Scenes Around Phnom Penh



Very nice riverfront




              We thought that this was funny and that it made sense for both to be handled by one Minsitry.

I'm just going to nap in my hammock until someone comes to buy my fruit.

                         The end of the day, and classes, at the Buddhist Monk's University.

Meat market

This is the comedic tuk-tuk driver who almost got his ass kicked when he joked that Phyl is fat.

                                      Happy Chinese New Year to us!  Bring us a bucket of Kingdoms.

This city block was lined with barber chairs and people where getting haircuts.  We have no idea how the chairs are brought there each day, but we suspect it's on the back of a motorcycle.

Gotta pee while your driving? No problem, just pull to the side of the road.  This was on a 6 lane road.

We were never sure what these things are.  Presumably they are food, but if you shake them, they make good maracas.

How  many revolting flavors of potato chips can there be?

Food to go.  The whole restaurant goes.

Why would our Greek salad come with French dressing?

                                                           The produce department.

Another chicken takes a ride. Do you think they enjoy the wind in their faces like dogs do?

Come pick me up.  Yes we'll fit.  I only have 3 small bags.

This is a typical intersection.  No stop signs or lights; if they do exist, they are ignored. Everyone just goes very slowly and wiggles around each other. There is no horn blowing.

Adorable baby at Karma Cafe.

Views of rice fields on the road to Killing Fields.

Mekong River with vegetable garden growing along the bank.

Sidewalk department store.



Killing Fields

We returned to our tuk-tuk and tried to scrape the sorrow from our souls as we rode to the Killing Fields.

G- I simply cannot get over the way the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty. It is so in your face. The number of Lexus and Land Cruisers astounds me and the number of motorcycles carrying chickens, ducks, bananas, and every other commodity sharing the street with them is almost comical.

P- I hate the way that LEXUS and LAND CRUISER is written in big letters on the side of the cars. Is that really necessary.

G- It's just so gauche!

P- What the hell does that mean?

G- It's so Al Copeland. New money, lacking in class. It screams, I am wealthy, look at me.

P- How is that different from anyone driving around in vehicles that cost more than the average person earns in a year?

G- It's just worse when the name of the luxury sedan/SUV is printed on the side of the car.

P- Look! There goes another bike with chickens hanging off it!

G- Damn! I can't seem to get a good picture. Do you think they're dead or alive?

P – They must be dead!

G- Not necessarily. I think they're alive. Look at the woman on the back of that bike holding that rooster by the legs. He's alive.

P- How do you know?

G- He flapped his wings.

P- You sure that wasn't the wind from the moving bike?


G- No, it was when they stopped because that cart came out in front of them.

P- I wouldn't want to be an animal in this country.

G- They may fare better than our chickens. At least their whole lives are not spent in tiny cages.

P- True.

G- This dust is killing me! I'm getting the blue cloth to hold it over my face.

P- Let me use it too.




The dust was terrible, but we did enjoy the breeze and the sights. Cambodia simply takes the cake for shocking things we saw on a motorcycles. It's just over the top! We enjoyed passing the “shops” and seeing what and HOW things are displayed and sold. We passed several places that had wall to wall chairs (like lawn furniture chairs) facing a TV in the back. I guess people without TVs go there to watch important shows or soccer.

We arrived at the Killing Fields after about 30-45 minutes. By 1977 the S-21 prison and a nearby cemetery were filling up with the dead so the Khmer Rouge seized a Chinese cemetery, about 15 kilometers southwest of Phnom Penh, near the town of Choeung Ek. At the time this was a substantial enough distance that the area was far into the country. The site was equipped with electric power to facilitate night executions and to help guards complete paperwork of execution lists. Nearly all executions occurred at night, to hide the activities at the site, and just next to holes in the earth so that the bodies would drop directly into the shallow pits. Prisoners were executed immediately after arrival, making holding cells unnecessary. I am unsure why the prisoners were not executed at the prison and carried, dead, to Choeung Ek, except that it took less manpower to have the prisoners get into and out of the trucks of their own accord.

In 1980 the site was discovered and excavated. Pits of mass graves were found including one of over 100 headless bodies and one filled with only naked women and children. The tree next to this particular grave, still covered with bone and brain matter, was red with the blood of babies that had been held by their feet, their heads battered against the tree. Babies and children were killed so that there would be no one to grow up and avenge the deaths of their parents. Most were killed by blows to the head with very primitive implements such as hoes, ox cart axles, metal bars, and wooden clubs.

Many fell into the pits still alive and died from suffocation or were poisoned by the powders sprinkled on them to prevent the smell of decay. Approximately 9,000 bodies have been exhumed, but only about 1/3 of the graves have been unearthed. 17,000 people were killed there.

