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Published: April 4th 2008
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This morning we boarded busses for a morning city tour which included the Royal Palace, the Silver Pagoda, and the National Museum. We met our new guides for the Cambodian portion of this cruise, and our guide is a woman of about 40, named Phali. She has excellent English, and repeats herself just often enough that we can grasp what she’s saying through the accent and may actually remember some of the details that she’s sharing with us.
The Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda were beautiful buildings, surrounded by lush trees and flowering bushes and topiary. We had to remove our shoes to enter the buildings, and had been reminded that morning that we needed to wear clothing that covered our shoulders and knees. There were plenty of other tourists, though it wasn’t what I would call crowded, and as Westerners, we were clearly in the minority. There were a couple of monks visiting, whose robes provided a splash of rich saffron against the greenery.
The morning tour ended at the Central Market, where we had a half hour or so to wander. This market consisted of one large covered building, full of permanent stalls selling
jewelry and eyeglasses and watches (“
Rolex: twenty dollar!”), and radiating out in every direction there were hundreds of awning-covered stalls selling everything else in the world: food of all kinds, shampoo and soap, T-shirts, bright and fancy dresses, belts, and lots of textiles. Vendors were friendly, but not aggressive, though if you hesitated for even a moment in front of their stall they were quick to approach and offer you a little plastic stool to sit on while they extolled the virtues of their merchandise. Bargaining was expected - some of them would even prompt you to do so by saying, “Only five dollars for this, madame, but you can pay less.”
The drive around the city of Phnom Penh was interesting. We saw everything from bicycle rickshaws to motorcycles (as usual, carrying anywhere from one to five passengers) to local mini vans used as long-distance taxis (built to hold eight people, they often cram 14-15 inside, and occasionally allow people to ride on the roof as well!), to shiny new Toyota Camry’s and Lexus SUV’s. There were businesses of every kind along the streets, including one large modern supermarket and many restaurants. They were police officers helping
hapless tourists cross the street, and children selling water and guidebooks, and tired-looking women with their heads wrapped in traditional Khmer scarves and half-naked babies hanging from their breasts begging at street corners.
I have always scoffed a bit at tourists who travel in packs, riding in big air-conditioned busses and peering down at the passing sights, but I must admit there is something about the insulation from the sometimes-uncomfortable sights of other people’s apparent suffering that I can now appreciate, with a fair amount of guilt. Sometimes when the bus stopped, kids would approach and tap on the windows, holding out their hands and making eating motions. At the Royal Palace, we were approached by kids carrying guidebooks for sale and holding up signs reading, “I don’t want to beg. I want to work. Please buy.” There is an urge to look away, and at the same time, I feel it’s somehow important not to do so. It makes me uncomfortable to
be the rich, privileged, overfed tourist sitting on that comfortable air-conditioned bus, and it somehow seems important to feel that discomfort rather than avoid it. I can’t help but wonder what the reality of these
people’s lives really is: can they make a living selling guidebooks or begging? Do they have a home or do they live on the street? Are there other options, and if so, why can’t they take advantage of them? What are the similarities and differences between the poverty-stricken of Phnom Penh and the poor of Burlington, Vermont?
The theme of tragedy continued into the afternoon: we went to
Tuol Seng detention center and then the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh. Our guide, Phali, had lived through the Khmer Rouge regime - almost always referred to as “The Terrible Time” - as a young girl. She was seven years when Pol Pot came into power in 1975, and her family was marched from one province to another, separated and sent to forced labor camps. Over a period of three years, eight months, and 20 days, half of the country’s population of 7 million people were murdered or succumbed to disease or starvation. (Hearing about Pol Pot’s strategy of recruiting young boys, 12-16 years old, as his soldiers and training to them to kill ruthlessly brought to mind the book
A Long Way Home by Ishmeal Beah, about his experience
Phali explaining more history of the "Terrible Time"
The photos are some of the thousands on display at the detention center. The Khmer Rouge took photos of every victim. as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.)
I won’t recount all that we saw and heard, but it is absolutely incredible to realize that everyone over 35 in this country must be suffering from some degree of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, having lived through The Terrible Time. My own fleeting moments of PTSD will come when I later remember walking the paths of the Killing Fields and seeing the shards of bone and scraps of clothing that continue to surface underfoot, all that remains of thousands of Cambodians.
It is clearly important to Cambodians that the world learn about this history, and we can only hope that remembering it might help the human race avoid repeating it, but history tells us otherwise. All we have to do is read the paper to know that genocide happens elsewhere in the world today.
For anyone who is interested in learning more about Cambodia’s tragedies, I can heartily recommend two books I read before this trip.
When Broken Glass Floats and
First They Killed My Father are both written by women about the age of Phali, who experienced The Terrible Time as young girls and both tell
their stories of survival beautifully.
While this was not exactly an uplifting and joyful day, it was compelling and in many ways a testament to the strength of a country that has suffered so greatly but is now working hard to educate its children and develop its resources.
The evening was well-planned to uplift our mood and illustrate the more promising future of the country. A group of children came to perform traditional Khmer dancing on the sundeck. They were dressed in beautiful colorful costumes, and the girls’ delicate features were highlighted by make-up. They danced in the Apsara style, which includes very graceful hand motions with the fingers held together and the curved up and away from the palms of their hands. The dances told stories of Cambodian folktales, and the music was played on traditional instruments, and it was charming and delightful. At the end of the performance, they demonstrated a dance that involved jumping in a simple two-step in and out of a pair of parallel bamboo poles held close to the ground and clacked together in an increasingly fast rhythm. Children came into the audience and recruited some of us to learn
the steps and try it out. Never being one to refuse an opportunity to make a complete fool of myself, I willingly gave it a go. Though I have no musical ability, my years of playing Samba helped me develop a certain amount of rhythm, so at least I managed to dance without getting my ankles cracked by the poles as they snapped together milliseconds after my feet left the space between them! My mom also did well, as did most everyone else who tried. Only one set of ankles got pinched, but not too horribly.
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Steve
non-member comment
tear jerking
and heart wrenching