A Second Day of Amusing Myself While Waiting For My Vietnam Visa

I hadn't pushed myself on the Sunday. I could have visited the museum and the royal palace had I really been in a hurry, but with yet another day to kill in Phnom Penh, I was in no particular hurry. With Monday open before me I went to visit the museum and the palace, and a couple of other spots as well.

First up was the National Museum. It's quite an impressive building actually. Unfortunately it's a bit short on developed content. It's mostly a collection of art from a number of archaeological sites around the country, with a predictable concentration on the temples of Angkor. And they didn't want any photos taken of the art collected from the various sites.

I'm bad though. :) This is a partial statue of Vishnu that was unearthed in a farmer's field. He is in a reclining position having just been awakened to create the earth. When complete, it would have been over 6 meters tall.

Another surreptitious photo that I managed to take is another statue of Vishnu. It is a bit hard to tell from the distance at which I had to take the photo, but the craftsmanship on this statue was so detailed, it was a stunning piece of artwork. I was amazed.

Other than those, the rest of the pieces were typical sorts of pieces that would be found and housed from archaeological digs. Some had reasonable explanations of what they were and where they were found. Many had only the facts of where, when and what. I would have liked to have seen more of where they were found, maybe in photos or such. But it wasn't an expensive museum, so I guess you can't have everything.

Then it was on to the palace. This was quite a bit more expensive at 6 and a half dollars. (Keep in mind that that is quite expensive for Cambodia, not for Canada or other western countries.) It was okay as well, but nothing to write home about, even though I am writing in this blog about it. It does seem to be good to be king though, even in an impoverished country that has recently seen decades of civil war and genocide, during which the king had been deposed.

This was the silver pagoda. Inside there is a bunch of Buddhas, one of them large and in the center of the action. The floor at least is made of silver tiles, but they are mostly covered up. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed, so I have to leave it to your imagination what it may have looked like, unless you want to visit yourself.

Outside the silver pagoda is a small representation of Angkor Wat. There is some French company that operates a hot-air balloon ride that rises nearby Angkor Wat. I think the view must be something like this one. Now I know what it looked like.

Aha!!! I knew they came from somewhere.

And there it is.

After the palace, I walked to Wat Phnom. This is the spot from which Phnom Penh gets its name. Some woman at some time came to this little hill and decided it was holy. Sometime later there was a flood and she took refuge on the top. The site was called Wat Phnom Daun Penh, which was later shortened to Phnom Penh and became the name of the city around it. Other than that, it is mostly notable for being the monastery where Pol Pot studied at one point. And according to the account I read, he was a model monk who caused no trouble.

From there I went out to talk to a tuk tuk driver about going to the Russian Market. It was quite a long distance and I didn't feel much like walking, so I thought I might get a ride. He charged me an outrageous 4 dollars for the trip, but I didn't feel like checking out other drivers or haggling, so I just accepted the price and got in. He took me to the market, and it was a fair distance, but I had gone for a whole day to see the killing fields and the interrogation/torture center for 10 dollars. I knew the guy had probably rubbed his hands together when I didn't fight his price too hard. When I got to the market, he asked (with a gleam in his eye) if he should wait. I said no. He asked me why. So I told him he was expensive. He didn't really fight me too much, but if he had, I would have continued with the fact that the market was closing down (it was after 5 and it was getting dark; I had thought it would be a night market, too, but apparently I was wrong), and I figured he probably knew that and hadn't bothered to tell me. So I told he needn't bother waiting, as I wouldn't be riding back with him. I had actually decided to walk back. Since I was there, I got some dinner at one of the little street restaurants, some really good noodles, and then headed back to my hotel.

On the way, I passed the Independence Monument again, and it was really nice lit up against the darkening sky.

And then I passed a dessert shop. They boasted handmade ice cream. There were many options for dessert, but in the end I opted for the chocolate cake with ice cream combination. It was delicious!!

Once I got back to the hotel, I got my passport with my Vietnamese visa inside and got ready to head out of Cambodia the next day.

