Phnom Penh

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Unlike my morning of vomiting on a boat and paying too much money to take a nap, my bus ride turned it all around. I got picked up in a van and then taken to a bus, which took us to a bus. They assigned me a seat next to a British guy, and we started talking. His name is Aaron, he's traveling for a while, he's an artist who makes really cool things, and I told him he should start selling notebooks. We spent the beginning of the ride chatting and showing each other pictures of our dogs and making fun of the dramatic Cambodian music videos playing in the front of the bus. Then, out of nowhere, they started playing Apocalypto. Which is super appropriate for a bus. I asked Aaron, “what does the guy have to do with Jaguars?” and he responded, “I think his name is something close to it. Padfoot or something.” So we burst out laughing, which is a totally appropriate reaction to Apocalypto and started calling all of the characters by Harry Potter names.

Aaron kept messing up his words throughout the bus ride, which caused us to laugh hysterically every time. We laughed through the entire movie. When we got off the bus for a break, I found Skittles (!!) and a black lab puppy (!!!!!!!!). Then a bus beeped, so we got back on it, only to realize it was the wrong bus. We got to the right bus and finished the movie with more laughter. It got dark and we entered the city and Aaron looked out the window and said, “There's a guy on that boat! I mean bus!” (it was a truck). We both think he's getting really early dementia.

So I didn't have a place to stay in Phnom Penh. In my hungover state, I didn't want to bother. I knew the name of a couple places, so I was just gonna go and see if they had any rooms. But we got in way later than expected (11). So I just went with Aaron to his hostel (which was one of the ones on my list anyway). It was called Happy House, which is what my first grade English curriculum was called in Hungary. He was meeting a friend he had traveled with in Vietnam, another English guy named Luke. The hostel had no more rooms, and that's how I ended up sharing a bed with a British guy I met on a bus.

The next day was Valentine's day. I got up before the boys and walked the 1.5kms to Top Banana Guesthouse where my Fitbit was waiting for me! REUNITED! I took a tuktuk home because I needed breakfast and we were getting picked up soon for the killing fields. So romantic. We ate our breakfast and the tuktuk arrived (after we had to remind the hostel). We took a long tuktuk ride full of sights (garbage, shacks, people) and smells (garbage, burning garbage, urine). Phnom Penh isn't a...pretty place.

We arrived at the killing fields and got our audio guides. There aren't really words to describe the killing fields, but I'll try my best (it's gruesome). Back in the 70s during the reign of Pol Pot, 1 in 4 Cambodians were murdered. They were worked to death, tortured, or just shot. The killing fields were a place that used to be a Chinese cemetery and where they brought people by the truckloads to be shot that night or the next day. They constantly played loud Communist music over the loudspeakers to drown out the sounds of the screams. Most of the structures were gone, but the audio guide brought us through the entire site. There were mass graves including one of 100 people without heads and one of 200 women and children. The whole field was marked with ditches where bodies had been dug up. Remnants of bones, teeth, and clothes still emerge during the rainy season. There is a tree where they used to smash babies' heads. The mass graves and the baby-killing tree are marked with bracelets that thousands of tourists have hung to commemorate what happened in that place. At the end of the tour, you arrive at the mausoleum in the center of the complex. There are 7 tall shelves, and they are filled with skulls of people who were killed in that place.

Now that we were thoroughly depressed, it was time to go to the genocide museum. We stopped for lunch and beers when we got out of the tuktuk. Beef ball soup. It was so tasty. After lunch we went into the museum and initially didn't get the audio guide, but then we went back to get it because you definitely need it. The genocide museum is called Tuol Sleng or S-21. It used to be a high school with four buildings full of classrooms. Then, during the Polpot regime, it was converted into one of many secret prisons around the country where people were brought in, interrogated, and sent to the killing fields. Many died in S-21. Out of around the 16,000 people who went into S-21, 7 survived. Seven. We went into classrooms that only had a bed frame with springs. On the wall was a picture of the body that had been found in that bed when S-21 was discovered. This went on for 7 or 8 classrooms. It was incredibly hard to see. In another building, walls separating classrooms had holes crudely punched in to make a hallway, and the whole building was lined with small brick cells. We were taken through buildings full of pictures of victims who were tortured and killed because they wore glasses or had soft hands (a sign of intelligence). Meanwhile, chalkboards remained on the walls as a horrific reminder that this place had once been a school.

S-21 was harder to see than the killing fields, in my personal opinion. At the killing fields, it was a hot sunny day, and grass was growing, and birds were signing. Buildings had fallen down and were replaced by signposts, and so it was hard to imagine just what had happened in the dead of night all those years ago. S-21, however, was still raw. A beam that had been used for PE classes had also been used to strap prisoners up by the ankles so their heads could be dunked in buckets of human waste during interrogations. And the beam still stood. So did all the buildings with scratches on the walls and bloodstains on the floor.

Ok, take a deep breath. I'm done. That was quite enough genocide for the day. When the tuktuk driver took us back to the hostel we didn't really know what to say or do or feel. So, what do you do when you need to feel better? Ice cream! We went to a really fancy ice cream place and ate really fancy ice cream and did indeed feel much better. Back at the hostel we lazed about for a while, and I procrastinated packing (I had an early flight in the morning). At around 6, we decided to find a sports bar and watch the Leicester City v Arsenal game. We ended up at a place called Score, which I think is the biggest sports bar in Phnom Penh/Cambodia. They had giant screens, and the game was amazing. I introduced Luke and Aaron to nachos as pub food, and they're fully on board. Luke and I were gutted when Leicester City lost, but Aaron was thrilled. It was a really good game, and we had a lot of fun.



The next morning I got up early and had a tuktuk to the airport. So long, Cambodia!

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Killing fields
Such a sad time in history.

[lexispence10]

Wow
How thoroughly depressing. It amazes me the cruelty people are capable of.