Chau Doc-Phnom Penh

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We had another early morning start, waking up at 0430 and departing the hotel at 0630 for another boat ride and tours. We started off at a nearby fish farm, a floating house in the middle of the Mekong . The house was surrounded by underwater nets, and the floors of the house had trapdoors to access the water and fish underneath. Sea Bass, Red Snapper and Catfish are farmed here, Catfish we were told is the only fish they export because of the size of the filets makes more financial sense.

After the fish farm we visited a Cham village, one of the few places where the minority Cham people exclusively live. The Chams are Muslim people that originally migrated to Vietnam from Malaysia. We were shown a mosque and a bridge that was financed by Dubai, evidently the Muslim communities receive a significant amount of money from wealthy Arab nations in the Middle East.

We departed for Cambodia at 0830, traveling by boat to the border crossing. I started feeling ill during the morning, coincidentally after bragging to my Mom via Skype earlier that morning how we were both feeling great. I never really take many precautions out of convenience, and brush my teeth with tap water, have drinks with ice, and eaten tons of spring rolls containing raw vegetables.

We exited the boat and walked down a hot and long dusty dirt road finally reaching a small immigration office that could have easily been missed. Once finished at the nondescript border checkpoint we boarded a bus to drive us to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. During this time we befriended a young guy from Czech Republic who had studied in the US as a foreign exchange student in San Francisco for a year. He spoke four languages and did so well on his SAT’s (taken in English) he has applied to Harvard and Princeton University. Again we were humbled and felt like really dumb and lazy Americans. Shame on us for not learning Spanish fluently yet; again we vow to study when we get home.

We arrived in Phnom Penh around 1430 checked into the Svonphum Guesthouse ($18). By far these were our worst accommodations yet, and felt more like a homestay experience, without the charm, as we were led down a filthy alleyway full of garbage and rats. It was half a block from the river and had a balcony and we were road weary so I didn’t bother to change rooms.

Once across the border I could immediately recognize the difference between Vietnam and Cambodia. The term Indochina comes from India and China, both large countries with a significant amount of influence throughout SE Asia. Vietnam is largely influenced by the Chinese, and the border to Cambodia serves as a socio-cultural transition from Chinese to Indian. Cambodians are 90% Buddhist, and worship a hybrid form that borrows elements on Hinduism. The Khmer written language closely resembles Sanskrit so the signs are impossible to read if not translated into English.

First stop was to the Tuoleg Sleng or “S21 Prison.” S21 was a high school before the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot came and converted it into a prison where horrific tortures were carried out and over 20,000 people were killed here and in the nearby killing fields. Pol Pot imprisoned anyone he deemed a threat, namely intellectuals, teachers and any skilled or educated person. We were even told that those who had soft hands or wore glasses were killed, as they gave the appearance of being an intellectual. Pretty much all the best and the brightest were imprisoned and ultimately killed between the years 1975-1979. This is reminiscent of other Communist regimes. The destruction of the “old ways, old thinking” and those who had the capacity of mounting any kind of resistance to this new form of government.

We hired a tour guide who walked us through the interrogation rooms with black and white photos of some of the victims as they were found by the Vietnamese Army. The photos were gruesome, and all were lying on metal frame cots above a pool of blood on the floor. The beds are still in the rooms, along with implements of torture. Our guide pointed to the floors and ceilings where we could see the blood stains left intact and uncleaned.

The Khmer Rouge were meticulous record keepers like the Nazis so room after room displayed black and white pictures of the prisoners, men and women, infants and the elderly all with numbers on their chests. You could see the fear in all their eyes, most of their hands tied behind their backs.

In the center of the complex, which was formerly the playing field for the students, the torturers used the exercise equipment as gallows to hang the prisoners, sometimes upside down, sometimes to strangle them by the neck in order to torture them into confessions.

When we thought that we were completely overwhelmed by emotions, our guide led us to a table where an old gentleman sat. This man’s name is Chum Mey and he is one of only 7 survivors found when the Vietnamese stormed this place in early 1979; we had just missed another survivor who had left for the day . Mey smiled at us warmly and bowed to us, thanking us for coming to visit. He had a stack of autographed books for sale, recounting his story with his full false written confession in the back stating that he was a CIA spy in order to appease his captors and stop the torture. Meywas kept alive because he was a mechanic and could fix the Khmer’s typewriters. We all purchased his book, whose proceeds go to the Victims Association of Democratic Kampuchea for families of the victims. As we left we all wept for the victims and survivors, whose stories have been largely unknown and ignored by history.

We spent the evening in a depressed daze after what we had seen, walking the waterfront amongst the scent of incense burning at the temples. I received a painful yet enjoyable $4 massage performed by a blind woman. Blind massage is popular throughout Asia, and are often thought of as the best masseurs. The blind are regarded as the damned and cursed, both Hindus and Buddhists believing their disability was as a result of a sinful existence in a former life. I always seek out a blind massage clinic wherever we go to support these misunderstood people.

We sat for dinner and noticed how many single white men were roaming the streets. Throughout this trip we have joked about the creepy “schtoopers,” (said in a creepy German accent), eyeing all these men suspiciously as pedophiles and sexual deviants. It wasn’t until we had come to Cambodia where we have seen that almost half the tourists are older white men traveling alone. It was no longer was a joke to us and we watched them with disgust and contempt. Cambodia has the highest rate of AIDS in Asia, and child sex slavery is more prevalent here than anywhere else. Neighboring countries often sell their children to be brought here in order for their wages to be sent home to their impoverished families.

As we sat down for dinner we were continuously bombarded by tuk tuk drivers offering rides, depressing young dirty and barefoot children selling bracelets, and the elderly and handicapped begging for money, many of which were amputees presumably victims from landmines that litter the countryside . There were several homeless mothers and nude nursing babies lying on the sidewalks. We haven’t seen such poverty and misery since Kathmandu. However this city, like the aforementioned is our favorite thus far. One can’t help but be enchanted by the multitude of monks walking the streets and the old wats and temples interspersed between modern hotels. It is a city of contrasts, both holy and profane, beautiful and vile.

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