Choeung Ek and the Tuol Sleng Museum

One essential part of any visit to Cambodia is a visit to some of the places that have been implicated in the tragic recent history of the country. In 1970, the head of the military, Lon Nol staged a coup d'etat against the king, Norodom Sihanouk. Sihanouk was a very popular king with the people, but after being deposed he fled to China. In the meantime, a man who became Pol Pot, had been educated in France and China and had developed a great new idea for how society should be organized. He had developed a hatred for the west, and the US in particular. He also felt that the communist system of China had failed. So he had returned to Cambodia armed with his new idea and he started fighting in the jungles and spreading his message. I don't know how successful he was initially, but when Lon Nol deposed King Sihanouk (with help and munitions supplied by the United States), Pol Pot saw an opportunity and seized it. He made contact with King Sihanouk and gained the king's support. He began drawing people to his banner, saying he would fight to restore the king to his throne. Pol Pot's army, the Khmer Rouge, started to gain soldiers. For 5 years, they waged civil war against the government's army, slowly gaining ground. In April of 1975, the Khmer Rouge took the capital of Phnom Penh, and routed Lon Nol's forces. The Khmer Rouge had control of Cambodia. Pol Pot now had the power and position to initiate his plans for the perfect society. His idea of a perfection was an agrarian society, where there was no education, no money, no religion. So he began. His first move was to tell the people of Phnom Penh that the US was coming and they would kill them all. The only way they would be safe would be to go into the countryside and take up roles as farmers. This was his story and many people listened. The rest began forced marches into the countryside. The cities emptied and Phnom Penh has been described during the reign of the Khmer Rouge as a city of ghosts. Having achieved a measure of control over the populace, the next phase of the operation was to begin to root out anyone with education or religious views. They were captured and tortured, and killed. Anyone who resisted the new regime was turned in and killed. Along with anyone who was convicted of these “crimes” often their families were killed as well. This took place all over the country. The spots where people were killed took on the name, in history, as killing fields. One of the most famous of these was the Choeung Ek Extermination Center. One of the most important torture centers was called S21. It is now known as the Tuol Sleng Detention Museum. It was a detention and torture facility. People were brought to the detention center where they were tortured for any information. They were also tortured to the point where they would make a confession of crimes against the regime. They would write a confession of their “crimes” and then sign it. This was in effect signing their death warrants. In a twisted sense of justice and punishment, the Khmer Rouge wouldn't kill anyone who had no confessed crimes. After signing their confessions, they would be killed and buried near Tuol Sleng. After a while, there were too many bodies for the area to handle and a new area was selected. This became the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. People were finished with at Tuol Sleng and then transported to the Choeung Ek Center. There, they would be taken out one by one and be executed by an open pit. Their clothing would be stripped from their bodies, if not bloodstained, for reuse and then the bodies would be dumped into the pit. Once all the batch of the convicted had been executed and dumped in the pit, it would be covered up immediately, with appropriate measures taken to hasten decomposition and to minimize the odour emanating from the area.

Over the course of almost 4 years from April 1975 through January of 1979, some 20000 people passed through Tuol Sleng. The Choeung Ek site is estimated to have had about 16000 people buried there. When it was found, they dug up almost 9000 bodies. The rest of the bodies have been left undisturbed. The two sites in Phnom Penh, along with many other sites of torture and execution throughout the country have been preserved in order that people will never forget what happened when one man developed a warped idea of the perfect society and how it could be brought about.

And because Cambodia has worked so hard at preserving that grim history, it is important as a visitor to the country to go and pay homage to that history and to reflect. Then maybe it can be kept from happening again. (Only it hasn't, as has been demonstrated often enough in the time since the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.)

I met a man at the guesthouse where I stayed in Siem Reap. He came to Phnom Penh on the same day as I did, and we ended up at the same guesthouse there as well. These days it is easiest to hire tuk tuks to get about to the tourist sites in Phnom Penh, the same as elsewhere. He had arranged to go around to the Choeung Ek site and Tuol Sleng with a tuk tuk driver. I asked if he would like to split the fee for the day and he agreed. So we visited these places together.

We began at Choeung Ek, located about 17 kilometers from downtown Phnom Penh. The tuk tuk was kind of slow, but it gave time to take in the sights and sounds of the now bustling city. On my first visit in 2001, the city still bore scars of its tortured history. There were large craters in some of the main roads. Buildings had gaping holes, presumably from some kind of explosive contacts. On this visit the main roads are in good condition. There are parks and trees and the city is fairly clean. Many of the side roads are still in bad shape, but they don't look like it was recently a war zone anymore. It is just that this is still a developing country and they haven't cleaned everything up yet.

When we reached the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, it was also quite cleaned up. The pits that had been opened were still there. Some of the explanations of what took place at this blood-soaked site were still there. However, on my first visit, walking along the paths among the burial pits, there were bones littering the ground underfoot. I remember walking along and listening to the crunch of things underfoot. I didn't really think about it until I looked down and realized that the crunch was coming from bones that were all over in the dirt beneath my shoes. And the dawning realization that I was walking on the remains of people who had been exterminated in a brutal fashion was quite sobering. There were graphic painted depictions of what had gone on here, Khmer Rouge soldiers killing babies by throwing them in the air and impaling them on their guns, or swinging them around and smashing their heads against a tree. It was a very impactful place, albeit in a way that was a bit heavy-handed. Now much of that isn't in evidence any longer. It is a much cleaned up site. I'm not sure if it's better off that way or not. It is certainly a more civilized presentation. But possibly the more “family-friendly” feel to it is not to the benefit of the reason for the preservation of the site.

One thing that hadn't changed was this tower...

...and what was kept inside. (However, there used to be the skulls of 7 journalists who were killed by the Khmer Rouge and dumped in the pits. I suppose those bones had been repatriated to their families.)

As time went on, the Khmer Rouge ran short on many supplies. They were forced to do things to conserve certain resources, such as bullets. Thus executions were conducted using blunt objects to bash heads in, or using leaves like these banana leaves, with serrated edges, to slit the throats of the victims.

Some of the pits where the victims were thrown after execution have been preserved. Others are open to the elements.

This is the tree where children were murdered by swinging them around by their feet and bashing their heads. They know that because it was covered in blood and bones and brain matter when they came here after the country was liberated by the Vietnamese.

