August 29-31
We arrived to Phnom Penh on the 28th in time to go out into the city for dinner. Michael and I jumped at this opportunity and headed out to see what we could see.
First stop? Night market:
After that, we headed to Bistro Langka, a French Cambodian fusion restaurant.
The food was delicious and it was nice to eat a meal off of the boat. Don’t get me wrong, the food on board was really good and there was a ton of it! But it was nice to have a bit of autonomy again, even if it was just in small doses.
The next morning we headed back out of the city with Fin and our group to see Oudong which was Cambodia’s capital from the 17th century until 1866. Now Oudong is a pilgrimage spot for Cambodians. The Khmer Rouge was based here before gaining power in the 1970s, so many of the temples and stupas were destroyed in air strikes ordered by the former President against them. But we were able to visit one monastery where we received a blessing from two monks.
I was expecting this to be hokey or touristy, but it was actually really touching. The blessing covered success, prosperity, longevity, and happiness. So we’re basically all set now.
The blessing was about ten minutes of the monks chanting before throwing wet jasmine flowers at us. It reminded me of being front row with a priest who likes to aggressively douse with holy water. Sitting right up front, the entire thing felt oddly personal despite being in a room of forty(ish) other people.
Tell me that with the strange lighting of this picture and our very serious looks (I promise – it was appropriate for the post blessing mood) that we don’t look like we’re about to reach enlightenment at this exact moment.
See? Super blessed. It was a really cool experience.
Our next stop was in the town of Kampong Tralach. I could have done without this stop. We rode ox carts for about a mile or so through town as children walked along side trying to sell flowers and drawings. The ride felt silly, like we were forcing an “authentic” experience.
But have no fear, Michael was still able to make friends:
Later that afternoon, we had a tuk tuk tour of Phnom Penh with our group.
We grabbed a ride into town, heard a bit about the center square and then ditched the group to go check out a brewery nearby.
Maybe enjoying the beer?
Definitely enjoying the beer.
After leaving the brewery, we saw a rooftop bar down the block and headed over to grab a drink and a bite to eat.
Crazy view, right? Phnom Penh is the most populous city in Cambodia and is also its capital. It has been called the “Pearl of Asia” and has several French colonial buildings in the city. It is obvious that the city is growing at a crazy rate and is just jam packed with construction and cranes. Someone mentioned that it is the “next Bangkok” and they might be right. But I have a feeling that we were visiting at just the right time. There was a lot to do in the city and plenty of great restaurants, bars, and clubs, but the city still felt reasonably small in size.
That night, on our walk back to the ship, we stopped at a street vendor to pick up second dinner.
Random fact about Phnom Penh: it sits at the crossroad of two rivers – the Mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers. The Tonle Sap heads north into the Tonle Sap Lake which then hits Siem Reap. The river is 120 kilometers long before it hits the Lake. But the interesting thing is that during dry season, the river flows south into the Mekong and during the rainy season the Mekong expands so much that it changes the direction of the river and causes it to flow north.
The next day we had another round of tours with Fin. This time, we started with a visit to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. This is just one of thousands of mass grave sites throughout Cambodia. It is located just 9.3 miles outside of the city center. As many as 20,000 Cambodians are believed to have been executed and buried here in 129 communal graves. We had the ability to walk among the graves and enter the Memorial Stupa where 8000 skulls, arranged by age and sex, are kept.
As we walked through, Fin talked to us about the atrocities that took place here. After the civil war ended, the Khmer Rouge was granted immunity against war crimes, so people were not afraid to come forward and talk in great detail about what happened at these Killing Fields.
The above was a grave site where hundreds of women and children were buried.
Michael struggled with the Killing Fields, commenting that he thought it was harder visiting here than Dachau. I didn’t agree. Although the stories were awful, I felt like Dachau was really good at giving names and personalizing the stories. This was just an overload of death.
Here, there were so many people that were killed, but no names. Just this one photo that someone had left inside the Stupa.
