More Cambodia

April 21, 2008

I took a little while to relax in Siem Reap before moving on. I’d gotten a rash from the heat in Kanchanaburi, and was trying to get that cleared up before I moved on. The heat and humidity really doesn’t agree with me, though I’ve been careful enough to not have any serious problems. I got the VIP bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. The road was paved the whole way, and it was a nice air-conditioned bus, so it was a comfortable trip. The guesthouse I was staying at in Siem Reap called ahead to get me a reservation at a place in Phnom Penh, so there was a driver there to pick me up when I arrived.

I booked a tour through my guesthouse that went to all the main sights around Phnom Penh for the next day. The morning was spent visiting the Choeng Ek killing fields and the S-21 prison. I remember when the movie The Killing Fields came out in the 1980s. It was the first I’d heard of the Khmer Rouge and what they had done to Cambodia. It’s still hard to grasp.

The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 after years of civil war. They were going to turn Cambodia into a peasant society. The cities were evacuated, and the people sent to the countryside to grow rice. Anyone who was educated was at risk of being executed. The ruling regime was very paranoid, and imprisoned and executed thousands of people. It’s estimated that up to 2 million people, almost a fourth of the population at that time, were killed before the Khmer Rouge was toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979.

This was only one of many fields that were used for mass burial of executed prisoners. I kept thinking of the Holocaust memorials that I have visited, and the slogan “Never again” that is so often used when referring to that genocide. But it keeps happening again and again in other parts of the world. It’s taken a while to be able to write about visiting these sites.

The S-21 prison is a former school that was turned into a prison. Almost everyone who was held here was executed, except for a few who were still alive when the Vietnamese army entered the city. Some were tortured for months first, some were killed almost immediately. It has been kept pretty much as it was when it was in use.

There was a spot under a stairwell where people had left messages with their feelings about what they had seen there. It was graffiti that did not feel like vandalism, but that people felt so strongly that they had to share those feelings.

The afternoon was less traumatic. We visited the Russian Market, which is a very large covered marketplace. Since my bag is getting full, and shipping is expensive, I didn’t buy anything but took the opportunity to find a nice air-conditioned restaurant for lunch.

Then we visited the Grand Palace, which contains several beautiful building, including a shrine with a silver floor.

There were a lot of restaurants and bars along the riverside, so I went there in the evening for dinner. One type of restaurant that I’ve seen quite a bit of around this part of the world is the “happy herbal pizza” place. And the herb referred to is not oregano.

I really liked Cambodia. The people there were some of the most friendly, outgoing people I’ve met while traveling. I had some fun conversations with teenagers that wanted to practice their English. Speaking English and Japanese or Chinese is the key to getting a good job in the tourism industry, and that’s where a lot of the well-paying jobs are now. I want to see more of the country, but between the heat and travel fatigue, I hit the wall in Phnom Penh, and took a flight back to Bangkok so I could head to the beach in southern Thailand.

Posted in Cambodia