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| Author : sue_and_nathan | Diary name : yearaway | ||
| 2 Jun 2001 : Phnom Penh - Cambodia | |||
| Somphal and Paul show us the sights | |||
| We were somewhat cautious as we arrived in Phnom Penh because of all the warnings in the guidebooks about armed robberies of tourists. We were expecting to have to eat evening meals in our hotel because it was too dangerous to venture out after dark. We're not saying that those things don't happen in Phnom Penh, but never once did we feel unsafe there. The first thing that struck us about Cambodia was how friendly the Khymer people are. They always stare at you with a straight face and then you smile at them and they give you a huge beam back. The other thing we noticed was the amount of laughter. The people seem to be laughing all the time and not just little chuckles, but big belly-laughs! The other striking thing is the poverty. It is like nothing we had seen before. There are huge numbers of beggars and people are obviously struggling to make a buck wherever you go. Then there are the amputees. You read about the landmine victims of Cambodia, but nothing can prepare you for the reality and the sheer number of amputees. We hired a moped with a driver each to take us around the city. The first guy who approached us had a huge smile and spoke excellent English, which he later told us that he'd 'learnt on the street' and not from a teacher, so we hired him. He was called Somphal and his mate that took Nathan was Paul. Our first stop was the famous Tuol Sleng, S-21, which was originally a school but which the Khymer Rouge had turned into a prison. Tuol Sleng was like no ordinary prison though - no one survived this place. Between 1975 and 1979, when the Khymer Rouge held power, about 17,000 people were bought here to be interrogated. They were then either driven or taken by boat to an extermination camp nearby called Choeung Ek or, as we know it, the Killing Fields. Only seven people were found alive when the prison was liberated. The prison has been left in the same state as it was found in 1979, blood stains and all. The walls are lined with photos of the victims - all ages, all shapes and sizes, a few black eyes and smashed faces, some looked petrified, some even smiled, but the majority were expressionless, devoid of that lovely Khymer smile. It made you wonder whether they knew what lay before them. Our guide at the museum told us at the end of the tour that she had been 13 when the Khmer Rouge had taken her parents away. We heard this sort of story repeated many times during our stay in Cambodia. We headed out to the killing fields on the most awfully potholed road. There is a 17 storey memorial to the victims of the Khymer Rouge. 17 storeys of human skulls all placed in groups according to their age and sex - many of the skulls smashed as the Khymer Rouge killed with bamboo sticks rather than bullets to save money. Even babies were killed, they were smashed against trees. We walked around the monument where there are a number of pits where the bodies were dumped. There are even still pieces of bone everywhere. Scratch the soil a little and it reveals bits of clothing, rope, electric wire and even a piece of black cloth - the black of the Khymer Rouge uniforms. And this happened in my lifetime! The man who showed us around was 16 when his parents were taken by the KR. Luckily, he was away from the village that day. Who did the KR kill? Anyone they believed to be an enemy of the movement, anyone who knew too much (the guards at Tuol Sleng were regularly slaughtered, so the secret of what was happening there wouldn't get out), teachers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, anyone with an education, anyone who had been denounced by their neighbours... In 1975 Pol Pot turned back the clock in Cambodia, burning books, destroying cars, clocks, machinery, outlawing money. They call it 'Year Zero' here. It's amazing how far they've come since then. It is estimated that during the 4 years 20-30% of the population was massacred, approximately 3 million people. A final comment about the KR. The leaders were never bought to justice, many sympathisers run the country now and even though in the West we have been told that Pol Pot is dead, the majority of the people don't believe that at all. The rest of our time in Phnom Penh was a lot lighter than this. We were taken one evening to a place that Somphal called 'the sunset place'. There were a number of stilt houses here with cafes in them, no ordinary cafes though as these had hammocks instead of chairs. So we swung in our hammocks, drinking coconut, chewing corn and watching the sunset over the lotus filled marshes below. One final word about Somphal our moto driver. He said he'd like to live in London because he thinks making money is easy there. I think he's right as people have to work hard here to earn very little at the end of the day. I told him that he wouldn't like London because people will think he's crazy as he smiles so much!! | |||