My pre-birthday in the Killing Fields...
Trip Start
Aug 25, 2003
1
9
38
Trip End
Jul 23, 2004
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Killing Field Memorial
. There were probably 20 of them, but Phil has a wonderful ability to tune them out and just move us through a crowd. We did have a few that followed us down the street, shadowing us by motorbike, but we just repeated,"No, thanks" and smiled about 5 billion times, and sought refuge in the Sunrise Cafe, where we had mango tea and real chocolate cheesecake. When we finally emerged, the hawker storm had passed and we landed at the Royal Hotel, only 200 meters from the chocolate cheescake. It was purely coincidence, I swear...As we were only in Battambang for our Vietnam visas; unlike Cambodia and Thailand, where you can get a visa at the border, visas to Vietnam have to be obtained in advance, and we'd heard horror stories about the 5 days wait in Phnom Penh. After waking the embassy guard up on our first visit (2 pm is siesta time, I think), we returned an hour later with our $30 US and had the visa in hand 11 minutes later. Talk about efficent!
In an attempt to further avoid Cambodian rough roads, we decided to take the train from Battambang to Romeas, then a bus the last 2 hours. Understanding Cambodia's history helps to explain the condition of the trains. Until the mid-1990's, trains were a frequent target of Khmer Rouge guerrillas, and daring passengers could travel for free in the front carriage because of the very real risk of landmines. Therefore, there is no glass in any of the windows of the train, and some carriages have large holes in their sides
S21 Prison in Cambodia
. The pro of this is the cooling breeze which helps to tame the Cambodian heat. The con is that every tree we passed seemed to grow specifically to whap branches through the open windows and wall-holes. Nothing like gazing out onto picturesque rice paddies dotted with fat dusty water buffalos and graceful white cranes, only to be poked in the eye by a rubber tree branch. Because large sections of track were damaged by landmines and trian wrecks, the train goes just fast enough for someone to jump out, pee in the rice fields, then have to run a little to catch up. Because it is so slow, it isn't very popular with travelers. We got quite a lot of attention as the only Westerners on the whole train. Especially at smaller village stops, there would be people two deep standing around our bench and leaning in the window, just staring at us. Not staring in an intimidating way at all, just curious; the same kind of attention someone with a lip disk might get in Iron Mountain, except Asian cultures condone obvious staring more than ours. We landed in Romeas, and caught a share taxi to Kompong Chhnang, which is on the main highway to Phnom Penh. I still don't know how we got seven people, two backpacks, and a breastfeeding baby in that car; the driver was sitting on the next passenger's lap, so they had to share driving tasks. Good thing the road was so bad, and we couldn't go faster than 15 mph, because we hit a pothole and popped the tire. Obviously a frequent occurence, as the driver had the spare on in no time, but it got us into "town" after dark, and the guesthouse we were dropped off at was full, so we had to find our way along some dark streets to another hotel. The only danger of walking here after dark is falling in a pothole, but some of these potholes could hide a bus, so we inched our way towards town. A shower and some fried rice makes everything a little easier to handle, and we had a TV in the room (!!) so we spent a few hours watching HBO and then crashed. The public bus trip to Phnom Penh was uneventful, and cheap, so deemed a success. Although Phnom Penh is Cambodia's biggest city, with 1.1 million people, it is easy to get around on foot. We stayed in the Chantrea Hotel, about a 1 km walk from both the main area and the "backpacker ghetto" on the lake, and it was fabulous. We had a beautiful rooftop sitting area where we watched the sun set over the stadium, and a room with two juxtaposed windows, which gave us a constant breeze through the room. It was wonderful, a respite from the hot dusty city. We stayed three days in Phnom Penh, but jammed all the "sights" into one long day.
Cambodian history is pretty bloody, but the atrocities the Khmer Rouge committed against the Khmer people is uniquely brutal. Basically, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, were Communists who wanted a "modern agrarian" society; to reach this end, they rounded up all the educated people (doctors, monks, even people who wore glasses), imprisoned and tortured them, and then killed them. Then they forced most of the Khmer people to move to the rural areas and become farmers. Anyone who resisted or was suspected of disagreeing with the Party was executed, along with their families. The site of some of the worst acts, Tuol Sleng Prison, was formerly a school; the creepy part is that it is such a normal-looking building on the outside. Inside is horribly different: former classrooms divided into small dark cells, or remade into "interrogation" rooms. Photos mounted on the wall show the rooms, and the most recent interrogatees, as they were found when the prison was liberated. Another building houses "before and after" photos of many of the over 10,000 people who were brought here; one photo when the prisoner was arrested, and one after they were killed. Some prisoners were taken, still alive, to Chuoeng Ek, the area known better as the Killing Fields. It is a long, dusty, bumpy ride from the city to Chuoeng Ek, which helped relieve the personal unease I felt about the Killing Fields as a tourist attraction. Less than half of the mass graves have been unearthed, and the skulls recovered are in a stupa memorial, categorized by age and sex, the names being largely unknown. The raw dirt of the graves themselves has grown over with grass and flowers, and the whole area is bordered by rice paddies and trees, so if it weren't for the markers reading "mass grave site", it would be a nice picnic spot. It was incredibly eerie, the park-like field where thousands and thousands of people were slaughtered and dumped.
We bumped and jolted our way back into the city, and visited the Royal Palace and the Siver Pagoda. It was interesting to see the many Buddha figures, but most of the silver tile floor of the Silver Pagoda is covered by indoor-outdoor carpeting to protect it, and you can't take any photos inside any of the buildings (although you have to pay an extra $2 to take a camera inside the compound!). The highlight of the afternoon, I have to admit, was the fabulous garlic bread we had for lunch. Sorry, Emerald Buddha. I was hungry.
We had planned to do all of the sightseeing on my birthday; not because I wanted to immerse myself in Cambodia's tragic history to force out any thoughts of turning 29 (well, ok, maybe a little), just coincidence. In retrospect, I'm glad that we did it the day before; I'm still self-centered enough to want to celebrate my birthday with all day adoration by my loved ones (the honor and responsibility this year are Phil's alone, lucky dog), not images of the horrible things humans do to each other. So, we spent my actual birthday crossing the border into Vietnam, through the incredible Mekong Delta. With Phil's constant birthday adoration, of course...
