War and Peace
The night before I head to Cambodia J was away with a job, so I went out for a few beers with Andrew. Headed down to Koh San road to do a bit of farang spotting and it was weird to see westerners again. All different shapes and sizes, and hair colours; it was a bit fascinating to watch after living in the sticks with the locals and dark skinned, dark haired models.
Anyway a Thai friend of Andys, Decha turned up to take us for a few beers with his mates. The place we went to was actually a petrol station around the corner from Koh San, with tables all over the forecourt with little candles on the tables. Hmmmm. Anyway the beers turned into 'buckets' of Thai whiskey and Redbull, then we were drunk and didn't want to go home so ended up on a 'street bar' which was just some floor mats on the pavement and then some geezer would run off to get the alcohol for us. Ended up chatting away with the very charismatic and very Gay Decha, and various travellers, locals and tramps til 5am when I realised that it wasn't really worth sleeping before getting my bus. So the three of us ended up back in Towintow, rowdy as you like trying to pack my backpack between swigs of whiskey and shouting nonsense to Jason down the phone.
6.30 am and I leave Andrew and Decha in my bed watching My Name Is Earl on the DVD player, and grab me a cab back to Koh San which is 45 mins away. I fall asleep in the cab, catching flies, and the kind cabbie didn't rip me off at all. Just woke me at up on arrival and the fare was good. As I stagger into a McDonalds and order a Big Mac for breakfast I'm vaguely aware that I'm still pissed. Hey ho, I sit on my backpack on the street, stuffing my mouth with burger and wait for my bus. And wait. And wait. The bus was due at 8am and by 8.30 the shop where Id booked the ticket opened. The guy opening the shutters makes some calls and by 9am I'm walked, not to the big double decker airconned-with-toilet-bus that I'd booked, but to a 10 seater mini van stuffed with people, the majority of which, were Polish. I plop myself down, fix my sunnies on my face and proceed to suffer and feel shite.
We eventually come to a town stop where we have a toilet break and fill in our Cambodian Visa applications. I claim a chair on the pavement and marvel at a couple who have two huge backpacks on, plus other luggage attatched to the two PUSHCHAIRS with their children in. I make some comment of this to a guy sitting across from me and have a brief chat with Rob from Sunderland. On a visa run, he'd been living in Bangkok playing in a band and organising club nights. 24 years old, had been living in Leeds the previous six years so we exchanged the usual 'do you know, I know, do you go/work/live' conversations. He was one of the skinniest boys I've ever met, and actually had TWO pairs of tight fitting jeans on- in the baking heat. My God.
Anyway after the chats we had a 20 minute drive to the border, and then went through all of the usual border crossing palarva. Then we are led to our DOOM. I mean our 'new bus'. This thing was so shonky, it looked like something out of a 'Carry On Up The 3rd World Country' film. At around 13.30/14.00 we climb into this.. bus... and notice a) the lack of air con, b) how bloody cramped and tiny it is, and c) everything was covered in an orange dust. I reckon they took the chickens out of it before we got on. And then, for the next six hours or so bumped, rocked, and shook our way to Siem Reap. I was wedged in at the back, next to an open window and and a guy from Northern Ireland called Steve. Even though we were basically 'off roading' in this bloody bus, I still managed to sleep some of the way due to total hungover exhaustion. To underline how bad this road was, we arrived in the dark at about 9pm and the distance covered was....150 km. I mean what the hell?
Theres a conspiracy theory regarding this road actually. They say the only airline who flys direct from Bangkok to Siem Reap pays the Cambodian government NOT to fix it up so that they can make flying there a more attractive proposition. It seriously was one of the worst roads in Cambodia, and considering the crossing to Bangkok is one of the their MAJOR checkpoints, I'm willing to believe this is true.
Anyway, I grab a room and look in the bathroom mirror and think 'Wow Les, how tanned are you?' and then get in the shower to lose all of my ORANGE tan in the shower. Everything on that bus had come out orange, and sitting near the window had turned me into an Oompahlumpah. Sigh.
