Khmer

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e arrived in Phnom Penh, we got a tour of the city by cyclo. A cyclo in Cambodia is different from the rickshaws or the tuk-tuks we have seen so far. The driver is seated high above the ground and behind the passenger. There is only a single gear and in order to stop or slow down, he has to reach behind him to pull up a handle that controls the breaks. The drivers are usually extremely poor men from the countryside and are usually too poor to have a place to sleep and are often abused and robbed. The agency that G-Adventes uses provides them with a place to sleep and bath, and they wear green T-shirts that make them very conspicuous (especially when they are travelling in groups of 16!) and large groups of Korean tourists were snapping our photos. My single-toothed driver only spoke the word ‘Okay!” and he pointed out various landmarks along the way.

King Sihanouk of Cambodia has just passed away a month ago and the city of Phnom Penh has been preparing for his cremation and funeral ever since. A huge structure is being built simply to provide a special place for his cremation. King Sihanouk came to power as a young man just as the French were losing control over Cambodia. He then was king during a brief golden age before the communist and capitalist powers began dragging the entire world into their fight for control. The history is so convoluted and complicated that I am sure that I won’t be able to tell it properly. But basically Sihanouk was ousted by a coup d’etat and during his exile, he made a pact with the newly formed Khmer Rouge to return to power. He never had that power however since the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh in 1975 and began a violent social restructuring more dramatic than anything I have ever heard of. All of the people living in cities were cleared out in only three days and had to leave all of their belongings behind because the labourer was king under the new rule. The cities were empty during the Khmer Rouge time and when the people returned three years later, all of their possessions had been looted by the Vietnamese when they liberated Phnom Penh.

The next morning we were met by our local guide in the lobby of our hotel and we drove to the S.21 Museum.  S.21 represents Security 21 and it was one of hundreds of schools or pre-existing public building that were converted to detention and torture centres for the unfortunate Cambodians who came up on the radar of the Khmer Rouge regime.  S.21 used to be a high school but it's windowns were boarded up and covered in bars, its balconies were covered with barbed wires to prevent suicide attempts, and holes were smashed in the walls between classrooms to allow easy access from one jail block to the next.   Of all the thousands of people who were imprisonned in S.21, no one ever escaped, and only 7 survived.  Two of them wrote books and sign them for tourists.  I bought both of them.

The social restructuring of Cambodia was so sudden, and so violent, that it blows my mind.  The doctrine of extreme Maoism they followed forced the people out of all of the cities, like all of the people, like in all of the cities, and into rural communities.  There are maps on the walls showing the forced movement of people.  There were no people left in Phnom Penh left to see or hear what was happening in the school.  The Khmer Rouge was so anti-intellectual that even wearing glasses came to mean that you read too much and were therefore educated and therefore a revolutionary.  People who spoke other languages were assumed to be spies.  They separated husbands and wives to prevent unpermitted pregnancy and also forced couples of different classes to marry.  In just over three years they managed to kill half of the country's population.  The farms went fallow because none of the city people knew how to farm and so, along with a drought and famine, did tremendous damage.

Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept meticulous records of their dramatic attempt at restructing the social fabric of the country and there were rooms full of photographs of men, women, and children who were detained there.  I'm not even sure if how deeply I should go into the telling of the story because it was, and sadly continues to be, so sad.  I saw classrooms where there was a bed made all from steel, with no pallet, with dark stains on the tiles under the bed where the blood of the prisoner drained after having his throat cut during torture.

After S.21 we drove to the Killing Fields’ where there are thousands of people buried in mass graves as part of the final solution of the Khmer Rouge regime as it became imminent that they would lose to the Vietnamese.   They detained the intellectuals and other threatening people in the torture stations trying to force them to confess to spying for either the CIA or the KGB.  Once they were weakened, they were sent to the killing fields where they were easy to club to death with bamboo sticks.  Eyewitnesses who returned to the village near the Killing Fields said they noticed bits of cloths or brains or blood against trees, and that is how the killing fields were discovered and soon excavated.  With each rainy season, more bones become uncovered and even along the pathways intended for people to walk, you can see teeth and bones.

After lunch Patricia and wandered around the small Royal Museum and I got to get very close to the Khmer sculptures and gaze deeply at the faces and the ‘Anchor Smile’.  Apparently you can recognize the period of the sculptures by the serene face and smile that changed subtly over time.  That change of focus for me has very much encapsulated the spirit of Cambodia itself (they call Phnom Penh Heaven and Hell) 

 For dinner we went to the ‘Friends’ restaurant which has an excellent reputation for training young people in English and in the service industry. Our order was taken by two waiters (one teacher and one student) and the teacher translated and oversaw everything the trainee did.   The place also has a store next door where they sell goods made from recycled materials so I picked up a travel wallet and passport holder.  They also advertise the childsafe program which exists in SE Asia because exploitation of children is still a serious problem.

The next day was spent almost entirely on the bus driving from Phnom Penh to Siem Riep.  Even though the distance is only a couple of hundred of kilometers, the going is slow because of the quality of the roads.  On that long bus ride, our tour leader Kevin took the opportunity to tells us more information about the Khmer Rouge period and fill in some gaps left by our local guide.  It has been tremendously helpful to have a Cambodian be with us for this section of the tour.  Kevin is so open and frank, and he is willing to answer any question you ask him. 

That evening we went for dinner, and then drinks in the shockingly bright and raucous ‘Pub Street’ area.  I call it that because that name is written in neon lights suspended over the street in many places.  The same lights also tell you when you are in the ‘Night Market’ area.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it.  I ended the strange day with a $2 foot massage.  The two Spanish guys who were on the tour together decided to try the 'Fish Massage' where you sit around a tank, put your feet in the water, and let the little fish come along and eat your skin.  They giggled and shrieked like school girls and apparently the bigger fish can really bite.  Every time someone offers me a fish massage, I admit that I laugh in their faces and politely decline.

 

Thanks for reading.  Sorry if this post doesn't flow so well.  I wrote it two separate parts.

 Also, I tried to use html to upload photos and can't say I did the best job so...enjoy the creavity.  You can click on the failed photos to see them.

Leslie