud. He gave an exaggerated smile with the last word in order to secure the girls’ approval of his linguistic skills. They giggled at him. The two Australians sat emotionless at his act. Their eyes kept straight forward. They did not speak. If embarrassed, they hid it well. My chin hit the hardwood bar. Delighted with the reaction he provoked from the two young girls, he made his way to the door and yelled goodbye to everyone in the bar. I imagined him blowing kisses as he pushed the front door open. We three men and the two bargirls never turned around to check.
I turned to the large man immediately next to me and gently spoke, “We’re not all like that, you know.”
He nodded, took a sip of his beer, and kept watching TV.

It was just an ordinary three-tier high school in a nondescript residential neighborhood of Phnom Penh. The open airy courtyard is framed in picture-perfect palm trees. With a little bit of cleanup and paint, it could still pass as an institution of learning. After the Khmer Rouge let loose their evil wrath on their own people, the vile adjustments within it will forever be remembered more for the inhuman horrors carried out in the name of an agrarian revolution.
Toul Sleng is more commonly referred to as Security Office Twenty-one, or S-21. The acts perpetrated upon the thousands brought here shackled and blindfolded in the middle of the night have been well documented. No one disputes them, not even the guards forced by the Khmer Rouge to carry them out.
They went after the educated and the intellectuals. The torture methods were so complete victims composed pages and pages of handwritten false confessions. Their agony reached the tragic point that even though they were certain to die, prisoners denounced anyone they could name just to escape the torture, even family members. When it was all over, the figures are staggering. No one knows the precise number of torn humans who actually entered S-21. In fact, the Khmer Rouge took great care in documenting their victims. Upon arrival each prisoner dictated to a guard their biography and had two pictures taken, one as a face shot and then another in profile. Arrivals were tagged and numbered. Estimates range from 14,000 to 20,000. But one astonishing figure is not up for debate: From 1975-1979, only seven people survived incarceration at Toul Sleng.
Ripped fish oil jugs still rest on bare bed frames in the upstairs chambers. Prisoners were forced to ingest the oil, provoking a brutal and agonizing death by poisoning. Where students once studied literature and mathematics, the Khmer Rouge ripped off prisoners’ finger nails. They transported bound men by tying their wrists and ankles to poles, much like a hunted beast being retrieved from the forest. Women’s nipples were torn away with pliers. A gallows still stands in the courtyard. Some were beaten so badly and inflicted with so much agony, they were rendered unable to physically speak, but remained tethered in dark cells with no food or water. Crying out or screaming during electrical lashes only brought on more. The wooden and brick cells measure perhaps six feet by three. It was common to order hundreds of men and women to lay on the cement floor for days on end without being able to speak or even twitch a muscle. When desperation became so overwhelming, Khmer Rouge guards had barbed wire placed over the exterior second and third floor hallways. That way the most hopeless could not even launch themselves over the side to end their lives, depriving them of any control or the slightest dignity over their already sealed fate.
Only the atrocities of Auschwitz come close to the cruelties committed at Toul Sleng. In the case of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge unleashed unquestioned evil on its own people. I contemplated this as I poked my head in the galleries and empty rooms, now rotting chambers from were primordial cries echoed, but were never answered. The Germans exterminated a perceived enemy they never considered to be truly German: Jews, Slavs, invalids, and prisoners of war. The harsh and irreparable legacy of Pol Pot’s Communist killing apparatus is that he ordered the elimination of one sixth of his own people. It requires a madness no sane person could comprehend. Other modern monsters come to mind: Stalin’s gulags and Mao’s “Cultural” Revolution. Not even Hitler set out to extinguish other ordinary non-Jewish Germans.
The world has never grasped the evil unleashed in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge gets very little attention in history books because Cambodia is tucked away in a hidden and impoverished corner of the world. The timing of Pol Pot’s rise to power could not have been better. The French were long since gone and the Americans were reeling over an inexplicable defeat at the hands of the North Vietnamese. No power stood in the way of the Khmer Rouge. It has been terribly convenient to pretend nothing ever happened.
In a third floor gallery, visitors are welcome to make comments in a guestbook. The entries are not surprising: May God have mercy on their souls. Never again. One mentally-challenged Belgian drew an analogy to the current turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan and called for peace in the world. The reality is that genocidal killings have occurred after the Khmer Rouge. Do Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur ring bells for anyone? Are we as humans so stupid to write self-effacing comments in a guestbook without thinking about the contemporary world? I believe these tourists have true pity on the masses slaughtered in Cambodia. Yet I am confident that they do not in any way understand what fortitude and sacrifice it takes to eradicate such evil from the earth.