That night I meet Steves two travelling pals, Kev and Fop and resolve to follow them about for the next two weeks ;) The next morning me and 'the lads' hire bikes and head off to the temples. We actually hit Angkor Wat first- the main event of several Wats- and after parking our bikes and wading through the multitude of beautiful little hawker street children we take in the scene. Well. It was really, really beautiful. 11,000 years old and so... imposing. Took a million pics and let Fop- the human guide book, talk us through the histories. Angkor Wat was the capital of Cambodia and the Angkor people between the 9th and 13th centuries and to cut n' paste from the Irish fellas blog (he was a machine!!):
"Cambodian devaraja (God-Kings) strove to better their ancestors in size, scale and symmetry, culminating in the world's largest religious building Angkor Wat. To put this in perspective, at this time the Angkor capital boasted a city of over a million people while London had a population of only 50,000." *Fopstevekev 2006
Also I should mention that Fop, whose about 30 years old, had never left the UK until 5 weeks previous. His first city abroad was Bangkok and his second city Cambodia. Talk about diving straight in hahaha!
Anyway after lunch, and the usual mobbing of children (helllo ladyeee you by my postcardstenforonedollar helloooooyoubuymyheadscarvesforonedollaaaar) we headed to Bayon Wat til sundown, which was smaller and had rather funky face carvings all over it. On the way I'm accosted by a yound Cambodian school boy of about 14 on his bike. He cycles next to me smiling away. They all smile actually, so friendly, strangers on bikes, children, adults etc. I guess tourism is still so comparatively new here that they welcome the 'Barang' (not hostile like some Thai are to farang). Anyway he asks me how old I am. I say 28. He looks shocked (I'll take that as a compliment) and when I ask his he says 19. My eye. Ah bless. Also saw some families of wild monkeys who seemed totally unconcerned with us.
Then just before home Steves bike first cannot be unlocked because the key snapped in the lock. Then once unlocked (joint effort of us, Cambodian security and finally, a pair of pliers) we head on up the path where his back tire then blows. I turn around to see Steve kicking his bike and generally loosing his rag, so cycle off to get him a tuk tuk so he can get back and have a row about it. Kev goes with him (*joke, how do you get two Irish fellas and two bikes in a tuk tuk. answer...) and Fop and myself have an uneasy ride back to the guesthouse in the dark. This was our first introduction to Cambodian traffic but will get to that soon enough. That night I begin to follow Jo-from-the-outbacks Guide to Cambodia and we eat in a place called the Red Piano before bumping into a couple of girls from the deathbus, Australian Kate and Hongkong Chinese Ariel. We all end up more than merry in Siem Reaps loudest bar dancing to Indie tunes til 5am. Some of them even carry on getting plastered down by the river but I crashed and burned.
In the end Kev and Steve slept the day away whilst Fop and myself dutifully tuktuked around the remaining Wats, but to be fair we'd seen the best of them and we were very hot and hungover. Again. Still the last one we saw was very Lara Croft- jungle crawling all over it and I got some very cool photos. That night I decided to move guesthouse. The aussie girl Kate was staying in a room on her own cos the Hongkong girl had left- her guesthouse was nicer and more central so I moved seeing as I was in a room on my own (and it felt a bit dodge). Then the 3 Irish amigos followed cos Fop said when he got back to his room someone had been in it and also left a key in the door. Another dodgy story is one of the other two, Kev, was wandering back from the river pissed and he got lost and apparently got a gun pointed in his face by some big black woman??? He just said he was lost and wanted to find D&D guest house, and she was like 'Ohhh, D-an-Deee okay' and left him alone?! Anyway that night we headed to the main strip and bumped into another Irish guy and an American we'd met on the bus here so they came with us for dinner. Had THE BEST Indian curry since that one Id had in New Zealand!!! They even sold Chapaitis - it was called Karma Sutra and I got so full so quickly- just not used to that kind of food anymore :( Still was so nice (I had a dopiaza) and tried to have one beer after it but gave it away and went to bed with my book cos was knackered.
