Phnom Penh: City of Horror and Renewal

Pedro
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Our arrival in Phnom Penh was well welcomed.  Truth be told, after everything was said and done, and with the exception of a few amazing places, Vietnam was not our favorite destination.  Worth a visit for sure, but a month's stay, and seeing the whole thing by bus made for a very long journey.

We are really excited to be Cambodia, and stoked to start exploring it's checkered history.  Upon arriving in Phnom Penh our plan was to stay for only a single day so that we could see the three major attractions:  The Royal Palace, the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, and the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum (also known as the S-21 Prison).  Before arriving we were told by many other travelers that Phnom Penh was pretty dangerous and not all that interesting, so we wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, all of the travel has caught up with Suz and brought her down with a pretty bad cold.  This setback, however, turned out to be pretty good for us.  In opposition to what we were told, Phnom Penh turned out to be a pretty cool city.  Our guest house was located right next to the Royal Palace and the river, which insured a good selection of sights and food for us as Suz recovered.

It seems like there is a fantastic culture lying beneath this terrible period in Cambodian history

Suzo
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In regards to Phnom Penh as a tourist destination I guess now would be as good a time as any to give brief history of the Cambodia Genocide.  I'm willing to bet that most people know as little about the whole thing as we did when we got here.  So, here it is.  During the early 70's, as a result of the Vietnam War, Cambodia was heavily bombed and invaded by American and Southern Vietnamese forces in search Northern Vietnamese Communist troops.  Understandably, this created anger amongst the Cambodian communists, who consequently turned their aggression inward.  In 1975 Phnom Penh fell to the communist rebels who then undertook one of the largest genocidal movements in history.  The stated purpose of the new government's policies, and resulting executions, was to turn Cambodia into a farming based, peasant controlled, self-sustaining country.  As a result, the Khmer Rouge (The new communist government) set out to exterminate all people whom possessed an education, ties to the former government or military, foreign language skills, skills such as dance and song that tied a person to their cultural heritage, and even people whom wore glasses.  In addition, all city people were relocated to villages where they were forced to work in the fields at slave standards.

View of the Tuk Tuk Driver
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In total over two million people died as a direct result of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 (this was about 25% of the total population of Cambodia).  Today, more than 40% of Cambodia's population is under the age of 14.  The mass destruction of  70's is evident in current Phnom Penh where poverty, drug use, and prostitution are quite ramped (So much so in fact that our guest house had many posters hanging up reminding their guests that drugs and sex with children are illegal...thanks for the reminder).

Us in the Tuk-Tuk
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The most compelling remints of this disaster are the killing fields and the S-21 Prison.  So, following a full day of sleeping and recovering we set out to see these places for ourselves.  The only way to describe our experience was eery.

Our first stop was the Killing Fields, where we came face to face with the unearthed remains of the executed persons.  At the entrance to the fields is a very tall monument in which they have built shelves, eight levels high, upon which they have stacked the skulls of the people whom they unburied from the mass graves.  After the monument visitors are welcome to walk around the field as they please.  With the exception of a few signs describing the methods of execution, the only other major visual element of the fields are the holes out of which the mass graves were dug up.  Signs accompany the holes to inform visitors as to the number and type of bodies recovered from the particular grave.  Aside from the graves, and probably most disturbing about the whole place, was the amount of clothing and bones sticking up from the ground.  Almost everywhere we walked we were surrounded by the old tattered clothing of the people who were killed and buried in the field.  It was incredibly disturbing.

Killing Fileds Monument
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Following the Killing Fields we headed over to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum.  S-21 was the primary holding, interrogation, and torture facility for the Khmer Rouge during their four year rein.  The building was actually a high school prior to the genocide, which added a real feeling of horror to the whole experience.  Within each old classroom we found cells of prisoners, beds upon which they were tortured, pictures of dead bodies as they were found by the Vietnamese solders, and mug shots of many of the prisoners who were detained and later executed.  In it's four years of operation it is believed that over 12,000 men, women, and children were held and tortured here, of which only 7 are known to have left alive.

Story of the Killing Fileds
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In total, the experience of seeing these places for ourselves was quite mind boggling.  We were amazed that this was really our first encounter with this horrific piece of history, and awestruck by just how terrible and cruel the Khmer Rouge was to their own people.

In light of their recent history, it is amazing to see how established and thriving Phnom Penh appears to be.  Obviously we were not shown the real terrible sides of the city, but from Tuk-Tuk and bus we did cover a lot of the inner and outer areas, and to us everything appeared to be level with many of the other Southeast Asian cities that we have visited.

Unearthed Skulls of the Executed
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It seems like there is a fantastic culture lying beneath this terrible period in Cambodian history, thus we are excited to now head to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat to experience this cultural heritage first hand.  Our next blog will be from there, and should include some awesome pictures of the world's largest religious complex.

Best wishes to all.  Take care.