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Pagodas, Chaos and Dust
Entry 7 of 21 | show all | print this entry |
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Abstract:
- estoy algo mal del estómago / habe Magenbeschwerde
- que tráfico / was für ein Verkehr!
- las locuras de Pol Pot / Pol-Pot Wahnsinn
- los monos se volvieron locos / die Affen sind Amok gelaufen
After my turbulent trip from yesterday and maybe also because I ate something on the journey I got some headache and weak stomach (you know, I go to the WC often). Yesterday I just met some nice friends I knew over internet and made a night city tour with a tuk-tuk driver. The Cambodian friends spoke with that driver to get me today a ride around the sightseeings and they managed to set a price of 8$. This price, compared to 15$ by another driver, is actually a good deal, and even other Cambodian friends told me so.
That tuk-tuk driver was yesterday very slow on the night city tour. This disturbed me a bit, but I thought, well it's because he wants me to see all the stuff, so I just forgot it and anyway got more fun chatting with the friends.
The problem is that the tuk-tuk driver was today also very slow and he didn't seem to understand the words: "go faster" or "you are slow". After some attempts to clear this fact, I just gave up and proceeded myself to enjoy the traffic fauna of this city.
The first thing it came to my mind was: Centro de Lima (Center of Lima). The same chaos, but motorbikes or tuk-tuk instead of Combis (minivan) and more asian faces of course. I saw some biker heroes and remembered my time as biker in Lima fighting against the Taxis and the Combis like David vs. Goliath. As I did it already in Lima, I don't need to do it here again, I said myself (man I am getting old I guess).
So at the end I visited some interesting points of this city. Of course guys I will not list what you find in other well documented travel websites but just give my impression about some of them.
Noteworthy in any case is the Genocide Museum (Tuol Sleng, just google for it or check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng). What a way to start my city tour anyway but I don't regret it, its part of Cambodian history.
Here you can see evidences what Khmer Rouge did when at the power. It's not a conspiracy theory like some crazy terrorist people would argue: they are facts. I thought just that Perú was going on similar direction around 15 years ago when the terrorist group Lightning Path (Sendero Luminoso) was really a menace to the civil government and was about to create a Republic of the New Democracy (did they get the idea from Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea maybe?). At that time, many human rights organizations just supported that "guerrilleros" having absolutely no idea who were they supporting (or maybe a very clear idea, in fact). In this era post 9/11 you don't hear that groups anymore, after they unfortunately experienced what countries like Perú or Cambodia suffered during terror time.
Just an additional mention on this topic: in Peru was Fujimori the president capable to control the terrorism and now we have a quiet country with few terror risks. The presidents before him, Alan García and Belaúnde, were at all not able to control this problem, that was growing and growing and if not were for Fujimori we would maybe have lived similar experiments like the Cambodian one. The fact that now Fujimori was extradited to Peru, facing corruption and human right charges, and being spotted by some as genocide and the worst president ever, let me to think how exaggerated some people are and what a really short-time memory some of they have. Well, he has to face the accusations of course and pay for them if found guilty, but not more and not less. Hopefully this come true not only for him but for other former presidents.
Let's go back to Cambodia and the Tuol Sleng Museum. The pictures of the victims are really macabre. People of any gender or age were killed there. There is a temporal exposition of some victims and related people telling their stories: the base people, the combatants and the cadre. People of all this levels, even being part of the revolution, fell also under the terror they once supported and maybe expected to keep away from their family and lives. Khmer Rouge was in this sense very strict: if they found you guilty, not only you, but also your family were on the dead list.
Here you can read very sad histories like a woman relating the case of her brother, missing in the revolution years. Despite of so many years passed she still misses him and she says something like: "I haven't seen him all this time, even on my dreams". His picture was found on this formerly detention center now museum. Very sad history, I was about to cry after I read it.
But by the other hand you can find a white rose in the middle of the marsh: a base man (farmer) with five children was sought by the Khmer Rouge to be "interrogated" (of course this meant death on that time...why terrorist always use euphemisms on their actions???). One Combatant (soldier of the Revolution) found him, but he just got compassion about this big family and he lied to the Cadre (his superiors) and kept all of them living.
Leaving this museum I was really depressed and spoke about that to the tuk-tuk driver. He just told me: "I know, I also suffered it, I am 44". The point is, he was smiling saying it to me!!!. Maybe this is more of the Cambodian touch I still don't get but this was too far for me....
The rest of the time was more relaxed visiting pagodas like Wat Phnom, and taking pictures of some monkeys there. This probed to be a bit dangerous later on at the Royal Palace when I found again some monkeys and while taking some pictures (with zoom and all that stuff) one of them got crazy and was about to bite me, and even went after me, so I had to run for my life!. I got a bit scared but nothing happened at all. I felt a bit like a journalist in difficult mission... maybe my job in 20 years?
More on this, something was hitting on my mind lately. You could describe the behavior of that monkey by "running amok" (I knew it actually from german: "Amok laufen"), but do you know there is a dish here called "amok fish"? My first impression was not so good about the food as you can imagine and this is always one topic of conversation with the local friends here. They explain me, so far I understood, there are two meanings in Cambodia: one is the name of the dish, the other is being a stupid (closer to the expression I know). Anyway, you can find some more backgrounds about Amok here: http://www.answers.com/topic/amok?cat=health
That's all for now... need to go to bed.
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