Anyway staying an extra day in Siem Reap was more a decision of physical exhaustion. Really I should have moved on but the extra day meant a trip to the Landmine Museum. This place was founded by a guy called Aki Ra, who is ex Khymer Rouge and laid many landmines himself during the 70's. Then he fought against them when he was captured by the Vietnamese. Anyway knowing the mess he was a part of, he now dedicates his life to clearing the mines and to the schooling of children who have been victims of landmines. One such victim was our guide, Hak, who lost his brother and sister, and his own leg at the age of eight. Now a very handsome softly spoken 19 year old, he took us around the shack/museum telling us how various bombs were made (and by whom; such as China, Germany, and chiefly America) and showing us them. Old bazookas, Bouncing Bettys, handgrenades, the place is full of demined shells,B52 bullets- the lot, are piled up for inspection. And children all playing with them. This museum was originally shut down and the artifacts confiscated by the Cambodian government so that they could open their own museum. They eventually had to return these and let Ra open again due to, I presume, bad publicity. Aki Ra clears his mines with a pocket mine and a stick. This is still the most effective method to date.
Eventually we (that is me, the lads and aussie Kate) get a boat to Phnom Phen. It was a really hot and sunny and was a whole day taking in the riverside scenes. Lovely. Then as we dock in PP and go to get our bags I rest my hand on the boats engine chimney and burn my hand. Cue stifled crying and frantic search for ice. In the end the five of us grab lunch in the restaurant immediately next to the dock so I can sit with some ice and then we grab two tuk tuks to the lakeside where we think we've found a nice guesthouse. Largely due to my fault we end up staying in a place that has a nice verandah and the worst room I've stayed in on my whole epic trip. Hot, stuffy, dodgy bedding, and a cupboard with a sink, toilet and shower in it. And the sinks plumbing was missing- the plughole led to nothing so it spattered straight down to the shower plug in the floor. And also SOMETHING RAN ACROSS ME IN THE NIGHT!!! I leapt off my bed to see some shadow run off the bed and under. Urrghh, I'm hoping it was a gecko. Thats all I'm saying. The next morning we tried to book into the relatively swanky Boddhi Tree guesthouse that is opposite the Genocide Museum but it was full so ended up in place called Spring Guesthouse which was a palace compared with Floating Guesthouse. That should have been 'Floater' guesthouse really.
So on a more sombre note we head to Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. Woah this place was grim. I know you will think 'Duh, of course its grim, its a genocide museum' but this isn't even quite like when I visited Austwitz, because it's presentation is so naked. Toul Sleng, or 'S-21' used to be a secondary school. Then when Pol Pot and the Khymer Rough took control in 1975 they turned it into their premier prison and torture facility. The place, as best as it can be, has been left as it was found. There are black brown marks and flecks on the staircase walls that can be taken has blood splatters. There are dark stained patches on the coffee and cream checkered floor tiles that run throughout the 'school'. 20,000 people were detained here over a three year period. 7 people survived. We watched a video that told the story of one female inmate, and her autobiography from 1970 onwards. Even before the KR took control, she had suffered rape at the hands of the previous government. The saddest part of her story was that the day she was incarcerated, she never even knew her husband was brought in the same day. She was tortured until confession after confession were dragged out of her (all of course, false) by children aged between 10 and 15 years of age and then both she and her husband were executed on the same day. And they never knew. Aside from the recorded 20'000 people (all photographed, documented, then tortured over a prolonged period of time and then, at last, bludgeoned to death) there were also the children of the inmates, numbered at approximately 2,000, who were also bludgeoned to death.
The museum has large boards with photo after photo of inmates- terrified looking men, women and beautiful children. It has cabinets with torture instruments on display, and glass fronted book shelves filled with human skulls. There is art work from one of the seven who survived of the tortures that occurred at the hands of children instructed by the devil Pol Pot himself. There are the cells. The grimmest of all were the torture rooms. 14 rooms in one of the buildings have been kept spartan save for one bed frame in each room. It was here when the the KR fled S-21 that 14 people were discovered still strapped to the steel, mattress-less beds, dead. The rooms have been scrubbed but you can still see the dark stains on the cream coloured tiles below the bed. In each room there is a black and white photograph of the bodies as they were found and you can see that the beds in front of you are the beds that are in the photograph. These 14 bodies, one of which was a woman, were given a special burial plot within the grounds of s-21, 14 white, unmarked sarcoghacus. Which is more than can be said for the dead of the Killing Fields...
