Last day in Phnom Penh

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Yesterday I went to see the Russian Market. This was certainly the best market I've seen in Phnom Penh and there were many things that I would have liked to have bought there. It had a great many types of food and drink on display, including some things I think were eels. These were black and snakelike with cylindrical bodies and lay flat on a sort of plate. Then, as I was looking idly at them, one twitched convulsively and seemed almost to jump out of the tray. The others also moved but it seemd that they were moved by the first one and didn't move independantly. As I watched, shocked by this development and apprehensive lest the eel should launch itself upon me they all lapsed once again into perfect stillness. I looked at the women attneding the stall and there was no sign that they'd seen anything unusual.

There was a vast range of products available for sale. Motor parts, machine tools, food, drink, clotes, toys, household goods, topuristy souvenirs etc. Some of the souvenirs were really nice, some lovely crystal paperweights and stone chess sets, but I have too much to carry as it is.

I don't know why they call it the Russian Market, I didn't notice anything specifically Russian on sale and I didn't see any fortune tellers either.

After the Russian Market I got a tuk tuk, driven by October who had picked me up from Phnom Penh airport, to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This is housed in the buildings used by S21, the Khmer Rouges Security organisation, during the years of KR rule.

Before being used as a prison and interrogation centre by the KR the place had been a school (or, perhaps more properly, an area on which two schools were based) and the buildings used as detetntion facilities and as torture chambers had previously been classrooms.

As soon as you arrive you are greeted by people with terrible injuries, prosthetic or no limbs, missing eyes etc. I hope that some of the money earned by the museum goes to help people affected by the series of wars in Cambodia.

The architecture was very like that at the school where I'd taught in Au Luk. Even the blacboards remained in pace in some rooms. On some balckboards, according to photographs, could be seen a hideous parody of school rules - the rules for the prisoners. It was strictly against the rules to cry whilst being tortured (see rule 6)!

"1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge."

This place unsettled me far more than had the Killing Fields. It was as if I could sense the spirits of those who had been tortured here still fixed to the place because of the horror of their deaths. This was a terrible place. At least 17,000 people, men, women and children went in and only 12 (five adults and seven children) emerged alive. More skulls of the deceased were preserved here, some arranged in the form of a grisly map of Cambodia.

There was a very interesting exhibition on the top floor of one building by an idealistic Swedish photographer who had visited Cambodia under the Khmer Rouges and contrasting his thoughts then (as he now remembered them to have been) with his present thoughts. All around the buildings you see photographs of those who suffered there. There are signs posted in many places consisting of a picture of a smily face with a big red cross drawn over it. Presumably smiling and laughing are prohibited there, but I cannot imagine that many visitors feel the need to do either.

The cells used for solitary confinement were tiny. The lower floor classrooms were divided up into tiny cells about as large as a lavatory cubicle, some had windows, others not, depending on where the classroom windows were. The change of use had been done rapidly and clumsily - an internal corridor was constructed by knocking through the brick walls of the classooms - previously the only connection had been the outside corridor - just as at teh Ao Luk school.

Light would have made a big difference. I closed the door on myself in one of the windowless cells and in one of the windowed cells to see the difference, and it was very great.

Some classrooms were used for mass detention and here the prisoners were shacked to the ground, side by side and the feet of one prisoner against the feet of his companion opposite. It must have been like being in a marooned slave ship.

There were beds in some classrooms and I was not clear on wat pupose they served. From the photographs it would seem that they were used as places to torture teh prisoners rather than to afford them rest. It was odd to see how the beds were mostly designed with decoration, such as a rising sun, which was so at odds with their actual use.

It is a painful place to visit and I don't know if I have learned anything from being there. I had a nice lunch in a restaurant adjacent to the museum and then went on to Wat Ounalom, which is the main wat of Phnom Penh, and indeed, Cambodia.

This wat was badly treated by the KR but has now been restored. A stupa contains an eyebrow hair of the Buddha. It was an intgeresting place to wander about in after the museum, but unfortunately a ceremony of some type was taking place, so I couldn't enter the main sanctuary.

Later on yesterday, I went for a cruise along the Tonle Sap, the river that can be seen from my hotel, and part of the Mekong. Phnom Penh is at the confluence of three rivers, the Tonle Sap and Mekong and also the Bassac. They form an X shaped crossroads and Phnom Penh was marked with a red X on the skull map in the museum.

The Tonle Sap is the same stretch of water that extends to Siem Reap, but it becomes the Tonle Sap Lake rather than River as you go north. The Tonle Sap is an interesting thing altogether - the lake grows and reduces in size according to the seasons and the waters of the river flow first one way and then the other.

I had not seen the floating village on the lake but I saw one here - a floating village of fisher folk who band their boats together and live on the river only landing to sell their fish and buy in supplies of food and drink.

On the other side of the river were scattered villages which, the boatman told me, did not have electricity and were very poor.

Before supper, I wandered about a bit. The streets here are very dangerous, especially at night. Traffic comes from all directions and many motorbikes do not have lights or do not use them if they have, The streets, even the biggest and most fashionable, are poorly lit - maybe one 40 watt bub high on a pole every hundred yards. All in all its amazing that there aren't many more accidents.

The air pollution here is very bad, as well, though it seems to clear up a bit after the rain. Sometimes it is almost impossible to breathe normally and many residents, especially those driving tuk tuks or motos, wear masks and breathe through these.

I went to the Central covered market today and got caught in a monsoon. The main part is, indeed, covered in a great art deco dome (sometimes said to be one of the largest domelike structures in the worls - vying with our Millenium Dome) but much is open to the elements. I noticed, in the partially covered parts, cleverly designed plastic chutes which funneled rain from the roof onto the floor.

I don't understand the Tin Tin fascination here. There's a Tin Tin hotel and mock covers of Tin Tin books showing his (non-canonical) adventures in Cambodia are everywhere. I suppose it's one of the few signs of Cambodia's French heritage left - even though Herge was Belgian!

Today I'm flying back to Bangkok but will not have time to leave the airport before catching the plane to India. I hope I shall have enough time to get my luggage.

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