March 21-23
Beautiful water lilies at the Royal Palace
On the morning of March 21st, our new group boarded a public bus for the drive to Phnom Penh Cambodia. The bus was better than I expected it to be (yes I did have visions of live chickens running up the aisles) but it was still a public bus with a single smelly toilet in the back. It was the kind of toilet you don't use unless it's a dire emergency. I used it twice. So clearly there was a problem. I'm sure you think this is over sharing, but I vowed to write about the good, the bad and the ugly and this was the ugly!
On the public bus from Vietnam to Cambodia
To be honest, I was amazed that it took this long. We had been in Vietnam for 15 days and we had eaten everything in sight, including local street food that was probably not prepared in what you would consider high hygiene standards, and we had had no stomach issues at all. So it actually took me by surprise when I started feeling unwell. I had just begun taking an anti malarial drug called Malarone for the Cambodia leg of the trip and my first assumption was that this must have been a side effect of the Malarone. After a few days it became clear it wasn't the Malarone, but luckily our travel clinic had armed us with antibiotics for exactly this situation. One z-pack and I was all fixed up!
So that afternoon when we arrived in Phnom Penh I opted out of the group activity for the first time on the trip. It was a cyclo ride through Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia and everyone else in the new group was doing it. I knew deep down that I would be playing Russian Roulette by doing a long cyclo tour, but I still felt strangely guilty for bagging on the activity. Besides the guilt, I also hated the idea of just lying around our hotel room all afternoon since the room was pretty spartan. So when our new guide Sareth pointed out the National Museum just a few blocks from our hotel, I decided it was the perfect place for me.
My visit that afternoon was less than an hour but it was wonderful. Cambodia is so different from Vietnam. Vietnam seemed like it practiced "religion lite"; a mix of a few little things they had picked up here and there from Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism with a few other things mixed in, like bits of Hinduism and Catholicism. As Bon kept telling us, the Vietnamese aren't very religious but they are very superstitious! And so the buildings didn't really seem to reflect any one style. In Cambodia, the ancient religious traditions came through much more vibrantly. Most people think of Buddhism when they think of Cambodia, but you only need to take one step inside the National Museum to feel the strong tradition of Hinduism. The elephant/man Ganesh and the mystical dancing women called Apsaras were everywhere. It was amazing to have driven for a few hours and to feel like you were now in a whole new world! Even the building that housed the museum was completely different than anything we had seen. The Khmer style of architecture is extremely ornate. The building was painted a beautiful burnt red and it had these "chofah" on the top, sweeping out from the gables like the pointed tusks of a hundred elephants.
The National Museum with it's Khmer Architecture
You couldn't take pictures inside the National Museum but the grounds were lovely
The other thing I loved about the National Museum was the different displays on the Temples of Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat was the main reason we chose to go to Cambodia and the museum totally whetted my appetite for that experience. They had lots of artifacts and photographs and even a video simulation of what Angkor Wat looked like at it's peak in the twelfth century. By the time I left the museum that day I was even more excited to see the amazing City of Temples that is Angkor Wat. But first, we needed to explore the Capital city.
That evening we had a group dinner at a place not far from the hotel and called it an early night. We had a big day ahead of us and this one was going to be tough. Cambodia, like many of the surrounding countries, has had a very violent and troubled past, and one of the most violent periods in it's history took place in the 1970's when the Khmer Rouge came to power under a despicable character named Pol Pot. The area in and around Phnom Penh, became host to some of the most horrific war crimes of the last 50 years. You can't understand Cambodia without understanding the events of that time, so our agenda for the next day was a visit to both the Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields.
Group dinner the first night in Cambodia
First up that day was the Genocide Museum, also known as S-21. When the Khmer Rouge came to power on April 17,1975, many Cambodian people were actually under the impression that this might be good for their country because it meant a long civil war was over. Even when Pol Pot ordered the evacuation of the city of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge Soldiers told the evacuees that it was because the Americans were going to bomb the city and that it would only be for a "a few days". Instead, the city residents were shipped off to forced labor farms in the countryside so that Pol Pot could begin constructing his "Agrarian Utopia".
In this new society, religion, money, education and private property were all banned and family bonds meant nothing. But the worst was yet to come. Under the new regime, one of the biggest crimes you could commit was to be suspected of being an intellectual. Anyone who was thought to be an intellectual was immediately executed. That included anyone who spoke a foreign language or wore glasses, which they considered to be a sign of higher education. Things continued to spiral out of control from there and by the time the Khmer Rouge was taken out of power 4 years later, more than two million of Cambodia's eight million people had either been executed, starved to death or died from disease in the work camps at the hands of these evil men.