We went to the Killing Fields the next day. 5 of us squeezed into a tuk tuk that had to cover terrain almost as bad as our bus trip. And let me tell you something about travel in Cambodia, and in particular Phnom Phen. IT IS CRAZY. We were heading down a main road, a busy main road a bit like a dual carriageway when we see a car driving towards us. I mean just slicing up the traffic on the wrong side of the road and the traffic going the right way weaving around it. I swear we all just sat there open mouthed. It seems if you need to pull out of a side street to the opposite road, then instead of driving to the middle and then turning, instead you just drive up the wrong way, looking apologetic but determined until you slowly veer off to the correct side! And this happens all the time!!! And sometimes its big trucks heading towards you! And sometimes its YOUR TUK TUK DRIVER who decides to take a trip up the road the wrong way so you have all the traffic coming at you and very little to protect you. Seriously it was mental.
So five of us were wedged into a tuktuk with 'Bo' our driver at the helm. I think we even got as fast as 20 miles an hour at one point (or the traffic may have been going faster the other way) and then the main road to the fields turned into mud. Bo persevered but eventually we had to get out so that he could get himself out of it. We get there and razz past a lot of tour buses (mainly Japanese tourists) who stare at us as if we are mad and indeed really tightfisted to have so many squeezed into one tin can on wheels. We finish our Phnom Phen morbid-a-thon on a very warm and peaceful day, strolling past the death pits that have now more or less healed over with green grasses. It was the crater shapes in the land, as much as the sign posts next to them, that reminded me I was walking across land that had seen one of the most evil atrocites to man, woman, and child kind. Nine thousand bodies were exhumed and then just as many in mass graves have been left in peace. The Charnel is the weirdest and bluntest tribute to the dead found on these lands. A temple made of glass, standing maybe about 60 feet high with four large glass walls and doors, with white pillars to keep it together- and it's filled to the top with human skulls. And you can walk in and around it and be altogether far to close to the subject matter. I wondered why they hadn't buried these skulls? Blessed them for the families?
What I do know is Cambodia SOLD the Killing Fields to the Japanese in 2005. I have heard that the Japanese also own the Angkor Wat heritage site. So profits of Camboidas greatest achievement and greatest atrocity do not even directly benefit this country. Cambodia is one of the poorest I have ever visited. There is a lot of begging. In a riverside cafe in PP the Irish boys were heard chatting and this old couple (in their 60's) were also from Ireland. While we chatted a street girl of about 8 came in and asked if she could finished their meals and then proceeded to eat the blokes left over salad and chips- which put his wife off her pasta because it was so sad. Then the girl polished off the spag bol- all the time looking over her shoulder. She must have been starving. I've never seen that before. Everyone begs. You get off a tuk tuk or bike and a cap is shoved in your face by an old man with one leg- or burnt face - or one eye, begging for a dollar for some 'yum'. Or its a street kid (5 street kids) with a baby tied to her front. Its at once infuriating and heartbreaking. You cant give to all- and say no to one, really you have to say no to all and it wore me down as I continuously felt shit saying no. All of these things make me count my blessings all the more.
So! Anyway lets get back to the lighter parts of the trip. Got a few bargains in the Russian Markets, went to a few funky places such as 'Elsewhere' bar, Java Cafe and even The FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) where the Irish fellas bought me dinner to cheer me up because my planned trip up the Mekong Delta was messed up when the tour company didn't pick me up on time. We also went to a lovely restaurant called 'Friends' that is very cute, gives great food and service and is an ex NGO project training street kids to chef or customer service. The staff either have 'Teacher' in red t-shirts or 'Student' in blue and it was so good we ate there twice. On my last night (the real last and not the last where I did'nt leave PP) the boys also bought a Mekong Delta ticket, which meant they hadn't got rid of me or me them, and we had a relatively quite one before the early start for the 3 day river trip...
