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Published: January 12th 2008
PP rider
The name of this town always fires the imagination Back in Bangkok after a thirteen hour odyssey involving boats and buses, we chowed on the excellent street food around Khao San and talked about the next few days. After nearly a month we were leaving Thailand to see more of the region. First off Cambodia - we were excited and nervous. Excited to be heading to a new country, getting back on the road, seeing a country that had captured our imaginations for years, the tragic past happening within our livetimes, evocative, even the name 'Phnom Penh'. We had both just finished reading 'Off the Rails in Phnom Penh' picked up in a book swop in Phuket of all places, a book by young American journalist who went and lived among real layabouts in the 'Majestic Hotel' - the book's subtitle is 'Guns, Girls and Ganja' - which should give you an idea of what it was about, so I was a little nervous, not sure what to expect. My uncle Benny had worked there during the UN elections in the 1990s and had told me fascinating stories, so nervousness bedamned.
In the airport we made a pitstop for a camera - sadly after a few days drying, Alan
Stupa at Choeung Ek
This stupa contains over 8000 skulls exhumed from the mass graves surrounding it. came to terms with the fact that saltwater and sophisticated electronics don't mix well unless it says so on the packaging. That said we checked the old finances and thanks to all you guys at home and the generous wedding gifts we were able to get a lovely new one in the Airport - and also, due to the Euro being so strong, we were delighted to find we ponied up even less than we had thought, so yay, we have photos again!
The half-full plane touched down in the dark and we stood in line as eight men passed our passports along a line and then back up again and down again, finally giving us our visa and our first insight into how the Khmer do business. It also became clear from this first encounter that the 'mighty dollar' is what rules here - the vast majority of our transactions were in US Dollars in this country rather than the local Riel, which was a little strange. It is the first country I've ever been to where the local currency is not used to such a great degree. We were getting in late so had booked accommodation and
The Killing Fields
The pastoral serenity of the site today belies its horrendous recent past. arranged a pick-up with our guesthouse and Alan spotted the sign for 'Mr Aoife O'Sullivan' being held up by a very smiley guy, and we felt most welcomed to the country, despite the gender confusion.
Our driver was very friendly and brought us to his battered colorful tuk-tuk, his pride and joy, awaiting amidst the taxis and fancypants cars. He was very informative during the journey, turning around and pointing out sights through the dark, at one point happily pointing out that the crowd of people in the middle of the road were looking at the aftermath of a recent accident, I saw a lady's foot, and Alan reassured me that she was alive, telling me he thought he saw it twitch. The driver didn't stop and we didn't hear an ambulance, so I hope she was alright.
The roads were dark, not so much street lighting, wide, a little dusty, and the houses were a fascinating mix of crumbling elegant French colonial mansions nicely spaced out and the odd newer build, many of which had corrogated tin roofs.
Our guesthouse was right in the centre of town near the Olympic Stadium and we arranged for the
It was all yellow
A monk strolls thoughtfully along the palace walls in Phnom Penh. tuk-tuk driver to bring us to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek the next morning. We shared our ride with three lovely Australians from Canberra (they are the first Canberries we've met on the road, and they convinced us to add the city to our Australian itinerary).
The Killing Fields are very moving, the tragedy that unfolded there resulting in approximately 17,000 people being murdered as they didn't fit the regime's prescription at the given moment. I can't describe what the regime's prescribed behaviour was in more detail as the more I read about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge the clearer it seems that the regime was most unsure of what it's prescribed behaviour or beliefs were at any given time - friends became enemies with smooth ease, and under the most ambiguous of circumstances. The regime meant that the city of Phnom Penh was more or less emptied and people relocated to the country to adopt an agrarian lifestyle. If anyone's interested in finding out more about this time, I'd recommend two books by David Chandler that I've found very insightful - 'Voices from S-21' and 'Brother Number One - A Political Biography of Pol Pot'. Pol
Root of evil
Clothes from some of the thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge still tangle with the roots of trees at Choeung Ek. Pot or Saloth Sar as he was named prior to becoming 'Brother Number One' was a second rate student, failing his final exams, and yet becoming a teacher for a time in his life, his family also had connections with the Royal Family and he himself was decidedly not of the common folk his regime so revered and yet starved at the same time. I remember learning about Cambodia in Primary School, less than a decade after the tragdy, and our teacher Iníon Uí Bhreannaigh explaining the concept of 'The Year Zero'. I think the entire class of nine year olds burst into laughter at the absurdity of a whole country trying to begin again and just wiping the past away. I'm glad that I got the chance to laugh. Actually being so close to the horror made me feel again how lucky I was to be born where I was and when I was.
As well as a graveyard to all these people robbed of their lives, the space is just a normal field of bumpy scraggy grass, with butterflies, dragonflies, spiders, pretty flowers, trees, sparrows and even a cow. Of course if you look closely, the material
Water crops
Fertile wetlands near Phnom Penh of the victim's last outfits disturbingly tangle with the roots of trees and poke out from the soil. A stupa stands as a monument to this organised tragedy with eight thousand skulls that were found during excavation housed inside, sending a shiver down my spine. As we walked through the space, the sounds of children in a nearby school playing reminded us that this country has lived almost thirty more years since the tragedy.
