August 27-28
Ok, let’s get a few things out of the way before I talk about our time spent on the Mekong River in Cambodia.
I already talked about the fact that Cambodia use to be called the Khmer Empire and that it use to be a lot larger than the country is now. I also mentioned that Khmer is the name of the language, the people, and the country. Another fact – Cambodia is the size of Missouri but with 16 million people (today) verses Missouri’s 6 million.
Timeline: After the height of the Khmer Empire (when it was bigger than Missouri), the country had a bit of a decline before being colonized by France in the 1860s. It gained its independence from France in 1953 and became a constitutional monarchy. In 1970 there was a coup against the king which installed the right-wing pro-US Khmer Republic. The ousted king put his support behind the Khmer Rouge which joined forces with the North Vietnamese and Viet Congress forces to start a civil war. During this time the US bombed Cambodia to disrupt the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge took control of the country in 1975 just five days after Congress refused additional aid for Cambodia and US troops evacuated the country. The Khmer Rouge carried out genocide from 1975 until 1979. In 1979 they were ousted by Vietnam and the Vietnamese and Soviet-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea.
Following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, Vietnam left the country and Cambodia was briefly governed by the UN (1992-1993) which oversaw elections. Since that time, there has been a one party parliament with a constitutional monarchy. The one party is the Cambodian People’s Party.
So that’s the bare minimum here. I had seen the movie First They Killed My Father recently which was a really well done movie on Netflix about one woman’s story under the Khmer Rouge, so I felt fairly prepared for this portion of our trip. I was not prepared. Cambodia ended up being a surprising and wonderful country that I just loved but also a country that at times is overwhelmingly sad.
One of the things that stuck with me from Young, our Siem Reap tour guide, was a comment he made about diet. “We are flexible. We grow rice. We eat crickets. We survive.” There were many times in these few days in Cambodia that people would tell us horribly sad things and in the same breath note something optimistic. The Cambodian people are survivors and they have worked very hard over the past couple of decades to rebuild their country.
We gathered for the river cruise with the rest of the passengers at the Sofitel hotel. Apparently the rest of passengers were staying a bit fancier in Siem Reap. We were put on a bus with 20ish other people and our Cambodian tour guide: Fin. This is Fin explaining something:
The majority of the stories that I’m about to tell come from Fin. So this experience is by no means all encompassing. Quick anecdote to drive this point home: someone asked Fin if he had seen the movie First They Killed My Father (he had) and wanted to know if it was a truthful depiction of the time under the Khmer Rouge regime. He told us that “was one story. There were millions of stories”. So some of this post is Fin’s story.
There are two major portions of Cambodia’s recent history that seemed to have a major effect on Fin and his family. The first, obviously, is the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Fin was adamant that we realize that people are not embarrassed by the phrase Khmer. That is who they are. Rouge, French for “red”, is used to represent communism. So Khmer Rouge is the group that executed the Cambodian holocaust – a phrase that Fin used frequently.
The Khmer Rouge modeled itself after China during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” campaign. Its intention was to transform Cambodia into a socialist society through agricultural collectivization. The regime evacuated the cities and sent the entire population on forced marches to rural work projects or coops. The Khmer Rouge wanted to discard anything considered Western including Western medicine, temples, libraries, and schools. It then replaced it with 11th century agriculture.
What could possibly go wrong? So many things. Similar to China’s outcome of the “Great Leap Forward”, taking land from farmers and giving it to communes of city dwellers and then forcing them into hard labor doesn’t work. Starvation was rampant and the cause of much death during this time. The regime was also responsible for massive genocide, much of which was done in the “Killing Fields”. The victims:
– Anyone associated with the former government
– Professionals – teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, or anyone wearing eyeglasses as they were seen as a sign of intellectualism
– Ethnic minorities
– Buddhist monks
Somewhere between one and three million people were killed during this time by torture, murder, or starvation. The most common figure is two million which was a quarter of the population at the time.