Anyway a Thai friend of Andys, Decha turned up to take us for a few beers with his mates. The place we went to was actually a petrol station around the corner from Koh San, with tables all over the forecourt with little candles on the tables. Hmmmm. Anyway the beers turned into 'buckets' of Thai whiskey and Redbull, then we were drunk and didn't want to go home so ended up on a 'street bar' which was just some floor mats on the pavement and then some geezer would run off to get the alcohol for us. Ended up chatting away with the very charismatic and very Gay Decha, and various travellers, locals and tramps til 5am when I realised that it wasn't really worth sleeping before getting my bus. So the three of us ended up back in Towintow, rowdy as you like trying to pack my backpack between swigs of whiskey and shouting nonsense to Jason down the phone.
6.30 am and I leave Andrew and Decha in my bed watching My Name Is Earl on the DVD player, and grab me a cab back to Koh San which is 45 mins away. I fall asleep in the cab, catching flies, and the kind cabbie didn't rip me off at all. Just woke me at up on arrival and the fare was good. As I stagger into a McDonalds and order a Big Mac for breakfast I'm vaguely aware that I'm still pissed. Hey ho, I sit on my backpack on the street, stuffing my mouth with burger and wait for my bus. And wait. And wait. The bus was due at 8am and by 8.30 the shop where Id booked the ticket opened. The guy opening the shutters makes some calls and by 9am I'm walked, not to the big double decker airconned-with-toilet-bus that I'd booked, but to a 10 seater mini van stuffed with people, the majority of which, were Polish. I plop myself down, fix my sunnies on my face and proceed to suffer and feel shite.
We eventually come to a town stop where we have a toilet break and fill in our Cambodian Visa applications. I claim a chair on the pavement and marvel at a couple who have two huge backpacks on, plus other luggage attatched to the two PUSHCHAIRS with their children in. I make some comment of this to a guy sitting across from me and have a brief chat with Rob from Sunderland. On a visa run, he'd been living in Bangkok playing in a band and organising club nights. 24 years old, had been living in Leeds the previous six years so we exchanged the usual 'do you know, I know, do you go/work/live' conversations. He was one of the skinniest boys I've ever met, and actually had TWO pairs of tight fitting jeans on- in the baking heat. My God.
Anyway after the chats we had a 20 minute drive to the border, and then went through all of the usual border crossing palarva. Then we are led to our DOOM. I mean our 'new bus'. This thing was so shonky, it looked like something out of a 'Carry On Up The 3rd World Country' film. At around 13.30/14.00 we climb into this.. bus... and notice a) the lack of air con, b) how bloody cramped and tiny it is, and c) everything was covered in an orange dust. I reckon they took the chickens out of it before we got on. And then, for the next six hours or so bumped, rocked, and shook our way to Siem Reap. I was wedged in at the back, next to an open window and and a guy from Northern Ireland called Steve. Even though we were basically 'off roading' in this bloody bus, I still managed to sleep some of the way due to total hungover exhaustion. To underline how bad this road was, we arrived in the dark at about 9pm and the distance covered was....150 km. I mean what the hell?
Theres a conspiracy theory regarding this road actually. They say the only airline who flys direct from Bangkok to Siem Reap pays the Cambodian government NOT to fix it up so that they can make flying there a more attractive proposition. It seriously was one of the worst roads in Cambodia, and considering the crossing to Bangkok is one of the their MAJOR checkpoints, I'm willing to believe this is true.
Anyway, I grab a room and look in the bathroom mirror and think 'Wow Les, how tanned are you?' and then get in the shower to lose all of my ORANGE tan in the shower. Everything on that bus had come out orange, and sitting near the window had turned me into an Oompahlumpah. Sigh.
