Advertisement
Published: March 27th 2017
Edit Blog Post
I came to the capital of Cambodia - Phnom Penh to learn more about the brutal history of the Khmer Rouge. The city is oriented at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers. It is an Asian city in every sense of the word. New and old clash here in a very unique cosmopolitan array of sights, sounds, smells, and interesting people going about their daily lives. It was a nice place to be even with my impending date with some of the tragic sites and museums I planned to visit whilst here. This city has left an indelible dark mark on my soul, one which unfortunately won't abate anytime soon. It was important for me to come here and witness first hand the history so I will not forget and can do my part to remind others that it cannot happen again.
My first few days in the city were spent wandering the narrow side streets and stumbling across various markets and eateries that dot the metropolitan area. I never really knew what would lay around the next corner and it was fun to get lost in the chaos of it all. So many strange and wonderful
things were all around me. Open air butcher stalls, vegetable and fruit vendors selling their wares fresh from the fields. I'll miss all of this once I return home, but here it is all so normal.
I also spent a day touring around the grounds of the Royal Palace. The buildings here were stunning. Extremely ornate as you would expect for a palace for a king. Unfortunately for the $6.50 admission I paid I was not informed until after that many of the buildings were closed for maintenance and I would not be allowed inside some of them, so I felt it was a little expensive for what I really got. Overall I'm glad I went as their were some interesting points to look at. If it were not for the stifling heat of the day I probably would have walked around longer. It's tough to do much here when the sun is blazing from about 9am until 5pm when it cools ever so slightly.
When Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge army came into Phnom Penh in 1975 they were received as liberators. That all changed when they forced the population out of the capital and into
fields for forced labor and farming. The Khmer Rouge wanted a peasant society based on agriculture. Any ties to the city were seen as reason enough to be executed. Wearing glasses, speaking a foreign language, even having soft hands were all grounds for murder. My day had come to visit some of the museums here in Cambodia that I had been excited and that I had dread at the same time to see. I hired a motobike (no public transport in Phnom Penh) to first take me to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The former high school turned S-21 Prison in the seventies is in a nondescript neighborhood of the city. Here the Khmer Rouge interrogated, tortured, and killed 20,000 people that passed through its doors.
When I got my first glimpse of the buildings here a terrible shudder went through my spine. I have seen photos before, but to be here was a whole different animal. The buildings are still the same as the day the prison was abandoned from the retreating Khmer Rouge back in 1979. It's hard to imagine the suffering and the atrocities that took place here. All instruments of torture were used on innocent men,
women, and children. Walking in the somber silence of the halls you could almost here the screams of prisoners past. How can people be so cruel to one another?
In the building that housed the prisoners the wooden cells are still intact. Sitting inside a cell it was frightening to think of waiting for your interrogator to come and drag you away. It must have been pure hell for those unfortunate souls who were imprisoned here in the tiny wood oven of a room with your legs chained to the floor. The Khmer Rouge also installed barbed wire on the upper terraces of this building to prevent the desperate people from committing suicide by jumping off the balcony. A much better fate than the one that awaited them at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Tuol Sleng was one of the most heart wrenching places I have ever been in my life.
My next stop was the infamous Killing Fields. Located about 15km outside of Phnom Penh it was here where some 20,000 people were murdered and buried in mass graves. There are over 400 such sites like this one located throughout Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge killed 25%
of the population of its own people. Some 1.5 million died from 1975-1979. Walking here was again a very somber and emotional experience. Housed in the memorial stupa are the skulls of some 8,000 who perished here. Walking around the grounds there are still bones rising up from the scorched earth from soil erosion and shifting. A gruesome reminder of just exactly what took place here.
My final night in Phnom Penh was spent the same as my previous ones. I would like to sit on the wall next to the river in what is a boardwalk type atmosphere of people watching and vendors selling snacks and drinks. I had my iPod out with my speaker next to my bag. In the darkness someone had snuck up behind me and tried to snatch my stuff. Now my guard has been way down in Asia, so this was partly my own fault for being so relaxed. Still I was savvy enough to have my bag looped on my arm. So when the thief felt the resistance my stuff fell on the embankment behind me and he took off running. I gathered my belongings and gave chase. I closed fast and
was surprised at my speed, bum knee be damned. Had I had another 5 meters I would have been able to tackle him to the ground. But he ducked into the reeds in what was a narrow and dark network of paths. Something in my head told me to stop. I did not know if he had a knife or if his cronies were in hiding in the reeds. I did have all of my things and I did not lose anything but I wanted to get him out of principle. Lesson learned and I will be more careful from here on out ala South America style. In 13 months of travel this is only the second time someone has tried to rob me and fortunately for me both were unsuccessful. I'm way ahead of the game. Still a really crappy way to end what had already been a downer of a day for me. I left Phnom Penh the next morning due South for the beaches and islands of Sihanoukville. I needed a change of scenery and a different sort of vibe from the powerful and traumatic ringer I had been put through here in Phnom Penh.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0387s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb