Phnom Phen

Young girl selling seeds to give to the monkeys.
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Oh boy, this is going to be a tough one... Just stepping foot out of the plane into Cambodia, we could tell there was something different in the air. Different than even Saigon, Vietnam, a short 45-minute flight away. Something much heavier was in the air surrounding us.

Stepping out of the taxi from the airport, small little tan hands of children grabbed at us, pushing my bag as I wheeled it, repeating, "No, thank you" to their attempts at trying to help me for a bit of money. Young girls constantly ask, "Wanna buy book?" as they display their large cardboard boxes filled with ripped off copied of Lonely Planet's and books about Cambodia's history. Men and young boys without limbs drag their severed bodies along the hard concrete, hoping for hand-outs from Westerners. Small children holding infants grab your arm and beg for anything you have, whether it be a water bottle or a piece of a sandwich. This is becoming a huge problem in Phnom Phen, with the street children begging money, food and water off Westerners to bring back to their Mother (or another "caretaker") who uses their innocence to bring home the bacon for the family. So many Westerners giving these children hand-outs is actually damaging to them, keeping them on the streets where they kow they can acquire money and food, when organizations are trying so hard to get them off the streets. I gotta tell you, though, it's hard not to give a little to help them out when they run up to you, with sunken in faces and sad dark eyes.

This "society cleansing" from 1975-1979 resulted in the deaths of over 25% of Cambodia's population from starvation, overwork and executions.

Many people here are left missing one or more limbs.
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Phnom Phen is a beautiful city, filled with temples, glamorous government buildings and educational institutes. It's so hard to believe that only 25 years ago, this city was completely emptied out by the Khmer Rouge and their leader, a sick man by the name of Pol Pot, taking over the government, killing one-fourth of Cambodia's population in a genocide to rid society of all education and "evil" Western influence. In an attempt to form a Communist, peasant, farming society, void of any education, Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge in a "cleansing" of society filled with doctors, teachers, mixed races, etc. This "society cleansing" from 1975-1979 resulted in the deaths of over 25% of Cambodia's population from starvation, overwork and executions. Although the buildings and streets are seemingly back to normal, you can tell in the faces of the Cambodian people that they are still affected and suffering from their horrific history. Really, it wasn't too long ago. Children surviving the genocide are now in their early 30's (and older), some still very young, but their faces show the struggles of their past.

Temple.
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Kevin and I took a tuk-tuk out to what is known as The Killing Fields. It is one of the sites of mass executions under the genocidal Pol Pot regime. It is where over 9,000 remains of men, women and children were found in mass graves. They have since made a huge memorial building for the victim's, taking their skulls and arranging them by age and sex in a gigantic glass case in the middle of The Killing Field. These people were removed from their homes, overworked and taken to areas (such as this) in the pitch black, blind-folded and bound, to be made to get down on their knees by young brain-washed Khmer soldiers dressed in all black, who would then take a machete to them and dump them into the graves, burying some still very much alive. A woman would watch her baby thrown into the air, for his life to be ended with one swift chop of the machete mid-air or to be beaten to his death against a "Killing Tree". Walking through the field, one would not be able to imagine the horror that occurred here, with the peaceful, soft warm breeze, light chirp of crickets and distant sound of school children singing. Then you look down at the earth beneath you, your sandles are treading all over the bones of wasted innocent human life. The feeling of death surrounds this place. Even the peaceful sounds of today can't disguise the horror that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge created. The graves are still there, the bones are still there, but filled with insane (justified) animalistic rage, survivors and family came to the Killing Fields, tearing down and destroying all of the torture weapon chambers and other buildings that once stood amongst the bodies of those brutally killed. They couldn't get their families, friends and loved ones back, though. Their bones are merely a reminder of what they endured and hopefully the memorial can teach people about what hate and pure insanity breeds.

Kev feeding the big mama monkey.
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As if seeing the Killing Fields wasn't heavy enough, we headed to S-21 Prison (also known as Tuol Sleng), where prisoners were taken and tortured during the Pol Pot regime. On our way between going from The Killing Fields to S-21, our tuk-tuk driver decided to take us to a sort of shooting range run by mean looking locals down a loooong dirt road. Starting at $20 dollars, you could have a go from things such as AK-47's and hand grenades all the way up to $200 for a rocket launcher. We had heard about these places and how the locals will even set people up with cows and other animals to shoot or blow up, if the price is right. Sick, sick stuff. We got the hell out of there. After a long, dusty ride back towards the city, we arrived at S-21. It is located right in the middle of Phnom Phen. Wow, Pol Pot was really trying to hide his madness. Here, he kept all his execution and other documents carefully filed on the third floor. The other rooms were where at least 14,000 prisoners were kept after being forced to admit to crimes not committed (but claimed while undergoing torture). The brutal tortures performed here are worse than one could ever imagine. All of the prisoners pictures are displayed throughout the prison as a memorial, along with gruesome pictures of their treatment. There are 14 graves in the courtyard of S-21. These are the graves of the 14 dead bodies found at the prison when it was abandoned. The bodies were found alone in their torture chambers strapped to beds, mutilated beyond recognition. One of the bodies was a woman. The rooms they were found in are left empty with a hard metal bed and a picture of how they were found placed on the wall. Only 7 of the 14,000 people kept at S-21 made it out alive.

Holly feeding the mama monkey, trying to avoid the baring of the teeth.
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Kevin and I were really shaken up by the prison, both leaving feeling sick to our stomachs. Attempting to get into our tuk-tuk, a man completely burned from head to toe, with two holes in his disfigured skull in place for his eyes followed us, his hand held out for money. He looked like the pictures of the corpses on the walls of the prison. I will never, ever forget that face. Whatever happened to him, it was probably because of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. He was probably somebody once, a nice man, maybe a farmer with two children and a wife, and now he is left with no eyes and people's fear of seeing him as if looking into the eye sockets of a corpse.

"Monkeying around" haha... ha... ok, not funny. They stole a lady's scarf and ran off with it.
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Our days have been filled with death. Kevin and I decided we needed to do something to make some sense of the lives that are still here, living in Cambodia. Between all of the child prostitution and street children, it is evident that adults take full advantage of children here, using them to satisfy their own sick pleasures (yes, we have seen many a dirty Western man here surrounded by young Cambodian women) and to make the money for them (sending their own children out into the hot sun with an infant in their arms to gain sympathy, and hopefully money). Kevin and I got in touch with a young, exuberant Cambodian tuk-tuk driver named Sam (he drove my friend Danielle around when she was in Cambodia a few months ago, and she gave us his info - Thanks Danielle! He was soooo nice. Oh, and he just got married!) to take us to a nearby orphanage. We picked up a few things at the market to donate to the orphanage: 100 kilo bag of rice, tons of school supplies and two soccer balls - so the kids wouldn't be too disappointed by just pens, paper and rice and would think we were cool - ha ha). After a long drive through some of the poorest conditions we've seen, we came to the entrance of the orphange. Arriving at Light House Orphanage, young beautiful Cambodian children from ages 2-14 surrounded our tuk-tuk, grabbing our hands, shouting, "Hello! How are you?!" They were obviously familiar with people. One small little boy looked at the soccer balls (futbols) and timidly asked if he could have one. "Of course!" I said, handing it over. The men who run the orphanage graciously thanked us straight away, as the kids pulled us off in separate directions. I had three little girls on my arm, asking me a dozen questions, obviously very pleased to have company at their home. They showed me where the pigs are kept in a pen, their bathroom (out in the woods and very basic, with a pail as their shower) and then showed me their bedrooms. There are 40 children aged from 2-17 at Light House Orphanage and Kevin and I only saw about 12 beds. You do the math. Light House is one of the more "well-off" orphanages in Phnom Phen, with a lot of tourists visiting with donations and supplies sometimes on a daily basis. It would be wrong to say these are even basic conditions these children live in, though. Though they might have more than some families we've seen on the side of the roads or street children, these children don't have parents. They don't have a Mom to scoop them up when they are sad and rid them of their sorrows against her loving chest. This is probably why they held onto us every second they could. Children would just come up to us, arms outstretched, for a big, loooong hug. I had never really thought adoption was in my cards, but after seeing all the beautiful loving children in need here, I see how having someone else's child can be just as rewarding as your own. Maybe even more.

Children love having their picture taken.
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The older children were more timid than the younger ones, but it was really heart-warming to see, when Kevin was playing volleyball with all these young Cambodian boys, the 17-year old boy who hadn't shown his face since we had arrived, come out and quietly joined in the game. I think he kind of looked up to a Kevin, not too far from his own age, and felt really comfortable, not justbeing around all the young children and babies all of the time. Watching him laugh as he and Kevin formed a team against a bunch of younger kids, you could see he looked at Kevin like an older brother, maybe an older brother he once had. A young boy asked me, as we were playing with the pigs, "Do you have any brothers and sisters?" I told him I had one older brother and one older sister, then I asked him how many he had. "Six. Three brothers and three sisters." His little face looked so sad. His siblings weren't at this orphanage and he'll probably never see them again.

Us in front of the temple.
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Saying good-bye to the kids, they all ran from whatever they were doing (learning English, playing badminton, playing volleyball) and came on all sides of us, hugging us and holding our hands, asking for high-fives. They high-fived us all the way out the gates of the orphanage. It's hard to leave, but it's nice to know that they will probably have more visitors, like us, tomorrow, unlike a lot of orphanages in Cambodia. Kevin and I told Sam that we really wanted him to find out about an orphanage really in need (it sounds really weird to say, "really in need", when they are all so in need) of help, so we can go volunteer in a few days. There are some orphanages here that probably have never seen a Western person in their lives and don't have the tourist visits like Light House. We hope to find ourselves there in a few days.

Day market mayhem. It looks like this guy is flashing me to show me his fantastic abs.
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Getting back to the hotel after a nice dinner along the river gave us a lot of reflection time from the past few days. Never did I think I would be walking on the bones of tortured humans, encountering sweet young girls stuck in a life of prostitution funded by sick old Western men, playing sister (or maybe Mother) to children left in a  home with no parents, surrounded by children begging for anything we can give them, people once able to move left with no limbs from the tortures of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge or land mines left behind in the wake of it all. I sat reading my ripped off copy of "First They Killed My Father" by Loung Ung, a beautiful autobiography of a woman who survived as a child through Pol Pot's genocide, and all the realities of what we had seen the past few days started flooding into me and to put it bluntly, I pretty much lost it. I'm an extremely emotional person (thanks to my grandma's genes carried on to my father), but I didn't cry at The Killing Fields or S-21 or seeing the children at the orphanage. Reading the horror of the history of the country surrounding me through Loung Ung's child eyes brought everything to a head, all of the images and the haunting feelings walking the streets of Phnom Phen came to me. Kevin was even very shaken up that night, and we spent the night in, talking about the things we've seen and how, hopefully, and maybe with our own help, things might someday be better for the people of Phnom Phen, and Cambodia as a whole. Cambodia has stolen my heart and it truly is a "land of smiles." It is amazing how, even after everything they have gone through, they managed to come out with their smiles so completely genuine.

Independence Memorial in the middle of Phnom Phen.
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We are heading down south to the beach town of Sihanoukville, as we need a little break from Phnom Phen, which has become a little emotionally draining, but will be back in Phnom Phen in a few days to volunteer for another orphanage.