That night I meet Steves two travelling pals, Kev and Fop and resolve to follow them about for the next two weeks ;) The next morning me and 'the lads' hire bikes and head off to the temples. We actually hit Angkor Wat first- the main event of several Wats- and after parking our bikes and wading through the multitude of beautiful little hawker street children we take in the scene. Well. It was really, really beautiful. 11,000 years old and so... imposing. Took a million pics and let Fop- the human guide book, talk us through the histories. Angkor Wat was the capital of Cambodia and the Angkor people between the 9th and 13th centuries and to cut n' paste from the Irish fellas blog (he was a machine!!):
"Cambodian devaraja (God-Kings) strove to better their ancestors in size, scale and symmetry, culminating in the world's largest religious building Angkor Wat. To put this in perspective, at this time the Angkor capital boasted a city of over a million people while London had a population of only 50,000." *Fopstevekev 2006
Also I should mention that Fop, whose about 30 years old, had never left the UK until 5 weeks previous. His first city abroad was Bangkok and his second city Cambodia. Talk about diving straight in hahaha!
Anyway after lunch, and the usual mobbing of children (helllo ladyeee you by my postcardstenforonedollar helloooooyoubuymyheadscarvesforonedollaaaar) we headed to Bayon Wat til sundown, which was smaller and had rather funky face carvings all over it. On the way I'm accosted by a yound Cambodian school boy of about 14 on his bike. He cycles next to me smiling away. They all smile actually, so friendly, strangers on bikes, children, adults etc. I guess tourism is still so comparatively new here that they welcome the 'Barang' (not hostile like some Thai are to farang). Anyway he asks me how old I am. I say 28. He looks shocked (I'll take that as a compliment) and when I ask his he says 19. My eye. Ah bless. Also saw some families of wild monkeys who seemed totally unconcerned with us.
Then just before home Steves bike first cannot be unlocked because the key snapped in the lock. Then once unlocked (joint effort of us, Cambodian security and finally, a pair of pliers) we head on up the path where his back tire then blows. I turn around to see Steve kicking his bike and generally loosing his rag, so cycle off to get him a tuk tuk so he can get back and have a row about it. Kev goes with him (*joke, how do you get two Irish fellas and two bikes in a tuk tuk. answer...) and Fop and myself have an uneasy ride back to the guesthouse in the dark. This was our first introduction to Cambodian traffic but will get to that soon enough. That night I begin to follow Jo-from-the-outbacks Guide to Cambodia and we eat in a place called the Red Piano before bumping into a couple of girls from the deathbus, Australian Kate and Hongkong Chinese Ariel. We all end up more than merry in Siem Reaps loudest bar dancing to Indie tunes til 5am. Some of them even carry on getting plastered down by the river but I crashed and burned.
In the end Kev and Steve slept the day away whilst Fop and myself dutifully tuktuked around the remaining Wats, but to be fair we'd seen the best of them and we were very hot and hungover. Again. Still the last one we saw was very Lara Croft- jungle crawling all over it and I got some very cool photos. That night I decided to move guesthouse. The aussie girl Kate was staying in a room on her own cos the Hongkong girl had left- her guesthouse was nicer and more central so I moved seeing as I was in a room on my own (and it felt a bit dodge). Then the 3 Irish amigos followed cos Fop said when he got back to his room someone had been in it and also left a key in the door. Another dodgy story is one of the other two, Kev, was wandering back from the river pissed and he got lost and apparently got a gun pointed in his face by some big black woman??? He just said he was lost and wanted to find D&D guest house, and she was like 'Ohhh, D-an-Deee okay' and left him alone?! Anyway that night we headed to the main strip and bumped into another Irish guy and an American we'd met on the bus here so they came with us for dinner. Had THE BEST Indian curry since that one Id had in New Zealand!!! They even sold Chapaitis - it was called Karma Sutra and I got so full so quickly- just not used to that kind of food anymore :( Still was so nice (I had a dopiaza) and tried to have one beer after it but gave it away and went to bed with my book cos was knackered.
