BUT…it’s all part of the experience…sometimes you just have to laugh those things off. As Canadians I think we were pretty uptight about rules, rules in general. Rules and order, timing and expectations. You have to let go of some of this in order to survive in places like this, or you’ll get your panties in a knot way too often. Yes…the bus driver eventually showed up. One more stamp in our passport and 45 confused minutes later, we were now in Cambodia and taking in the country side of houses on stilts (wet season). You can tell, right away this country is more poverished. The architecture, the people and how they dress. I’m not speaking down upon, but I am just commenting on what I saw and gathered. We befriended Hannah and Sopfie, some Londoners. We got a tuk tuk for the few days we’d be in the city of Phomn Pehn. A tuk tuk is basically a motorcycle with a carriage on the back. You feel a bit like a queen, they wait for you, come when you ask. For 2 full days of driving around, Carmen and I paid $15-$20 each. Not bad.
We stayed at a great hotel. Me Mates Place. It’s run by a Canadian and an Aussie. We started our journey at the Grand Palace, where the King resides. REMARKABLE….Gold roofs and fancy architecture.
On a more solemn note, we also went to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. It was an old school house and was taken over and re-designed into prison cells. The leader of the country, the Pol Pot led a group called the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot decided he wanted to basically create a new race. He wanted to off the intellects that he feared would overthrow him (i.e. doctors, artists, teachers, lawyers, students) and their offspring, so he would torture them in this old school and ask them were their family was hiding so he could kill them. Moreover it was the Chinese soilders who did the work for Pol Pot. Many families were confused but knew they had to flee the cities and pretended to fit in with the “simplier” folk, the farmers. The Pol Pot did not like that Cambodia had been “Western” influenced. He did not like flashy clothes or ammeities, tvs, watches, clocks. He got everyone to rid their houses of these things. He killed many city people and kept the farmers. Mostly because they were necessary to provide food, but he also thought they were less brainwashed being in the country, and he thought he could brainwash them easier than the city folk. I am reading a book now, a memoire of a girl whose family was killed, starved, executed. It’s heartwrentching. Pol Pots idea was to re-create a race of Chinese Soilders and few, beautiful Cambodian women.
We went to one of the killing fields, called Choeung Ek, that made my heart sink. There are valleys where they threw dead, or ½ dead bodies, 300 in one pit. They poured chemicals on them to get rid of the smell, or to kill the living. They had a tree that had a loud speaker on it to play music to mask the cries of help. They had a big tree that they whacked babies on to kill them before throwing them into the pit. We saw bones, teeth and particles of clothes of the victims. It was a silent tour around the area, and one that opened up my eyes to the atrocity that Camobodia faced a mere 30 years ago. 3 of the 7 million Cambodians were killed before the Vietnamese stepped in and Pol Pot fled to the Thai border. Sickening, to say the least.
The thing is, everyone you encounter in Cambodia has a story. THEY survived the genocide, they lost family members, they witnessed the hardships…or their parents went through it. This nation is essentially new and building themselves from these recent events. It’s sad, and eye opening. Cambodia continued in the city of Siem Reap…..
This is an example of the kiddies selling scarfs :) Press play
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