We walked around the fields viewing the various shallow graves. The dirt path through the holes in the earth still contain clothing, bones and teeth all of which rise to the surface during heavy rains. We walked carefully as we could see clothes, bones, and teeth just under or escaping from the dirt under our feet.

P- Be very careful where you walk. Look! There is a tooth.

G- This big white section here is a bone.

P- And there are so many pieces of clothing still coming out of the ground.

G- This is horrific, but somehow it is not as difficult to bear as the prison itself.

P- I was thinking the same thing. Maybe it's a sunny day and we're outside or because this setting is pretty.

G- I think it's because there are no photographs of the victims here. Looking into the eyes of those poor people haunted me. Seeing their bones is horrible, but doesn't quite penetrate my soul the way looking into their eyes did.

P- Yes, I think that's it.

Today Choeung Ek is a memorial, marked by an 11 level Buddhist stupa filled the with skulls and bones of the approximately 9,000 victims who were exhumed.



We left the Killing Fields in a somber mood and rode quietly back to Phnom Penh. We had our tuk-tuk driver drop us off at Karma Cafe where we had several beers and ultimately ate dinner. During the evening we met Allison & Brian, Americans who recently graduated from college and are now living and teaching English in China. They were on holiday for Tet Celebration (the Chinese New Year). We sat and spoke to them for several hours, got a little buzz on, and made plans to visit them when we were in China. We then went to the Lazy Gecko for chocolate cake and ice cream, a rare treat in Asia!!

We returned to our room, booked a hotel for the next night, and fell asleep.

S-21

I went down to get the hot water and, luckily, was recognized by the kitchen staff. This made the request easier as they remembered me from yesterday. After coffee, we grabbed 2 yogurts from the guesthouse and went outside to find San, the tuk-tuk driver who met us at the bus. We had arranged for him to pick us up this morning and take us to the Genocide Museum and the Killing Field. We had our souvenir box with us and instructed him to first take us to the post office. At the post office, a woman weighed the box, 7 kilograms (about 15 pounds) and told us it would be $197.00 US dollars to mail it home. No way in hell that was going to happen, so we took our box and left.

It was a short drive to the Genocide Museum, Tuol Sleng Prison (aka S-21). Once a school, the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison and interrogation/torture center. We paid our $2.00 to enter and walked to the first cell block, Building A (sitting perpendicular to the street), past the tombs of the last 14 people killed (shot) just seconds before the prison was liberated, their bodies found warm and bleeding. Inside the first room, previously a class room, was a metal frame bed. On top of the bed was a bar with chain for shackling the ankles and a metal box, which held a battery used for electric shock, and there were round bolts running down either side of the room (to chain prisoners to). This was a 3 story building and the first 2 floors were lined with torture rooms such as this, the 3rd floor consisting of 3 large holding areas. Men, women, and children were held and tortured.

G- This is so disturbing it makes me want to puke.

P- Why are the floor tiles so black?

G- Stained from blood.

P- OMG!

G- The photo on the wall is haunting. Look at the blood splatters on the ceiling.

P- These rooms are just so eerie. It's almost as if you can feel the pain of the people who were tortured here.

G- I cannot fathom how one human being can do this to another. It sickens me.

We walked through each room, each building, in utter silence, with a weight in our hearts that words cannot express. Building B's (parallel to the street, perpendicular to Building A) rooms were lined with photos of the 14,000 + men, women & children whose lives were cut short in this place. As each person was brought to the prison, they were numbered and photographed. Maybe the Khmer lunatics learned this cataloging system from the Nazis.


P- Looking into the eyes of these people is very disturbing.

G- You can clearly see the pain in their eyes; some looked resigned while others look defiant.

P- They look terrified.

G- That is surely to be expected. Look at these boys. He looks no older than 9 or 10.

P- I wonder if they knew what was about to happen to them.

G- I don't think they knew exactly, but they had to know it wasn't good.

P- And these people are here because they were teachers, or just educated, or just a wife or child of a teacher or educated person. You can understand that they'd imprison prior government officials who opposed the Khmer Rouge, but anyone with an education? That seems crazy.

G- Maybe it wasn't as easy to manipulate and control them, so they had to be killed.

P- But tortured? They tortured them to get them to confess to things they didn't even do.

G- No one said it was rational. Tyrants are seldom rational.

The 3rd floor of Building B contained an art exhibit by an artist who painted the portraits of some of the victims. They were large, with vibrant colors, and equally as haunting as the photographs. Building C (next to/parallel to Building B) was enclosed in barbed wire to keep the prisoners from escaping or jumping to their deaths to escape torture. The classrooms in this building contained shabbily constructed individual cells, a bolt in the floor next to the door to attach the leg iron/shackles. Those on the first 2 floors were made of bricks and those on the 3rd floor were made of wood. They were exceptionally narrow.