Anyway staying an extra day in Siem Reap was more a decision of physical exhaustion. Really I should have moved on but the extra day meant a trip to the Landmine Museum. This place was founded by a guy called Aki Ra, who is ex Khymer Rouge and laid many landmines himself during the 70's. Then he fought against them when he was captured by the Vietnamese. Anyway knowing the mess he was a part of, he now dedicates his life to clearing the mines and to the schooling of children who have been victims of landmines. One such victim was our guide, Hak, who lost his brother and sister, and his own leg at the age of eight. Now a very handsome softly spoken 19 year old, he took us around the shack/museum telling us how various bombs were made (and by whom; such as China, Germany, and chiefly America) and showing us them. Old bazookas, Bouncing Bettys, handgrenades, the place is full of demined shells,B52 bullets- the lot, are piled up for inspection. And children all playing with them. This museum was originally shut down and the artifacts confiscated by the Cambodian government so that they could open their own museum. They eventually had to return these and let Ra open again due to, I presume, bad publicity. Aki Ra clears his mines with a pocket mine and a stick. This is still the most effective method to date.
Eventually we (that is me, the lads and aussie Kate) get a boat to Phnom Phen. It was a really hot and sunny and was a whole day taking in the riverside scenes. Lovely. Then as we dock in PP and go to get our bags I rest my hand on the boats engine chimney and burn my hand. Cue stifled crying and frantic search for ice. In the end the five of us grab lunch in the restaurant immediately next to the dock so I can sit with some ice and then we grab two tuk tuks to the lakeside where we think we've found a nice guesthouse. Largely due to my fault we end up staying in a place that has a nice verandah and the worst room I've stayed in on my whole epic trip. Hot, stuffy, dodgy bedding, and a cupboard with a sink, toilet and shower in it. And the sinks plumbing was missing- the plughole led to nothing so it spattered straight down to the shower plug in the floor. And also SOMETHING RAN ACROSS ME IN THE NIGHT!!! I leapt off my bed to see some shadow run off the bed and under. Urrghh, I'm hoping it was a gecko. Thats all I'm saying. The next morning we tried to book into the relatively swanky Boddhi Tree guesthouse that is opposite the Genocide Museum but it was full so ended up in place called Spring Guesthouse which was a palace compared with Floating Guesthouse. That should have been 'Floater' guesthouse really.
So on a more sombre note we head to Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. Woah this place was grim. I know you will think 'Duh, of course its grim, its a genocide museum' but this isn't even quite like when I visited Austwitz, because it's presentation is so naked. Toul Sleng, or 'S-21' used to be a secondary school. Then when Pol Pot and the Khymer Rough took control in 1975 they turned it into their premier prison and torture facility. The place, as best as it can be, has been left as it was found. There are black brown marks and flecks on the staircase walls that can be taken has blood splatters. There are dark stained patches on the coffee and cream checkered floor tiles that run throughout the 'school'. 20,000 people were detained here over a three year period. 7 people survived. We watched a video that told the story of one female inmate, and her autobiography from 1970 onwards. Even before the KR took control, she had suffered rape at the hands of the previous government. The saddest part of her story was that the day she was incarcerated, she never even knew her husband was brought in the same day. She was tortured until confession after confession were dragged out of her (all of course, false) by children aged between 10 and 15 years of age and then both she and her husband were executed on the same day. And they never knew. Aside from the recorded 20'000 people (all photographed, documented, then tortured over a prolonged period of time and then, at last, bludgeoned to death) there were also the children of the inmates, numbered at approximately 2,000, who were also bludgeoned to death.
The museum has large boards with photo after photo of inmates- terrified looking men, women and beautiful children. It has cabinets with torture instruments on display, and glass fronted book shelves filled with human skulls. There is art work from one of the seven who survived of the tortures that occurred at the hands of children instructed by the devil Pol Pot himself. There are the cells. The grimmest of all were the torture rooms. 14 rooms in one of the buildings have been kept spartan save for one bed frame in each room. It was here when the the KR fled S-21 that 14 people were discovered still strapped to the steel, mattress-less beds, dead. The rooms have been scrubbed but you can still see the dark stains on the cream coloured tiles below the bed. In each room there is a black and white photograph of the bodies as they were found and you can see that the beds in front of you are the beds that are in the photograph. These 14 bodies, one of which was a woman, were given a special burial plot within the grounds of s-21, 14 white, unmarked sarcoghacus. Which is more than can be said for the dead of the Killing Fields...