We also visited S-21, the infamous secret torture prison used by the KR and housed in what was originally a secondary school and eerily still looks very much like one from outside - the KR were anti-intellectual (apart from the Leaders, naturally enough) and it's not clear whether it was lost on them that they were utilising a place of learning as a place of killing. Inside original school rooms had been crudely converted into torture rooms, some of which were tiny spaces, smaller than a pig-sty and others which were as originally constructed with an iron bed and old ammunition boxes which were used to collect the prisoner's waste. Imagining the true horror of what had been is thankfully impossible, and yet the display
Faded grandeur
Still elegant French colonial remains dot the landscape in Cambodia. cases of photographs of the prisoners on arrival, some of whom were only little children, along with their parents, women and men, enemies of the regime and seeing the terror in their eyes, and some of them almost smiling in disbelief, that their regime could deem them an enemy, and knowing how their lives had ended was harrowing.
While as visitors to this country we felt that it was important to acknowledge the past by visiting the Killing Fields and S-21, there are many other sights that Phnom Penh as a city has to offer - even walking the streets looking at the crumbling edifices of the French Colonial influence while munching a baguette is fascinating, as is talking to the locals, looking at the Independence monument, eating good food and watching a city that you just know is going to change beyond all recognition in the next ten or so years. We also visited the Royal Palace, where the King of Cambodia still lives, but he mustn't have known we were in town, he didn't come out to say hello. In the National Museum we looked at artifacts from the Khmer kingdom's heyday and strolled along the riverside.
Phnom Penh taxi
We thought we'd spare this fella our ample western frames! Despite it's dark past, and the fact that a lot of people there are very poor, Phnom Penh is a great city to visit, I'd recommend it to anyone. I didn't feel unsafe, the people were very helpful and friendly, and it's hopefully got a bright future. After a couple of days there I found myself annoyed by the characters that had been described in the book 'Off the Rails in Phnom Penh', they were just taking advantage of the kind nature of the people and their vulnerability in being poor. It's a fantastic country to visit and you feel as though your tourist dollar is actually helping it come along.
On our last night we took a tuktuk to the lake and had dinner in the Lazy Gecko restaurant and a drink in a bar by the lake. We chatted with a few local kids who were selling photocopied books for a few dollars, so we bought a few. On the way home we almost accidentally hijacked an American's tuktuk, the driver sheepishly admitting that he hadn't told us he was on a fare and agreeing to take us, more or less admitting that he was about
to abandon the American - the American was very nice and we laughed about it, but for a second I think he thought we were trying to leave him stranded in Phnom Penh.
Our guesthouse ('Sunday Guesthouse') isn't very fancy but makes up for all of that by being so friendly and helpful - we were sad to leave, but once we were on the bus to Siem Reap we almost forgot as it was the best bus journey so far. The majority of passengers were tourists with only about a third of the bus being locals, and the majority of the tourists were grumbling about the bus, which made me feel good as I thought it was fine, and then grumbling about the roads, which are fine too (seriously no road so far has compared in bumpiness to the road from the border in Russia to St Petersburg) so being a right old grumpy woman about my comforts in Dublin, I felt that I must be a bit more chilled after four months on the road. Or maybe it's just that we're Irish and Bus Eireann despite it's fancy ads isn't all that and some of our roads
Lamp post
Waterfront, Phnom Penh aren't exactly the M1 as the only other Irish person besides us was a hungover young man who shouted 'right lads, this is a sh*t bus' and then promptly fell asleep to the soothing sound of extremely loud Khmer pop music (involving much sobbing by the pop-stars during the choruses - for real - on a side note, a particularly popular tune there at the moment has the oft-repeated refrain 'I'm down on my knees, bagging you not to leave me...' and then reverts back into Khmer...I'd leave her, she's a bit of a moaner).
Anyway the reason the journey was so fantastic wasn't the bus (which I admit was a little shabby) or the roads (which were fine, honestly) or the eager horn beeping of the driver (very regular and sustained) or the fact that we had four Khmer staff constantly rechecking our tickets, collecting them, doling them out, writing on them, taking them again (eight times I think), the highlight was the pitstop, where the first thing I saw was a smiling lady with a wide platter of deep fried tarantulas on her head which she was trying to sell us for our breakfast. Alan isn't mad
Throne Hall
Royal Palace, Phnom Penh about spiders, even when they've choked it so ran, whereas I was in shock and forgot to take a photo....oops (although I caught a snap of a girl with a platter of beetles)...I decided against a tarantula for breakfast, they are damn big spiders, and I don't think I'd manage a whole one, still the smiling lady and her ghastly treats had me hooting for ages.
The Khmer kids working at the pitstop weren't going in for the hard sell, they were as fascinated by us as we were by them - laughing and negotiating, asking us our names, telling us about school and trying to convince us to buy stuff - I was utterly charmed and ended up with baguettes, banana cake, fresh pineapple and tiny bananas that a little girl assured me 'are good', but sadly no tarantulas.
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Helen
non-member comment
You should have tasted a taratula... Seriously though, Ughhhhhh!!!!!!!