The Genocide Museum is on the site of Security Prison 21 (S-21), a former high school that was turned into torture chambers for the Khmer Rouge Soldiers. At any one time, between 1000-1500 people were held there. I will spare you the details of what they did to these poor souls, but lets just say that there were only a few lucky ones who managed to kill themselves. The rest were tortured until the Khmer Rouge had gotten whatever confessions they needed and then killed and buried on the grounds. Sadly, they soon ran out of room on the grounds of S21. They needed a new place to do the killing, and so the "Killing Fields" were born.
S-21 The classrooms of this former high school became torture chambers under the Khmer Rouge
The best known of the "Killing Fields", Choeung Ek, is about 15k outside of Phnom Penh. It is believed that the Khmer Rouge killed over 17,000 people at Choeung Ek alone. (There are thousands of other sites like Choeng Ek throughout the country). At this site, they have found 8,895 bodies in the mass graves that have been exhumed, but they have only excavated about 85 of the 129 mass graves. The ones that have been excavated were left as open pits, some with small wooden signs identifying the type of victims. One of the graves contained hundreds of headless corpses, Some of the graves just contained women, children and infants. In most cases, the people were bludgeoned to death or killed in some other horrifying way, because bullets were considered too expensive. Because many of the graves have not been exhumed, clothing and bones often still surface after heavy rains.
The memorial stupa at Cheoung Ek
Inside the memorial stupa, just level after level of remains
In 1995 a memorial was constructed at Choeung Ek to the victims who died there. It is a Buddhist Stupa that has glass sides. Inside, there are 13 levels and each of the levels is filled with the skeletal remains of the people who were killed at Choeung Ek. It was quite poignant and sad. But nothing is more sad than the fact that almost nobody who perpetrated these crimes was ever brought to justice. Only one man, a man known as Duch who ran S-21 has admitted guilt and his original sentence was 35 years!! (It was later upped to a life sentence but the guy is in his eighties now so what good does that do). From what I understand the government is still so corrupt and so many are former Khmer Rouge members, that they have actually protected a lot of these characters over the years. I left the Killing Fields with a bitter taste in my mouth.
Thankfully, we were now done with that part of Cambodia's history. Our next stop was lunch, and the place we went to was the perfect antidote to the evil we had just seen. Friends Restaurant is a training restaurant in Phnom Penh that takes street kids and teaches them the skills they need to get a job in the hospitality industry. Phnom Penh alone is estimated to have over 20,000 street kids, so this is a very worthwhile enterprise! The place was charming, the waiters were friendly and hard working and the food was excellent all around.
That afternoon we had free time but it was our last day so we used our time well! First up was a trip to the National Museum with Shaun and some other folks who hadn't been yet. Next up was the Royal Palace. It was quite beautiful and once again had the vibrant colors and fantastic Khmer Architecture I had come to love. We explored the grounds for a few hours before heading back to the hotel to clean up for dinner.
The grounds of the Royal Palace
Just loved the colors
Aidan, Pam, Nikita and Shaun climbing up to one of the temples. It was about 96 degrees that day but you must wear long pants or skirts and cover your shoulders out of respect
One of the Stupas on the grounds
For dinner that night, our Cambodia tour leader Sareth asked if anyone wanted to go out to a local place for some "meat". One of the big specialties of Phnom Penh is whole cow slowly grilled on a giant rotisserie. (I know, maybe not so sanitary but that's why we had shots before we came!) Shaun, Aidan, Pam, Nikita and I all decided to go. So we jumped in a couple of Tuk Tuks and headed over to the meat place with Sareth.
On the Tuk Tuk ride to get some meat
If you like beef, this is the place for you. They basically bring everyone a big plate of meat and the only decision you need to make is whether you want it on the bone or not. (Normally I would say yes to the bone but we all thought that might be just a little too risky) It was all served with a bowl of fried rice and chilled raw vegetables. And of course, beer to drink. Like many local places, the tables were out on the sidewalk. And even though it was nighttime, it was still hot as hades out so when the waitress came over with big chunks of ice for our beer we took her up on it!
Eating big plates of meat on the streets of Phnom Penh
After dinner Sareth headed out with friends and the five of us went to a bar called Kwest to see some jazz. The music was nice, but to be honest, my favorite thing about that night was the locale. The bar was on the ground floor of the Amanjaya hotel and it was really lovely. It was air conditioned and had comfy couches and chairs and the bathrooms were spotless. Maybe it was a sign that I was getting travel weary, but I was absolutely thrilled to be able to use a clean, modern bathroom! And so we had a nice last night in Phnom Penh with some dancing, some good music and good friends. It was a good introduction to Cambodia, but I was ready to move on to the next part of our journey, one of the most highly anticipated stops of the whole trip. We were heading to Seim Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat!
Drinks at the nice clean air conditioned bar!
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