We went to the Killing Fields the next day. 5 of us squeezed into a tuk tuk that had to cover terrain almost as bad as our bus trip. And let me tell you something about travel in Cambodia, and in particular Phnom Phen. IT IS CRAZY. We were heading down a main road, a busy main road a bit like a dual carriageway when we see a car driving towards us. I mean just slicing up the traffic on the wrong side of the road and the traffic going the right way weaving around it. I swear we all just sat there open mouthed. It seems if you need to pull out of a side street to the opposite road, then instead of driving to the middle and then turning, instead you just drive up the wrong way, looking apologetic but determined until you slowly veer off to the correct side! And this happens all the time!!! And sometimes its big trucks heading towards you! And sometimes its YOUR TUK TUK DRIVER who decides to take a trip up the road the wrong way so you have all the traffic coming at you and very little to protect you. Seriously it was mental.
So five of us were wedged into a tuktuk with 'Bo' our driver at the helm. I think we even got as fast as 20 miles an hour at one point (or the traffic may have been going faster the other way) and then the main road to the fields turned into mud. Bo persevered but eventually we had to get out so that he could get himself out of it. We get there and razz past a lot of tour buses (mainly Japanese tourists) who stare at us as if we are mad and indeed really tightfisted to have so many squeezed into one tin can on wheels. We finish our Phnom Phen morbid-a-thon on a very warm and peaceful day, strolling past the death pits that have now more or less healed over with green grasses. It was the crater shapes in the land, as much as the sign posts next to them, that reminded me I was walking across land that had seen one of the most evil atrocites to man, woman, and child kind. Nine thousand bodies were exhumed and then just as many in mass graves have been left in peace. The Charnel is the weirdest and bluntest tribute to the dead found on these lands. A temple made of glass, standing maybe about 60 feet high with four large glass walls and doors, with white pillars to keep it together- and it's filled to the top with human skulls. And you can walk in and around it and be altogether far to close to the subject matter. I wondered why they hadn't buried these skulls? Blessed them for the families?
What I do know is Cambodia SOLD the Killing Fields to the Japanese in 2005. I have heard that the Japanese also own the Angkor Wat heritage site. So profits of Camboidas greatest achievement and greatest atrocity do not even directly benefit this country. Cambodia is one of the poorest I have ever visited. There is a lot of begging. In a riverside cafe in PP the Irish boys were heard chatting and this old couple (in their 60's) were also from Ireland. While we chatted a street girl of about 8 came in and asked if she could finished their meals and then proceeded to eat the blokes left over salad and chips- which put his wife off her pasta because it was so sad. Then the girl polished off the spag bol- all the time looking over her shoulder. She must have been starving. I've never seen that before. Everyone begs. You get off a tuk tuk or bike and a cap is shoved in your face by an old man with one leg- or burnt face - or one eye, begging for a dollar for some 'yum'. Or its a street kid (5 street kids) with a baby tied to her front. Its at once infuriating and heartbreaking. You cant give to all- and say no to one, really you have to say no to all and it wore me down as I continuously felt shit saying no. All of these things make me count my blessings all the more.
So! Anyway lets get back to the lighter parts of the trip. Got a few bargains in the Russian Markets, went to a few funky places such as 'Elsewhere' bar, Java Cafe and even The FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) where the Irish fellas bought me dinner to cheer me up because my planned trip up the Mekong Delta was messed up when the tour company didn't pick me up on time. We also went to a lovely restaurant called 'Friends' that is very cute, gives great food and service and is an ex NGO project training street kids to chef or customer service. The staff either have 'Teacher' in red t-shirts or 'Student' in blue and it was so good we ate there twice. On my last night (the real last and not the last where I did'nt leave PP) the boys also bought a Mekong Delta ticket, which meant they hadn't got rid of me or me them, and we had a relatively quite one before the early start for the 3 day river trip...
posted by LesAlanos @ 9:19 PM
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