Phnom Penh

I took an organized city tour of Phnom Penh today. Our morning started on a somber note, first visiting the Killing Fields, a complex of mass graves outside Phnom Penh where thousands were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Over the course of the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror, around 2 million people died, and the country is still recovering from this reign of terror and the ensuing civil war. It gives me new respect for the hardworking and generally friendly people of Cambodia and puts my earlier complaints about the city in perspective. One other thing to keep in mind about Phnom Penh is that it is a city that has been through hell - in the 1970s the population of the city first swelled as refugees flowed in from the countryside to avoid American bombing and then emptied out as the Pol Pot regime expelled everyone from the city, leaving it a virtual ghost town, and decimated the population, including killing all the educated elite. Today Phnom Penh is rising from those ashes, and while still a bit rough, is peaceful, stable, and growing.

As we walked around the Killing Fields, some of the paths had exposed bones coming out of the ground. Pretty gruesome. The image of skulls above comes from a display at the center of the Killing Fields that stacks some of the skulls that were collected from around the site. One of the more haunting moments came as I tried to photograph them - my camera has facial recognition software that automatically detects and focuses on faces when taking shots of people and as I put my camera up to take pictures of the skulls, the facial recognition activated around the skulls. It reminded me of the obvious but something that's easy to forget in the moment - that these each of these skulls once belonged to someone who was painfully tortured and killed at the hands of a genocidal regime.

I must say I didn't know much about the Khmer Rouge before coming here and read up a bit before my trip. It is a history that is both alarming and gripping.

We then went to the Genocide Museum, a former high school that had been transformed into the main detention center for political prisoners. The prisoners here were intellectuals and professors, former government officials, dissidents within the Pol Pot regime, their relatives and children, and a whole host of others. Here are the famous images that, along with the skulls above, capture the essence of the Cambodian genocide for most outsiders:




There were signs all around the monument advising us not to smile, as this is a very serious and somber subject. Stripped of its context though, the sign is a bit amusing:

Waterboarding has been discussed widely in the U.S. and it is perhaps unfortunate that it has become something of a late-night punchline, with few stopping to discuss or contemplate the seriousness of the act. It was in fact a signature torture technique of the Pol Pot regime and that was on display here at the Genocide Museum. The 1st image is one of many artistic renderings in the site depicting waterboarding and the 2nd is of a large pot that was routinely filled with filthy water and then used to waterboard political prisoners.
Later in the tour we visited the National Museum, Royal Palace, and Silver Pagoda. These were quite a contrast to the morning's tour of carnage and remind the visitor that the Khmer (Cambodian) civilization has a deep and rich heritage despite its recent troubled past.

I was joined on this tour (organized by our guesthouse) by two absolutely wonderful women from Spain - Aroa and Sonia. After our tour ended we chatted a bit over drinks and dinner, enjoying much lively conversation and sharing some travel tips. They were even so kind as to provide me with their map of Saigon and some extra mosquito repellent!

It's definitely true that one of the most rewarding parts of traveling is meeting other interesting travelers and I hope to continue that going forward.

Sonia, Aroa and I at the Silver Pagoda:


Yesterday I went to the mall here in Phnom Penh to buy some pants to cover my legs from the vicious mosquitoes (seen in the picture above). I felt a little guilty as most of the people at the mall did not have a great grasp of English (unlike those in any commercial context in Thailand) and were visibly frustrated as I failed to communicate effectively with them. Still, they were poised, polite and ever friendly and those that could speak English were helpful and humble in a way that I did not experience in Thailand.

One final, offbeat observation: At the mall, many (though to be fair, not most or even a majority of) people displayed a bit of anxiety at the tops and bottoms of escalators, apprehensively stepping on to them very deliberately, as if they might fall. I was first clued in to this quirk as I tried to get on an escalator and a crowd formed and backed up as a small group of Cambodian girls was scared to get on and just kind of stood at the bottom in fear. Some of them giggled and shrieked as they jumped on and some others backed out and took the stairs. Some adults also displayed some anxiety and stepped on to the escalators awkwardly as well. There are, as you can imagine, not many escalators around here...

Tomorrow I'm crossing into Vietnam and I'll be taking an organized boat tour of the Mekong Delta for the next three days. I'm not sure if I'll have decent Internet access or time to blog so you may not hear from me for a few days. Don't worry, I'm not dead (hopefully).