However, I changed my opinion after visiting S-21, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Back in Phnom Penh, in a old high school building, is a former security prison of the Khmer Rouge. It was the most notorious prison, S-21, and was given the name Tuol Sleng. The fruit of the Sleng tree is poisonous. Between 17,000 and 20,000 prisoners were detained here in classrooms that were turned into cells. Only 12 people survived. The stories of torture and living conditions in the prison is not anything I will relate to you here. Here is a picture of the survivors when the prison was shut down.
What made the experience that much more difficult was that three of the survivors were there telling their stories. Also, one of the survivors was an artist who drew, in great detail, pictures depicting the atrocities that happened at the prison. That art was displayed.
This, for me, was worse than Dachau. I physically couldn’t get through it and had to walk away. It was just too awful.
One picture I do want to point out is the above – Pol Pot on top and Kaing Guek Eav, “Duch”, on the bottom. These are two of the names that are important from the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was the leader of the regime and held the title of Prime Minister. Duch ran S-21 prison.
The immunity to members of the Khmer Rouge did not extend to these two individuals, along with three other high ranking officials of the regime. However, Pol Pot died the day before he was to be handed over to an international tribunal in 1998. They claimed heart failure, but it is believed that he committed suicide by overdosing.
Duch was sentenced to live in prison along with two other men. Here is an article about the proceedings if you want more info:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/asia/cambodia-khmer-rouge-united-nations-tribunal.html
The bottom line is that the trials took way too long and probably didn’t accomplish enough. Part of the problem is that members of the Khmer Rouge are still in power today and so the government was holding up the trials. The government wanted justice, but not too much justice. For example, Hun Sen, the current Prime Minister, was a high ranking official in the Khmer Rouge for several years. During some of the paranoia of the regime, Hun Sen along with others were accused of working against the regime. So they fled to Vietnam where he became the Cambodian leader of the army backed by the Vietnamese that invaded Cambodia and took power back from the Khmer Rouge. Hun Sen was appointed Prime Minister during the 80s. When the Vietnamese left Cambodia and the UN oversaw elections in 1992, Hun Sen refused to relinquish power and established himself as co-Prime Minister.
In 1997, Hun Sen launched a coup and replaced the co-Prime Minister with a new guy but in 1998, he got rid of the new guy and took over as the only Prime Minister. After the 2013 election results, which were believed to be rigged, months of protests resulted in 6 people killed and many injured. In 2017, the National Assembly voted unanimously to abolish the minority and majority positions to lessen the opposition party’s influence and then a constitutional amendment was passed to dissolve the opposition party.
Hun Sen appointed his son into higher military positions in a bid to prepare him to take his place when he retires or dies. He claims his son was born from a ‘supernatural’ being and therefore, divine or godly. Political experts believe this is heading in the direction of a North Korea scenario.
So… Cambodia isn’t as free or democratic as we were led to believe. After a long day of really sad stuff, we popped into another brewery and spoke with an expat who is about to leave Cambodia with his family for Thailand. He said that it was time to leave because there was about to be a “regime change” and called Hun Sen a dictator. The most extreme language Fin had used was calling it a “monopoly” on the Prime Minister position. I guess in a dictatorship you are a careful with the language you use when speaking to tourists.
We visited the Royal Palace on our last day in Phnom Penh.
And were able to even smile again after all of this heavy, heavy stuff.
Then, we said our last goodbye to Fin and went to the market.
That last picture is king prawns and they are HUGE!
And as previously mentioned, we popped into a brewery and even grabbed some pizza before heading back to the ship.
So that’s it for Cambodia. The next day was a day on the river where we relaxed, got in some runs on the treadmill, and crossed into Vietnam. I loved Cambodia, and was super interested in the history of the country as you can tell by my obsessive informational overload in these posts. I’m sorry that the info was so heavy. I absolutely promise that Vietnam will be much lighter. It was hard being in Cambodia for some of the historical stuff, but the people, the food and the beers made it really enjoyable. I’m really glad that we visited. We’ll have to see what happens in the next couple of years. I hope the country is able to get their act together politically and that their prosperity can grow. The people deserve it.