So let’s recap. The Vietnamese and Soviet Union helped put the Khmer Rouge in place against the Pro-US Republic government in 1975. By 1978, the Khmer Rouge had begun trying to expand its border back into Vietnam, where the great Khmer Empire once existed. So Vietnam stopped backing the Khmer Rouge and joined forces with the ousted King and fought back. Vietnam forces entered Cambodia in 1979, took over leadership of the country, and sent the Khmer Rouge north to the mountains. The internet calls the next ten years Vietnamese occupation. Fin knows this is seen by other countries as foreign occupation, but the Vietnamese stopped the Khmer Rouge, so he and others in Cambodia call it their liberation day.
The 80s – that ten year period until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – was the second period of time that was important in recent history to Cambodia. During this time, with the Vietnamese and Soviet backed government in place, Cambodia began to rebuild. Remember that the Khmer Rouge killed off professionals and teachers, and those who were not killed off fled to refuge camps in Thailand. Although the killing field activity had come to an end in the 80’s, there was a new danger for young people as they were conscripted into the army to fight a guerrilla war in the Northern mountains against the remains of the Khmer Rouge.
Being sent North to fight was basically a death sentence as the armies were fighting the Khmer Rouge and planting thousands of mines in the mountains. Note: no record was kept of where the mines were being planted. As of 2010, it was estimated that 4-6 million mines were believed to be unexploded in the country. Obviously not near Siem Reap or any area that we were going to be visit. Also, I believe that there is a constant effort to remove these land mines, but there is nothing more current than 2010 that I could find online.
Two of Fin’s brothers were conscripted to the army in the 1980s and both fled the country. Hearing of his one brother’s journey to Thailand was incredible with stories of being captures by royalist soldiers, one of those soldiers eating human livers, riding lumber trucks to the border, lodging with monks, and elderly women helping to hide the boys. The final leg of the journey consisted of crossing the border during the Thai guards’ “lunch hour” when the entire border patrol would leave their post to eat. Both brothers reached the refuge camp in Thailand and lived there until 1991 when they returned to Cambodia. Both brothers were hoping to go to Europe or the United States during these years as some refugees did, but neither made it out of the refugee camp. The one brother was in the camp for seven years.
Fin is the youngest of five children, all boys, raised by his mother. His father was killed during the Khmer Rouge regime. After boarding the bus in Siem Reap on that first day heading to the ship, we drove through the town he grew up in.
A few anecdotes from that trip:
Fin use to be responsible for walking their cows down the road to graze. This hike included a bridge crossing. During the 80s, the army had bombs on the bridge with trip wire at night to ensure no crossings. In the morning, soldiers would remove the trip wire and normal passings would happen throughout the day. Often, the soldiers would forget to remove the trip wire, or would get too drunk the night before to remember, so the local kids would be responsible for doing it.
Less horrifying, during rainy season, as the area is filled with water and rice is planted, fish swim through the rice fields and locals can fish right behind their homes.
Fin also told about his village during the Khmer Rouge. Apparently, each family had a trench dug outside their home. At night, there would be explosions near his home and they would run outside and hide in their trench. Then the Khmer Rouge would ransack the homes. Fin noted with a laugh that, “we were lucky because we didn’t have anything so they never came to our house”.
One reason why Fin was such a great tour guide was because he was able to communicate the message with a bit of humor but without taking the severity of the situation away.
This good humor came out again later in the day when we visited Kampong Cham to explore the Twin Mountains: Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei which translates to male and female mountains.
Legend says that women use to have to pay the dowry when they got married. But they didn’t like this set up, so they had a challenge with the men in town to see who could build a higher mountain in just one day. The rule was that both groups could pile rocks until the North Star was visible in the sky. So they all piled rocks all day long. The women were determined to win, so they lit a lantern and let it fly into the sky. When the men saw this, they thought it was the North Star, so they stopped building and went to bed. The next morning, they awoke to see the women’s mountain much higher and ever since men have had to pay the dowry to women for marriage.
