August 16, 2007

Phnom Penh (CAMBODIA)

Phnom Penh's Killing Fields, Human Skulls, and Distasteful Entrepreneurship

Between getting up at 6am for a Cambodia-bound bus and watching the 3am Arsenal match last night, sleep was fairly hard to come by. I was not too worried because I had a long bus-ride ahead of me to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. It was only two hours from Saigon to the Vietnam-Cambodia border, but after an hour at immigration we hit the Cambodia roads, which are anything but. Rather, the main stretch was a dirt track pockmarked with divots that made sleep impossible to come by on the bouncing bus. Fortunately, there were a group of English law students sitting behind me and chatting with them sped the time by.

The view along the road was pure countryside as Cambodia sees few visitors, and several decades ago no one in the world would imagine visiting a place like this (I will highlight the horrific tragedies later during this trip). Here are some photos I took from the bus:

I arrived in Phnom Penh at half past one, and before I could even alight from the bus there was a pack of touts banging the bus window trying to get my attention. All wanted me to take their tuk-tuk or moto so they could receive commission from a hostel they work with, but I was not about to fall for such nonsense. Nevertheless, pushing through them was a real hassle as they followed me for 100m as I searched out an ATM. There was an Irish guy I met en route who was also looking for accommodation., and after we withdrew money from an ATM - where I received actual US dollars - we each hopped on the back of a motorbike and made our way to a backpacker's district called Boeng Kak, which is located in a scummy section of the city overlooking a fly-infested lake. Accommodation was decidedly cheap, and we ended up with our own room for only $2USD/person.

I was on a tight schedule, so immediately after checking in I hired a moto driver to take me to the Myanmar embassy in town where I applied for my visa. The $20USD charge was far better than most other countries, which charge $200USD to see the least-traveled-to country in Southeast Asia. The only downside is it would take 24 hours to process the visa, so I would be stuck in Phnom Penh for an extra day and a half.

Traveling around in Phnom Penh is actually quite dangerous and it has been constantly re-iterated that I should be extremely careful walking the streets alone - especially at night. While the odds are probably fairly good that I would be OK (I usually have my backpack across my chest and keep my wits about me), there are recurring examples of theft and robbery. Plus, with so many guns left over the in country (knives are still sold on all the streets) I was serious about heading the warnings. I have heard from other people who have traveled through here in the past that ten years ago one would not ever dare to even visit the city, but there have since been smalls efforts to make things better.

After leaving the Myanmar embassy I had my moto driver take me to the Cheung-Ek Killing Fields, which is where the murderous Khmer Rouge disposed of over 10,000 bodies in mass graves. This is the closest I have ever come to seeing the after-effects of mass genocide as one out of every five Cambodians were killed during this period (conservative estimations leave the total number somewhere between two and three million people who died over the course of the four year campaign). The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, targeted everyone with an education (doctors, teachers, those who had traveled or were bilingual, etc) as well as the well-off and their entire family.

The first structure I came across after passing through the ticketing office was the ornamental building shown to the left. Although it looks inconspicuous enough from the outside, climbing up the steps and looking inside is an unforgettable experience. On display were 20 or so shelves stacked with human skulls that were unearthed from the surrounding mass graves. The corresponding sign outside read that the idea was for the the dead to never be forgotten.

I was the only one visiting at the time, so I spent far longer than I expected walking in circles inside as I looked at the various skulls. I did not feel creeped out by the human skulls because all I could think of was how these were real people who were tortured and then executed or buried alive. All of this made the skulls into a different kind of entity altogether; they were more like the souls of people than something to be feared. Below are some pictures that show the abuse the people were subjected to (crushed skulls and puncture wounds).

After heading back to my lakeside hostel for a shower, I went out with my Irish roommate for the night. Over dinner he told me about how he visited a shooting range to fire off rounds of an AK-47 (an activity I had no interest in whatsoever despite my driver's best efforts to persuade me into going). He said that when he arrived he was given a menu that looked like the following:

Weapon's For Your Pleasure

Hand gun: $15

AK-47: $25

Grenade: $25

M16: $35

M6 (Rambo's gun): $75

Bazooka: $200

When I say I am not interested in such activities there are a few reasons. Firstly, after visiting Vietnam and the Killing Fields where I saw all the horrors these weapons caused I would get no pleasure from firing them. The weapons for hire are all former military weapons (many of which date back to the Khmer Rouge), but have since entered the black market as a way for the military to make money on the side. However, the most influential reason I am against it is because live animals are sacrificed on request and for a little extra money. For example, Tom said the owners offered to bring the bazooka into a firing field with cows in the distance or to release chickens when Tom tried firing the AK-47 (both of which he refused). That any sicko would shoot a cow with a bazooka is truly despicable, in my mind.

I cannot imagine using it on a human would be any better.