The second half of Phnom Penh’s hellish historical double feature brought Toul Sleng’s beaten and doomed inmates blindfolded to Choeung Ek, eight kilometers from downtown Phnom Penh. Due in large part to the Warner Brothers film, Choeung Ek is better known as the site of Cambodia’s Killing Fields. While the S-21 apparatus targeted those classes deemed to be counter-revolutionary, victims at Choeung Ek were from all walks of life, including peasants and hundreds of children. There is little left of what happened here. The administrative stations no longer stand; the trucks that transported prisoners are gone. It was necessary to detain prisoners overnight since executions could not be carried out fast enough; those barracks have come down. If either by a single gun shot or blade to the throat, thousands fell or were shoved into mass graves easily distinguishable today by numerous circular impressions in the ground. Weeds have covered most of them. Purple flowers poke out from a few of the deepest ones. Certain graves are fenced off to mark an extraordinary act of demonism. In one in particular the bones of naked women and children were found without any evidence of clothing. Before their execution, they were stripped of their final chance of any dignity. Camera-toting Europeans and Americans move silently around the graves.
A ten-story modern pagoda stands as a memorial to those lost. Each level is a platform on which several hundred skulls have been stacked on top of each other. Some of the crania are well intact, but for a single tiny hole at the top. Others have been indented and violently smashed. Whole fragments of some have gone missing. The skulls are aligned and stare back at us. They no longer make any sound, but speak of their fate better than any book, video, or testimonial.
A cheerful busload of Koreans has arrived. Before approaching the ticket booth, they move en masse to the souvenir shop to seek out any bargains.

“It’s just a pile of bones and some holes in the ground.” That is what Russell, a young twentyish British ex-pat told me last night over a game of nine ball. He has lived in Cambodia for four years as an IT consultant and loves it here. The Englishman’s version of Cambodia’s history started in 2003. Before that, nothing happened here because it did not pertain to him. Pol Pot turned back the calendar to Year Zero when he took over.
“Why would you want to go there?”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but there is nothing to see there, I told you.” He sunk the next three shots and beat me for the second consecutive game.
For Russell, mass slaughter in the name of socialism is a footnote buried in the pages of a dusty textbook. Given his wealth of time in Cambodia, he should appreciate that the horrors interred at the Killing Fields go beyond a whimsical comment at a pool table.

It’s a down night at the Rose Bar. Not much is happening three floors below my room. It is Sunday night, one of the bargirls tells me. The day of the week means much less to me than the date. In Southeast Asia among other travelers, I can go weeks without knowing which day of the week it is.
For single men or the temporarily single, the selection is excellent and the odds are better. At ten o’clock, most of the seventeen girls chat to themselves at tables or giggle behind the bar. One woman practices gyrating her hips in front of a mirror to perfect moves. Her pelvis sways back and forth to the subdued classic rock tunes over the stereo system. I peek at her exercises. She’s in top form and has nothing to worry about.
Five men have the pick of the lot. A team of small, slender, and available females are paid to keep them as happy as humanly, or at least legally, possible. One lady of particular beauty, if a bit bony, has engaged an American. From where I sit, I see her sharp shoulder blades protruding above a skimpy black-and-white polka dot halter top. Her skirt is the size of a paper towel, and just as sturdy. He kisses and nibbles at her neck; she does not resist, as her job requires. Men ask the girls the same questions. Where are you from? Do you like to work here? How long have you worked here? What is your name, darling? Anything beyond that, and customers are clearly not interested
I pay very close attention to their exchanges from my position. The answer to my favorite question always makes me crack a smile. The youthful American with the inverted baseball cap and cargo shorts asks the Khmer beauty, “How old are you?”
She knows how to reply. “Twenty-three.”
Of course, all the girls lie. Conversation is just a filler to pass time. It is part of the business and a means by which they protect themselves and maintain a degree of separation from the customers. They cannot reveal too much about their personal lives. My guess is the girls tack on three, perhaps four years onto their age when they talk to men. Most of these ladies are in their late teens. The skinny one with the American cannot be twenty yet. Though right now it is far more crucial she eat a few cheeseburgers before a gust of wind blows her over. He diverts his attention from her and peeks over at me. He notices four women around me, but cannot see why. He wonders what I have that he doesn’t in order to quadruple the fun he has. His curiosity reaches the point where he takes his hands off the bargirl’s bottom and walks over to investigate.
“Whatchya doin’, dude?” He does not know that I reside above or that I will go upstairs after I finish my drink…alone.
I have my notebook open to a blank page. Various phrases and expressions in both Khmer and English are written in the margins and first few lines. “I am teaching some English. It might help them do their job better.” Don’t ask me what compelled me to say the last sentence. It isn’t their English skills that got them the job in the first place. I just to like to teach, that’s all. I have taught on buses, in classrooms, Lao villages, and on beaches in Brazil. Why not a hostess bar in Cambodia?
The American lost interest and also realized his newly-found love went to the door and welcomed another guest. He’d have none of that and snapped his fingers for her return. They both returned to where the left each other and assumed the same interlocked position at the bar stool, hands and all.
The Rose Bar is not a sleazy dive. However, some men behave terribly. What else would you expect when the rules have just been adjusted, but completely redefined?
The four girls surrounding me do not take well to compliments beyond their appearance. Tell them they’re gorgeous, they’ll smile and bat their eyelashes in return. “Oh, thank you”, they’ll say. Say they pour a great drink or have the loveliest legs. Again, same reply.
I turn to one of the girls. Her name is Reth, from Kratie. “Your English is getting better and better. You’re a very smart girl.”
She changes her demeanor to one of sheepishness. My words embarrass her. “No, no, no! I am no smart. I just work her. Know little bit.”
“Yes, but you knew nothing two weeks ago. You learn fast.” I pointed to the side of my head and then made the same gesture at hers. “Very smart, intelligent girl”, I repeated.
“No! Just work here.”
Yes, dear, but you don’t have to.

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