We explored the temple at the top of the male mountain.
Fin explained some history of the temple and also gave us the basics on Buddhism. His info on Buddhism was nothing new, but he added a little flavor to it that I appreciated.
“You are born in your rich country which is much better than being born in Cambodia. But even kings have suffering. So you do good to have less suffering in the next life.”
That’s right. He called attention to the fact that it is better being us – the Americans. He later joked that he must have done something wrong in his prior life to have been born in Cambodia.
This temple was a detention facility during the Khmer Rouge. There is almost nothing left to denote this except for this lion statue.
Apparently the executioner would sharpen his machete on the lion’s back side.
Another thing we learned at this stop was that temples are the place to bring unwanted pets or deformed animals. There are two thoughts here. Regarding the unwanted pets, a new law was put in place to outlaw the ownership of a lot of animals, including monkeys. So people brought their monkeys and other wild illegal animals to the temples where they knew they’d be fed by monks and strangers.
And the deformed animals? Well Cambodians believe they are lucky. So you cannot kill a pig that was born with two tails or a monkey that’s missing an arm. We got a look at this pig wandering around the temple grounds. You can’t tell from this picture, but his front left leg is white while the rest of his body is that grayish color.
Our second day on board had us stopping in Wat Hanchey for a beautiful view from a hill top pagoda.
We had a chance to chat with these (very) young monks who are studying here.
This sweet boy answered questions about where he grew up and what his life is like when he is at the monastery.
After schooling at a monastery, a monk can decide to leave the monastic life and get married or rejoin his family. Fin asked him about this and this 13 year old told us that he believed he’d stay a monk his entire life, because it was, “on his fate”.
This is an empty bomb shell that they use as a school bell now.
And this is a statue of a woman’s hand holding a skewer of sausages.
Most of the statues made a lot of sense. This… not so much.
J.K. Rowling’s inspiration for Fawkes:
Look at the colors on this bug! It’s a bit zoomed in so it’s fuzzy (no way I was getting too close to that crazy thing), but it was a good 2/2.5 inches long – 3 with antennas.
A few words on the Mekong: The Mekong River has the second richest aquatic biodiversity in the world after the Amazon. The river starts in the Tibetan Plateau and runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The word Mekong is a Khmer word that means “mother of water”.
This past July, a Laos dam collapsed on the Mekong which killed at least 36 people, with 98 more missing, and displaced at least 6600 people in that area. The broken dam released 5 billion cubic meters of water. I don’t have a relative understanding for how much that is, but it seems like a lot of water. Anything I’ve read online speaks exclusively to the effects in Laos, but even a month later, villages downstream were feeling the effects of this dam collapse. We were told that the river was much higher than usual for rainy season and a visit later in the trip to a village had to be changed because it was flooded out.
That afternoon we visited Oknhatey which is also called silk island because of its traditional silk weaving. The villagers farm silk worms, placing them in bunches of sticks to assist them with their cocoon making.
They feed the worms mulberry leaves while they mature for about 47 days.
Then the cocoons are boiled and the threads are pulled strand by strand into silk threads.
One cocoon can unravel to a string of silk 100 meters long. The threads are then colored by natural dyes before being woven into silk fabric. Everything here is done by hand.
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/img_4913.mov
Now I know this is one of those stops where you watch the locals create a product that you can buy anywhere in the area, but you pay more because you watch the women doing it and it is incredible what they can do with their hands. I know that only suckers get conned into buying stuff that they do not need at a place like this. That is why Michael and I bought nothing.
Just kidding. We’re suckers. Anyone who thinks they deserve a present after us being gone for a year is probably getting something made from these incredible women, so I hope you like silk.
After the silk farm, we stopped at a local school on our way back to the ship. We hung out with third grade kids and they were awesome. I don’t love the idea of parading a group of tourists through a school of kids so we can ooh and ahh over them and take pictures. However, they encouraged us to try to talk to the kids and to let them practice their English on us, so I’m trying to be optimistic that they get something good out of it. There was also an opportunity to donate to the school, which does make me feel better about the entire situation. I’m also hopeful that the ship makes some sort of payment to the school.