Now there is also a fairly good museum on site that explains the hierarchy of the Khmer Rouge and what happened after they were overthrown, including the recent tribunals that have finally been convened to try the leaders of the Khmer Rouge. (At least try the leaders that are still alive. Pol Pot and a number of others escaped final justice by dying before the tribunals could ever be convened. It is small consolation that they died in custody.)

While Andy and I were looking at the site, we stopped for a bit of a breather in a small rest hut. A young man and his father came along and stopped to talk to us. The older man had never been to the site before, so his son had brought him that day. The older man had lived through the days of the Khmer Rouge. He graciously consented to talk about that time with us, even though he spoke no English and we spoke no Khmer. His son translated back and forth for us. It was a moving few moments.

From Choeung Ek, we hopped back into our tuk tuk and headed into town and the Tuol Sleng Museum. This place was much as I remembered it. The school is arranged in four buildings. The first building was used for housing prisoners as well as the torture of higher ranking people. Nobody was safe from the regime, not even the Khmer Rouge. If someone became suspected of traitorous thoughts or actions, they were apprehended, brought to Tuol Sleng and interrogated.

When the country and city were liberated by the Vietnamese in 1979, Tuol Sleng was abandoned. 14 final prisoners were slaughtered there and left as they lay as the Khmer Rouge fled to the jungles. The bodies of those people were found and buried just outside Building A. The torture beds were left in the cells in the building and photos showing how they were found now adorn the walls.

Just outside Building B there is a hanging post. Prisoners would be hung by their feet and interrogated until they passed out. Then they would be dunked in filthy water to wake them up and the interrogation would proceed.

Building B has more cells and interrogation areas. These were filled with photographs. The photographs showed the people who had passed through the center. Every person who came to Tuol Sleng was measured and photographed, to have records of the enemies of the state perhaps. Once they had confessed and written their confessions these would be kept in files with their photographs. When the prison was liberated, thousands and thousands of files were found. Once again, in a bid to make sure that nobody ever forgets what happened in that time, the photos were put up for visitors to see. Room after room of photos are arranged along the main floor of Building B and then D as well.

On my first visit to the museum, they had a pedestal with a bust of Pol Pot on it, to show the face of the man who had perpetrated this horror against his own people. There was a damaged bust on the pedestal and a defaced one lying on the ground beside it. There were people who didn't care to have his face displayed there. By my second visit, it seemed they had given up on trying to have the bust displayed. The pedestal is off by itself...

...and four defaced busts are off in a corner, in a cage.

Building C had a couple of floors of individual cells in either brick or wood.

The top floor had a small exhibition about the leaders of the regime who are now on trial, including photos and biographies as well as bits of their writing.

Building D had more photos of the victims of the center. There were also paintings that depicted the different methods of torture. All were disturbing.

At the end of the series of buildings, there used to be a map of Cambodia. They had it on the wall, and it was done all in skulls and bones. This has been taken down at some point, probably for being too graphic. However they still have a photo of it in its place.

After delving into the gruesome for a few hours, Andy and I were a bit tired and had had enough of that part of the history. Andy wanted to find a new hat, so we headed to the central market. I just wanted something to do, so I went along with him in his search. He never found a hat that met with his satisfaction, but I did find a hat that was interesting. It was odd to find a hat with the city slogan of a minor South Korean city in the middle of the market in Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

The Bus Ride Down to Phnom Penh

The next day, I woke up to rain. Not anything heavy or tropical, it was just steady and more than a drizzle. I had thought about going out to Angkor Wat for the sunrise, but there obviously wasn't going to be one. So I decided that I would head to Phnom Penh that morning instead of taking any more time with the temples. It meant not completing the three day pass, but I have seen these temples before, I have some photos of the things I missed at Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. I hope I will be able to get the suitably digitized someday, but I figured I had had enough of Siem Reap and major changes to the area. So I bought a ticket for Phnom Penh on a bus that morning.

It was on the bus that I finally felt some of the old Cambodia that I remembered. There were some foreigners like me on the bus, but there were also a number of normal, regular Cambodians, the ones that are just living their lives. They aren't caught up in tourism in any particular way. And they are quite different in feeling. It was relaxing.

Partway down to Phnom Penh we stopped for about half an hour for a lunch stop. There were the usual sorts of people selling food and stuff from stalls by where the bus stopped. There was a restaurant across the street. I bought a grapefruit and an iced tea. The thing that set me truly at ease that I had found the Cambodia I remembered though was the girl who sold me the iced tea. I picked it out, but it had been sitting on the top of the cooler, on top of the ice. She said it wasn't cold enough. I said it was okay, but she started digging around in the cooler for another one. She found one at the bottom that was quite chilled. She didn't do it for any reason other than that she wanted me to have a better quality iced tea than the one I picked. That's what I remembered. It was nice.

There were other little surprises along the way. We passed through a town and a gas station. As we slowed and stopped to let someone off, or maybe on, I noticed some writing on one of the pillars of the gas station. It was the name of two Korean pop bands. Odd place to find that.

And the rest was just enjoying the scenery of the countryside through a somewhat blurry bus window.