Phnom Penh
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2007
1
179
220
Trip End
Jun 17, 2009
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Even though it's Sunday morning the streets are busy, most of the shops are open and the market stalls are in full swing. It takes nearly an hour to clear the Saigon suburbs and after almost two hours we are at the border with Cambodia. A 'facilitator' has travelled on the coach with us and prepared the documents for leaving Vietnam and obtaining Cambodian visas.
We leave the bus with all our luggage and as we enter the Vietnamese border building we put it through a scanner, before handing in our exit documents, which are checked and our passports returned
Ferry cross the Mekong
. Our facilitator then collects the passports and takes them to passport control across the hall. Well over three quarters of an hour later he gets them back, exit stamped. The processing speed varies, as whoever puts the most money into his passport, gets it back the quickest. We then join another queue, where an official checks our exit stamp before we are allowed to board the bus again. OK - Goodbye Vietnam.Five hundred metres away we get off the bus again, leaving the luggage on and stand in a queue waiting for a Cambodian official to check our passport photos whilst we stand in front of him. The 'our man' takes the passports again and goes to get them entry stamped while we wait. The whole border crossing process took nearly two hours.
As we drive away from the border we notice several large hotel / casinos on the Cambodian side, with more being built. After a few more minutes we stop to grab something to eat at a roadside café, before setting off again twenty five minutes later.
The countryside is noticeably flat and less green than Vietnam with some bare fields devoid of growth. Although there are a few more cows and water buffaloes about, none of them look particularly fat
Things to cary on a motorbike 5
. There are also very few motorbikes about, a definite contrast to Vietnam.The reasonably straight road was only one lane wide in each direction, tarmaced but with rough edges and passed through fields and the occasional small town, although there are large, impressive Buddhist temples dotted along it.
After another two hours we reach a ferry crossing at the 'Mekong river', the great waterway that runs nearly 4,000 km from China down to the sea in South Vietnam. Our journey has taken us north west from Saigon.
At the busy ferry crossing we wait our turn as the small car ferries shuttle back and forth across the fast flowing river. The buses and cars are surrounded by street sellers, with all kinds of goods, particularly food and dozens of people just sitting around, whilst children beg from the occupants of the vehicles. We had been warned that Cambodia was less prosperous than Vietnam and the vehicles around us are packed with people.
Across the river we motor on in the hot, hazy sun as the scenery remains the same and the co-driver creates some light relief by putting on a (pirated) copy of 'Mr Bean'
So what are you going to do with that ?
.Nearly seven hours after leaving Saigon we start to enter the heavy city traffic of Pnomh Penh and after a bus swap at the city bus station, we arrive at our hotel an hour later.
The hotel overlooks the Meikong river and we are glad to settle into our basic but adequate room and relax for what's left of the afternoon.
We take a tuk-tuk, a motorbike with a mounted, four seat trailer, complete with roof to a Cambodian restaurant and enjoy another tasty meal of curries and fish dishes. So go on then, what was the starter? Fried tarantula. Pardon?????? OK - it was fried tarantula! A little bit crispy but quite tasty and it certainly saw off my 'unfamiliar bacteria'. We slept well that night after a busy day.
Monday 22nd September
A sightseeing day, but one with a difference.
The coach picked us up and drove across town to an old school
Early morning fishermen
. This had been converted into one of the main interrogation centres during the 'Pol Pot' regime's rule of terror in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. It was just one of many centres throughout the country where any citizen was brought and questioned about their occupation, background, family and friends in the regime's determination to wipe out all intellectuals, educated and skilled people, even doctors and teachers in its aim to totally dominate the country. It sent everyone from the towns out to the countryside, where there was insufficient food and the net result was that three million people starved, died of illness or were tortured and then killed.
The school has been kept as a memorial and a display of what happened in those terrible years. I remember reading the little information that was available to us at the time but never understood fully what had happened in this region in the years after the Vietnam war. The pictures, paintings, exhibits and reports of what took place were horrendous and the dingy school building, with its cells and barbed wire fence, added to the overall starkness of the events that took place here.
The regime were eventually overthrown when Vietnam invaded to stop the slaughter but even then, western governments continued to support the Pol Pot regime, until eventually a political 'compromise' was found
Killing Fields stupa
. This whole visit was a deeply saddening insight into human behavior and it happened only thirty years ago.
Our local guide was, as a child, sent to a work camp by his parents who could see what was happening. This way the children would have no knowledge of where their parents were and had been instructed to say that they had died. The policy was that if any one person was suspected by the regime, then the whole, extended family had to die so as not to be a threat.
Our next visit was to the fields outside the city, the infamous 'killing fields'. Again my lack of knowledge led me to think they were the site of some battle, but no. The prisoners who did not die during torture or interrogation, were eventually brought out here by the lorry load, taken out to great pits and beaten or hacked, if lucky, to death and if not then to die later or be buried alive. We were shown 'the baby tree', where children were smashed against it and then tossed into the pit.
To investigate the atrocity reports, the site was dug up in the 1980's and in this area alone nearly 9,000 people were killed and dumped. They recovered the majority of the bones but because of the skeletal damage, could not recover them all and the surrounding grass land and even the paths, contained bone fragments and tatters of clothing that had been uncovered by rains. It was the middle of an horrendous nightmare and there were at least 179 sites like this throughout Cambodia.
On this site a giant stupa or monument has been erected and the recovered skulls and some bones piled in it
Can we fit any more?
. A picture of this stupa was the only one I felt I could take of today's visits. We had wanted to travel to see the world, meet people and experience many different things. This is one experience I would never wish to see again.A sombre ride back into town for a quiet lunch and then in the afternoon it was back on the cyclos for a round the city tour and the sights of Pnomh Penh. Near the end of the tour it started to rain heavily, whereupon my driver pedalled faster, as if to dry and out run it. Good try but it was coming towards us and nothing less than an F15 was going to get out of there fast enough. Once soaked he passed me a polythene sheet, with tears in it, which managed to keep me humid as well as wet through.
We soon stopped, as did the rain and walked a short way along the river embankment to the Royal Palace. This was a fabulously ornate range of buildings and temples, some of which are open to the public. We visited the sumptuously rich throne room and then the 'silver pagoda', so called because the floor is covered in sheets of silver. The centrepiece is a 90kg gold Buddha, inset with over a thousand diamonds and jewels.
By late afternoon we were wilting from the heat, still drying from the rain storm, suffering visual overload and it looked like it was going to rain again, so we caught a nearby tuk-tuk, who, after a quick haggling session from Norah, took us back to the hotel
Phnom Penh market
.We were now joined by Al, a sprightly ninety year old Canadian, who had missed a flight connection from Toronto via Hong Kong to Saigon.
For supper we walked down the riverside street to a Cambodian restaurant that supported a children's school. Many of the restaurants, under western encouragement, are donating part of their profits to supporting schools and orphanages or actively training the youngsters in the restaurant business. We had also seen this in some of the shops and Norah had had her toes and nails 'done' earlier by trainees in one such shop. We have learnt that this is preferable to either giving street children money or buying from them, as this then becomes the accepted way of income without them (or their parents) looking for better, long term means of support.
