The Dark Side
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Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Saturday, May 26, 2007
We arrived here from Siem Reap on Thursday afternoon, an uneventful bus
journey of about five hours. We had even called ahead to reserve a room
so we were sorted. We are staying in the backpacker ghetto of Boeung
Kak - a row of guesthouses which grow out over the lake on stilts.
Amazing sunsets, cheap food and beer, and about five stereo systems
competing for your attention. The air-con unit in our room requires
some imagination when you first turn it on, but it works eventually.
There isn't that much sightseeing to be done here, but what is here is
pretty dark and depressing stuff. On Friday our friendly tuktuk guy
Tony took us to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum in the morning in time
to see the documentary film there about the abuses of Pol Pot's regime.
Then you can have a wander through the former school building to see
the mugshots of the prisoners (before), photos of the bodies (after)
and the cells and rooms where they were tortured and often eventually
killed (during). A chilling way to spend a morning. Afterwards, Tony
took us to the Choeung Ek Memorial, otherwise known as the Killing
Fields. Thus we pretty much retraced the route taken by most of the
prisoners: torture in Toul Sleng followed by a brutal slaying and a
mass burial in Choeung Ek. The memorial building there houses thousands
of skulls to remind you of the events that took place there. Again,
chilling stuff.
So after that it's a bit strange to get back into town and find a
restaurant to get some pizza and milkshakes but there you go. We went
for a few beers with some friends last night and saw an absolutely
incredibly sunset from the balcony at the guesthouse. Today we've been
wandering about the Royal Palace grounds and saw the Silver Pagoda,
pretty similar to what you would see in Bangkok. However there was one
golden buddha with over 200 jewels in it, made in 1908 or so - I
couldn't help wondering where Cambodia would be now if the money spent
on it were spent on educating the populace instead...
Phnom Penh is a poor place with lots of beggars, both children and
amputees. The land mine problem in Cambodia is massive, with hundreds
of people being maimed and killed each year as they unwittingly uncover
more of the unexploded ordinance. PP is noisy, dirty, hot and humid as
hell, with the usual traffic madness of an Asian city. Cambodia doesn't
seem to have any form of public or government bus services - in the
capital, everyone just uses a tuktuk or more commonly hops on the back
of a motorbike and pays the driver. There are also totally overloaded
trucks with people spilling all over the sides at the back. US dollars
are accepted everywhere here and the ATMs even spit them out instead of
the Khmer riel. It can be confusing at times when the prices in one
shop are quoted in different currencies. I've even seen a sign
advertising internet access for $0.375 an hour! Bizarre.
Child sex tourism is also a problem here. We had some lunch at a small
NGO called the Global Child, which had a very clear "no sex tourists"
policy (i.e. you can't eat there if they think you're a sex tourist).
There is a lot of NGO activity here, with plenty of ways for
backpackers to go and volunteer their time, mostly in orphanages. There
was an article in the paper about an area of town which is rife with
child prostitution, and apparently the people running it are afraid of
the NGOs but not of the local police. A sorry state of affairs.
We tried to get our guesthouse to organise our Vietnamese visas for us
on Thursday - unfortunately we wanted to enter on the 7th July, which
is more than 30 days from now, which is not allowed. The girl in the
guesthouse's solution? Just change the date to the 6th of JUNE instead!
Genius! So the poor, stressed girl ended up having to pay for another
visa for each of us, coming in at $70 - not a happy bunny.
So Phnom Penh is a strange place to be "on holidays" in that's for
sure. The plan is to get our Russian visas at the start of the week and
then head south and eventually to Thailand via the coastal town of
Sihanoukville. Looking forward to having a break on the beach for a
while, all of this learning about the horrific past of the Khmers is
pretty exhausting, not to mention trying to do anything in the heat...