The little girl I was chatting up was really cool. She wanted to know how old I was and where I come from. She had a handle on some very basic conversational skills, but also she had some things lined up to respond to what I was suppose to say. So if I responded wrong, then her response didn’t make sense. For example, she asked, “how are you?”. I responded with, “really good. I’m so happy to be talking with you.” To which she responded, “I am very good.” She was obviously expecting me to ask how she is doing in return and I messed up by being rude.
That story is not dissimilar from one we heard about Cambodia’s Prime Minister when he met President Obama. Apparently he wanted to be able to address Obama in English, which he didn’t know. So his English teachers told him just to say hello and ask how he is. No matter what Obama’s response, the Prime Minister was to respond with, “me too”, and then the translators would take over from there. Well, when the time came, the Prime Minister got a tiny bit confused and asked Obama, “who are you” instead of how. Obama responded with, “I am Michelle’s husband”, and the Prime Minister responded with, “me too”.
One of my favorite things about Cambodia is how hard they are working to rebuild their country. Fin often used the phrase “year zero”. When I googled this, it is a political concept applied to the takeover of Cambodia in April 1975 with the idea of completely destroying society and starting from scratch. Now society wasn’t completely destroyed despite the best efforts of the Khmer Rouge. But a lot of damage was done. When all of the teachers are killed off, who educates the next generation? Who builds and repairs new buildings when the architects and engineers are gone? Who fills the hospitals when there are no doctors? Well, a lot of people left in the 1980s to be educated. They went to other communist countries, so when they came back from Cuba, they knew Spanish. When they came back from China and Russia, they knew their new skills and those languages as well. But it wasn’t until after the fall of the Soviet Union that anyone learned English. When the refugees returned, a lot of them knew English from their time in Thailand and other countries, so they returned to their homes and taught English to anyone who could pay them even small amounts.
When we were at the school, we met the headmaster. He was a student in his 9th year when the Khmer Rouge forced them out of their homes. When he came back to the island, he was the most educated person. So he became the teacher. The slogan Fin told us was, “Those who know more teach those who know less. Those who know less teach those that know nothing.”
Getting an education in the villages was, and still is, much more difficult than getting an education in Phnom Penh, simply because there are not enough qualified teachers.
So – how did Fin get his education? In 1983, Fin and his family moved into the city (Siem Reap). By the 10th grade, at 15 years old, Fin was no longer in school and was working in a restaurant to help his mother. He was and still is gregarious and one day was chatting with two men who were visiting from Brooklyn. The one man, named Michael, wanted to meet up with him after work to talk more. They had another conversation and the next day, Michael wanted to meet Fin’s mother. He went to their home to meet her and to find out what the family would need for Fin to go back to school. It not only costs money to go to school, but it also takes income away from the family. They came up with a dollar amount and Michael put enough money into a bank account that Fin could go to school for the rest of the year. He then tells Fin that he should write him a letter whenever he needs more money. So Fin finished school through grade 12, writing every so often for more funds. Then he sent Michael a note to ask if he’d help him go to college in Phnom Penh. The story is better told by Fin who can attest to the stress and anxiety about waiting for weeks to get a letter from the US with an answer. Ultimately, Michael pulled through and Fin was able to go to school in Phnom Penh where he got his education and met his wife. They now have a son, named Michael.
So all this hardship and death and sadness… and yet I loved Cambodia. The land was beautiful, and covered with crazy things like this banana flower:
And the idea that rest stops should have hammocks so you can really relax while you have a coffee:
Plus the people were incredible. They didn’t gloss over their hardships. Fin wanted us to understand exactly what happened and how they’re trying to fix their country.
That night the ship arrived to Phnom Penh. We were were really excited to spend a few days in the capital.
