Wow, it's really been a while since I've posted an update. I need to write about Cambodia. It's hard to know where to start when talking about a country that is so complex. Where you physically and emotionally experience immense extremes. It's beautiful and dark at the sametime. I guess I've been procrastinating a little because I want to do it justice without going into every grim and wonderful detail. So I'll try to keep it brief!
If Vietnam is the fast lane, Cambodia is the slow one. Everything moves at a slower pace here. It's less developed which is nice (for tourists), there are less people which means less traffic and all round just less aggressive. While our introduction was overwhelming and it taking a couple of days to get adjusted and get a bit of an understanding of why Cambodia is the way it is, I really loved it here.
We spent the first couple of days in Phnom Penh, where we started to learn about Cambodia's horrific history. We visited the Tuol Sleng Museum (S-21) and The Killing Fields. I really didn't know anything about Cambodia's history before I got here. I had heard the name Pol Pot before, S-21 and the Killing Fields but I had no idea of what actually went on here. I'm not going to get into a huge history lesson here but here's the "Coles Notes" version or Lonely Planet version of what happened (feel free to skip past...):
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During the late 1960s, Cambodia was sucked into the Vietnam conflict. The US secretely began carpet bombing suspected communist base camps in Cambodia, and shortly after the 1970 coup, American and South Vietnamese troops invaded the country to root out Vietnamese communist forces. They failed, and only pushed Cambodia's communists (the Khmer Rouge) and their allies deep into Cambodia's interior. Savage fighting soon engulfed the entire coutnry, ending only when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975, two weeks before the fall of Saigaon [and two weeks before I was born].
After taking Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot's leadership, implemented one of the most bloody revolutions the world has ever seen. It was 'Year Zero', money was abolished, cities abandoned and Cambodia transformed into a Maoist, peasant-dominated, agrarian cooperative.
During the next four years, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, including the vast majority of the country's educated people, were relocated to the countryside, tortured to death or executed. Thousands of people who spoke foreign languages, wore spectacles were branded as 'parasites' and systematically killed. Hundreds of thousands more died of mistreatment, malnutrition and disease. About two million Cambodians [1/4 of the population] died between 1975 and 1979 as a direct result of the policies of the Khmer Rouge.
For a gripping true story of what it was like during this time, read "First they Killed my Father."
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Thinking about this gives me the chills and knowing that it happened in my lifetime makes my heart go out to a country and its people who essentially had to start all over 35 short years ago (and I'm not just saying short because I'm turning 35 soon, okay maybe I am). A majority of the educated were executed - how do you even start to rebuild? Today, over 40% of the population is under the age of 15! And with practically everything abolished, they really had to start from nothing. It's still really apart of them and everyone has a story. Our tour guide at S-21 had scars from being shot in the leg. She used chilis to clean her wounds. Can you imagine?!
And while they have been through so much, a life unimaginable to you and me, and while there is still a dark shadow of desparation, they are so lovely and kind and seemingly hopeful, really looking to rebuild. A lot of young Cambodians I met are going to post secondary school learning to speak English and learn about tourism - which seems to be their future.
Cambodia (and Laos) is following in Thailand's footsteps, toursim is taking over here. They say that tourism got away from the the Thais and it has really changed the country and not for the better. A lot of their (Thailand) cultural heritage is now a spectacle for tourists, for example, the Hmong Villages in the North. You can take a tour that takes you through the villages to see how they live. While on the surface it sounds like a great learning experience (and yes, I did this the last time I was in Thailand), the lives of the Hmong are literally put on display. I equate it to going to the zoo and seeing how the animals live - so unatural, so intrusive... so wrong. But there's a part of me that still wants to see it and other things like it. So, the longer I'm in these countries the more it makes me think about how do you develop tourism while preserving and being respectful of the existing culture and environment and still be able to enjoy local cultural experience. And how do you develop and not just become another Westernized country? "Same same but different?"
Life is uncomplicated here. Simple. People don't have much, but they have each other and there seems to be a huge sense of community. Everyone is social. Even strangers seem to strike up natural conversations. There's not much else to do here so the art of socializing and conversation has not be lost on them as it seems to becoming lost in Western countries with people spending so much more of their time on the computer.
Phnom Penh:
What can I say, this place was a bit of a shithole. Our introduction turned us off of staying there too long. So we stayed there just long enough to see the important stuff. While we were only there for a short period of time, it was a huge learning curve about the Cambodian history.
We went to the S-21 prison (which used to be a high school) and The Killing Fields, where some of the worst torture and executions happened in the country (and some of the worst in history). The S-21 prison was raw. You could still see blood stains on the floor, on the walls and even on the ceiling. The Khmer Rouge kept really good documentation of everything they did so it's really an in-your-face lesson of what went on here - nothing has been edited. "Mug shots" of Khmer Rouge cadres and their prisoners line the halls. Everyone numbered to keep track. Some of their numbers were pinned to them with a safety pin through the flesh of their necks.
The Killing Fields themselves are not not much to look at now but knowing what went on here was overwheming. Mass graves where they found hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, some decapitated. Men, women and children. There's a "killing tree" where they used to smash babies against to kill them. While I didn't see the marks myself, I'm told that you can see the babies' scars on the tree. There are pieces of bones littered around, right in the open, where you could touch them. It's all very in-your-face. From one tree they hung a speaker that played music really loudly so that neighbouring villages wouldn't hear the moans and groans of the victims. And they used some sort of solution to pour over the dead bodies, one to keep the smell in control and to finish off those who may have been buried alive. A 17 tiered monument containing the skulls and bones of people who parished was built in rememberance.
Phnom Phenh was a bit of a sad eye opener but thankfully didn't set the tone for the rest of Cambodia. We did actually have some fun there... i.e. got a Dr. Fish foot massage where you stick your feet in a pool of fish and they eat the dead skin off your feet! Sounds disgusting, I know. And I wasn't going to do at first, but you got a free beer, so why not. It's not for those with overly sensitive. We sat there having our free beer and watched some of the familiar street kids watch the Michael Jackson movie "This is It" and try out some of their own moves. Awesome.
