Week 8: Cambodia

Amos in front of the National Museum in Phnom Penh

In Week 8, we planned to invade Cambodia by taking a bus from Southern Laos all the way down to the capital city, Phnom Penh. However, the only people who travel this route are tourists, so we were extremely worried about fraud at the rural border crossing. Just three days before we came, some of Emmy's friends from Indonesia had been scammed $25 apiece on this ride. The Laotian buses dropped them at the border, and no connecting bus ever appeared on the Cambodian side to finish their 10-hour journey to Phnom Penh-- they were forced to buy a new ticket. So we decided to buy a $4 bus ticket just to the border, and then find our own transportation on the Cambodian side. We became even more concerned at the border, where our passports were gruffly stamped by a Cambodian official named "Ouch Mean." Once on the Cambodian side, the Phnom Penh-bound tourists did not find the "VIP bus" they had booked, with its highly anticipated plush seating and heavenly air-conditioning. In its place, fast-talking Cambodians herded a gaggle of angry tourists onto 12-passenger vans cramped with 14 oversized foreigners. Clearly afraid of backlash from the Englishman downing day-old whisky, the drivers took off hurriedly without checking our tickets. In short, we ended up accidentally scamming the scammers, paying $4 each for an (albeit uncomfortable) 14-hour bus ride to Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh was a strange capital city. Its two greatest tourist attractions were a torture center and a death camp from the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer) genocide of 1975-79. In 1970, the US had installed a military dictatorship in place of the opportunistic Prince Sihanouk because he got along too well with the Vietnamese communists next door. Dethroned Prince Sihanouk then roused rural Cambodians to join his new friends Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to overthrow the military government. As the government's support crumbled, the Khmer Rouge basically walked into Phnom Penh, locked poor Sihanouk in the Royal Palace, and evacuated the entire city of Phnom Penh. Unlike the Holocaust and other 20th Century genocides in Turkey, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge (mostly 12-year-olds toting AK-47s) attempted to exterminate not a particular ethnic or religious group, but ALL EDUCATED CAMBODIANS. (Since "educated Cambodians" were just random members of the Cambodian population and not distinguishable by any religious or ethnic criterion, Cambodia's tragedy technically isn't a genocide under international law!)

The first of the somber tourist attractions is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a high school that the Khmer Rouge converted into the S-21 torture chambers after they emptied the city. The second and more famous are the Killing Fields of Choeng Ek. The Khmer Rouge blasted music there to mask the cries of the dying, since there were few gunshots. Slightly less sophisticated than the Nazis' gas chambers or the Rwandans' machetes, the Khmer Rouge bludgeoned heads with bamboo clubs, sliced necks with razor-sharp palm leaves, and simply swung babies against "the Killing Tree." This genocide had a unique totalitarian flavor, since the entire population was forced into labor camps (to farm rice that was then exported to buy the starving child soldiers new weapons), all families were separated, and the paranoid leadership frequently executed its own commanders and executioners. No-one was safe, except for "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, who with his degree from the Sorbonne in Paris ironically topped the list of Cambodian intellectuals. For the rest of the trip, we harbored all kinds of silent questions for every person over the age of 40, who must all have suffered and perhaps committed terrible atrocities while Cambodia's entire population suffered in labor camps and almost half of the population died.

Tuol Sleng, a high school turned torture prison during the 4-year reign of the Khmer Rouge.

Prison cells inside what used to be classrooms

One of the many torture chambers in Tuol Sleng.

Amos stands next to shackles that were used to keep the prisons from escaping or interacting with each other.

The Khmer Rouge turned the school's climbing bar into a torture device. They hung prisoners by their feet and dipped their heads into pots of pesticide.

The Choeung Ek Killing Field, one of the many killing fields in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. More than 17,000 people were killed at this site. Bodies have been exhumed from about a third of the mass graves (those are the large pits in the photo) while the rest still remain buried. Human bones and clothes still litter the site.

Over 5,000 human skulls are on display in a glass stupa in the center of the Choeung Ek Killing Field. Many of the skulls were cracked or smashed in because the killers preferred to club or axe prisoners to death rather than waste their precious bullets.

The Khmer Rouge tried to destroy all evidence of Cambodia's ancient heritage in order to restart history at "Year Zero", but Angkor Wat (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) survived their dynamite to become an enormous tourist attraction. This mostly 11th-Century complex of temples was built by King Jayavarman VII-- one temple for him, one for his mother, then his father, then aunts, uncles, etc. We spent three days touring temples with intricate carvings, eerie statues, and massive moats, but our favorite part was how the forest had overtaken the temples after they were abandoned in the 15th Century. Behemoth tree roots oozed through solid rock like revolting alien tentacles. Our favorite temple was Beng Mealea, the poor step-sister of majestic, clean-cut Angkor Wat that has been left to rot in the jungle. Unfortunately, Beng Mealea's dense jungle overcoat ruined most of our photographs. So you will have to fly to Cambodia on your own to get, as our Lonely Planet guidebook says, "the ultimate Indiana Jones experience."

We closed out Week 8 by heading back to Phnom Penh and touring a nearly deserted zoo for animals rescued from poachers' cages and traps. If you've never heard of a "sunbear" before, we promise it's real.

Emmy decided to sample a local specialty on our bus ride back to Phnom Penh.

Doesn't it look like a child in a bear costume? We promise it's real.

Don't expect a Week 9 because we're flying back to the US after quick stopovers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Singapore, Singapore. We'll restart in September when we arrive in Kunming, China to teach English. On to the pictures!

The Mother Temple: Angkor Wat

Our helicopter view of Angkor Wat!

...just kidding, it's only a local sculptor's model of the giant temple.

Beng Mealea: The overgrown version of Angkor Wat

Not only is the jungle overtaking Beng Mealea -- termites are too.

Bayon Temple: the temple of 216 giant faces

Ta Prohm, one of the temples that Jayavarman dedicated to his parents. The tree roots looked like alien tentacles. If you've made it this far following our blog, these pictures are your reward. Thanks for reading!