Killing in the name of

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Suzanne here...

Our arrival in Phnom Penh was later than expected, after trouble with the bus. The gearbox was making a terrible grinding noise so we stopped for a roadside repair, which only seemed to make things worse. It was touch and go, but we finally made it. Once off the bus there was the usual sense of chaos and disorientation and the feeling that we were gazelles surrounded by lions, or rather tuk-tuk drivers and guesthouse owners. We grabbed our backpacks and legged it, before realising we were going the wrong way. We went slinking back the way we'd just come. Luckily the lions had dispersed.

We headed towards the guesthouse we'd earmarked. There was a bit of confusion with the road names, actually numbered and in this case one side was 110 which we wanted and one 114 which we didn't. We walked all along 114 and back again before we realised all we needed to do was cross the road. Bah. When we did find the guesthouse it looked a bit grotty and was pretty expensive, so we decided not to bother. We headed for another we'd heard about, fully booked. We picked one at random, too expensive. By this time we were hot and bothered and sick of tuk-tuk drivers constantly approaching us. When we finally got to another on our list, the Indochine, and found they had a room for $10, we happily accepted. It was tiny, windowless, and not exactly spotlessly clean. The bed looked clean though, it was comfy, and the location was great, right on the quay.

After freshening up slightly (still far from fresh to be honest, but it was getting late and we were hungry) we headed out for some food. In Asia, if you so much as glance at a menu the staff hover right over you and try and usher you in. I was too tired by this time, and started to get cross. Some places were starting to close so in the end we settled for Happy Pizza. We'd read about it and knew that if you were not very clear, you could be given an extra 'happy' topping. I was reasonably sure that my lasagne would be safe, but David told them in no uncertain terms that he wanted his pizza without anything 'extra'. We've been offered drugs a few times in Laos and Cambodia. Obviously we've politely declined. Frankly, I think that anyone who wants to court jail time in an Asian prison deserves all they get, it's just not worth the risk.

The next day we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where from 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge tortured, raped and murdered up to 20,000 people. The building was an old high-school. It still looked like it, with it's tiled floors and even blackboards on some of the walls. That a school had been perverted into a torture chamber was quite chilling. The hardest thing to see was the 100's of admission photos. The fear in some of the people's eyes was quite terrible to see. I felt that I should look at every photo, although there were far too many to do so. Each one I skipped seemed like a betrayal. Almost worse was the photos where they were smiling. A natural reaction for the camera, despite the horror they must have known was to come. One set of photos was of children. Some early teens, some as young as five or six. What threat did they pose? What can they have possibly done? Apparently procedure was to kill the children so they would not take revenge later. To think that this horror happened not in the dim and distant past, but in my lifetime... so heartbreaking.

The next day we visited the Killing Fields, Choeung Ek. Here thousands and thousands of innocent people were executed by the Khmer Rouge and dumped in mass graves. Sometimes bones and teeth surface after heavy rainfall, and as you walk along the path you occasionally realise that no, that isn't a stone, it's a fragment of human bone. For me, even more heartbreaking was the scraps of the victims clothes that were visible everywhere along the path. The humanity of that little piece of yellow floral fabric, perhaps a dress, or that navy blue piece of shirt. It really brought home that these were real people who suffered in the most unimaginable way. We came away feeling a terrible sadness for what the Cambodian people have had to endure.

So now... do I write about the rest of our stay in Phnom Penh? The food we ate, the beer we drank, the fun we had? Isn't it a bit crass after the darkness I've just written about? The thing is, Cambodia has suffered, a lot. Today there is still grinding poverty. Homeless children, disabled beggars... life in Cambodia can be bloody hard. Yet I'm doing the country a huge disservice if I imply that is all there is to it. Who wants to visit a country where poverty and suffering is all around? But there is so much more to Cambodia than that. The people are so warm and friendly, more so than any other Asian country we've visited up to now. Phnom Penh is a wonderful city and if you ever get the chance to come here, I'd say grab it. Yes, it is noisy, dusty and chaotic. You take your life in your hands trying to walk through a city that thinks pavements are scooter parks, shop floors, rubbish dumps, basically for anything other than pedestrians. However there is a vibrancy on the streets, In the evening locals and tourist alike mingle on Sisowath Quay, enjoying the warm evenings and light breeze. Basically, our tourist dollars can only help the economy of this amazing country. I'll be sad to leave, but it's time to move on.

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