Building D (perpendicular to the street and Buildings B & C) housed the photos and stories of the 7 people who survived internment in S-21. Also, this building housed torture devices such as hoes, rakes, battery containers, whips, a press/vice for smashing various body parts, a large pot that the victim's head, his body hanging by the ankles from a chain, would be lowered into for drowning, and a large box that the victim's feet and hands would be shackled to as it was slowly filled with water to drown them.

G- So many people will disagree with me, but in my heart I don't believe people are basically good; that at their cores, most people are really good. I think every person on earth is good and bad and every day each person struggles to keep a balance, but most often bad wins.

P- I agree with that. There is good in everyone, but overall, people are only out for themselves.

G- There is too much evidence to prove that people chose bad over good. There is a plethora of examples in history, and you just have to read the paper everyday. I'm not talking about enormous levels like the Nazis or the Khmer Rouge, I'm just talking about everyday decisions that people make when no one is looking.

P- The list goes on and on. I totally get it. It is so much easier to be bad than good, that's why bad wins too often.

G- The even more terrifying part is how easy it is for a supremely evil SOB to get the mindless sheep to jump on his bandwagon and support him or carry out his evil plans. Case in point, Pol Pot. It does not take many people in charge to carry out a crazy, evil, murderous scheme when so many sheep are so willing just to follow along. As long as there is something, no matter how small, in it for them. Blech!



P- The craziness just keeps happening over and over. Let's go. I can't take anymore of this place.

Shut The Hell Up!!!!

We were rudely awakened at 6:30 or 7:00 am by people talking loudly and laughing in the hallway just outside our door. Phyl got up to see what was going on and discovered that it was 3 of the hotel staff doing laundry at the end of the hallway.



Royal Residence

 P- It's the fucking guesthouse workers!!!



G- OMG! These people are going to kill me. I know that all of Cambodia awakens between 5:00 – 6:00 am, but don't they get that everyone staying in this guesthouse is a TOURIST and we don't wake up with the chickens?!?!

P- It's unbelievable! Here, take your earplugs.

G- They are louder than the SOBs in the house next to Bun Kao. Thank Gawd I was not born in Cambodia.

We managed to fall back asleep, but then the construction on the building across the street began. This was clearly not going to be a peaceful place to stay. I went downstairs hoping to get 2 mugs of hot water for our instant coffee packets. After much explaining, the clerk had me follow him to the kitchen where I selected 2 mugs, drew an imaginary line on the side to indicate how high the water should be, then pointed to the kettle of water sitting on the floor on a burner that looked like an upside down terracotta flower pot with coal in it.

Just in time for brunch, and with our stomachs growling, we walked down the street to The Lazy Gecko. On the menu, as the special of the day, was roast beef sandwiches on toast or baguette with gravy. Apparently they cooked roast on Sunday. The place was clearly owned by foreigners. Our excitement was short lived. When we bit into the the roast beef, it was very tough. We gnawed what we could, but primarily ate bread, dipped in the gravy, which was very good. Everything in Asia is cooked quickly, so slow cooking a roast was clearly lost on the chef.

After lunch we walked along the river and headed to the Royal Palace. On the way we talked to a tuk-tuk driver who told us that the Palace was closed until 2:00 pm. We had quite a comical conversation with him because he was intent on taking us on a tour and we continually told him that we did not want to go anywhere except to the Royal Palace. All was going well until he told Phyl she was fat. Not in an ugly way, of course.  It seems that all Cambodians are so slender that weight is a new concept for them. I restrained her from beating the crap out of him and went to the Palace gate to confirm that he had told us the truth. We are so accustomed to the “temple closed” scams of Thailand, that we don't believe a word anyone says anymore. We sat along the river, and watched the boats go by, until the Palace reopened at 2:00.

After the Grand Palace in Thailand, this Palace was quite a disappointment. We wondered why we could only walk in the temple area and not near the palace, but then we learned that the Cambodian king still lives in the palace! Well that explains it. We did enjoy the courtyard around the Silver Pagoda, and the murals lining the gallery surrounding the yard. It was exceptionally hot and we stepped inside the silver elephant room just to cool off. Finally, we toured the elephant chairs used by one of the Ramas (king) and his queen.

P- You can totally tell that this is the capital and where all the rich Cambodians live.

G- Yes, I haven’t seen this many Lexus & Land Cruisers since I left California.

P- I never expected to see these cars in Cambodia. I even saw a Jag.

G- Me either, and the really weird part is that we can stand here and watch a motorcycle carrying bananas or chickens or baskets stopped at a light next to a Lexus. It's the dichotomy that is astounding.


P- And do they have to have Lexus or Land Cruiser written down the side of the car, in huge letters? Talk about over kill!



Hot and tired, we returned to the river for the breeze and walked along until we discovered the Karma Cafe. There we had several cold beers and dinner, and watched rush hour traffic, and an elephant, go by. After a few hours we took a tuk-tuk back to our guesthouse.