No clever or silly rhymes for this blog title I’m afraid, as it feels wrong to make light of some of the things we have learnt and seen this past 48 hours. Phnom Penh has experienced some horrific things, and all as little at 35 years ago- it’s mad to think that this city was basically in ruins in 1979. But before we share anymore of the history of this place, we’ll tell you how we got here.
Well. An early morning boat at 8am from glorious Phu Quoc saw us dock in Ha Tien at around 10am where we believed we would be led straight onto a bus for Cambodia. Simples, right? Oh how naive we were. After being bundled into a minibus (er… where’s the luxury bus we were promised?) we were offloaded a mere 5 minutes away at a hotel with a travel agency in the foyer. A small and scary Vietnamese lady (who smoked cigarette after cigarette, as if she might die if she didn’t have one in her hand) informed us she would be processing our visa’s here and sending them ahead ‘to save time’. Brilliant! So when will we be leaving? In 3 hours. So, not arriving in Phnom Penh at 4.30pm as we were told, arriving at 6.30pm? And we are stuck in this hotel foyer until we leave? Good. Great. Excellent. Of course, the wait was nothing to do with our Visa’s and more to do with us having to wait for another minibus load of tourists to arrive, and of course we would also be persuaded to spend money on food here since there was nowhere else to go, and that’s what you do when you wait around for hours on end isn’t it? You eat!
So, not wanting to bore you with tedious detail, (I had a fried egg sandwich. The Vietnames don’t really do breakfast as we know it) I shall cut to the chase. Eventually we were piled into a minibus. And i mean sardine-can piled. A space for 3 at the back had to squeeze in 4, and that included all 6ft 2″ of Kieran and 5ft 9″ of me, so you get a vague idea of the comfort level we were dealing with here.
The border was actually very close, and our smokey friend herded us off the bus and marched us to visa control with all of our passports in her hand. I’ll tell you now, you follow a person VERY closely when they have your passort (especially when they continue to smoke with the same hand, and you can just see it going up in a blaze of Marlborough), and all seemed to be going smoothly until we reached the Cambodian end. Suddenly our smoky friend was screaming ‘CORRUPTION!’ and waving her nicotine stick around dramatically. Now we weren’t sure if these dramatics were for our benefit, or if she just liked to make an entrance, but we stood around in the blistering heat for quite some time wondering what on earth was going on as she and the guards screamed at each other in… Vietnamese? I don’t know, I am guessing it was Vietnamese.
It seemed after much probing, that the issue was the Cambodian guards wanted each of us to have our temperature taken to check we didn’t have yellow fever, and for us each to give a dollar to the ‘Doctor’ for the privilege of being tested. Frankly, we were all happy to just hand over a dollar to speed things up, but apparently ol’ smokey Jo had principles, and she was sticking to them. About an hour passed in the dusty heat before finally the guards aquiesced (probably just to get rid of your woman waving her cigarette about and yelling at them), and we all were tested for yellow fever by a fella in a surgical mask (who i suspect was not a genuine Doctor) and let through into Cambodia to continue our sardine can journey for the next 5 hours. You’ll all be thrilled to hear that Kieran and I don’t have yellow fever (I mean, wouldn’t it be kind of OBVIOUS if someone had yellow fever? I think so. But then I’m not a doctor.) I do apologise for the lack of photos to illustrate this last tale, but they get a bit funny if you take photos at borders it seems… We saw someone else try. It wasn’t well recieved.
Arriving much later than planned, we arrived at ‘Fancy Guesthouse’ (loving the name) at 7.30pm for a much needed shower, and then we went in search of food and BEER!
Guess where we are?
We bypassed a lot of very Western friendly restaurants and bars in favour of a little place that was virtually empty, and had a big table of locals having a bit of a party inside!
Party people on the left. We weren’t invited to join in 😦
We had a curry in a coconut! And very nice it was too.
Chef for the evening.
We had a really good meal, even if we were persuaded to order far more than we needed by the 14 year old lad serving us. You’ll soon learn why, but we are a bit soft in Cambodia.
The next day we had a quick breakfast (poached eggs on toast! Yes! A point for Cambodia vs. Vietnam), before taking a walk to Central Market which has had a bit of a spruce up thanks to French Funding.
Although the snacks weren’t really doing it for us.
After a good long wander around, I settled upon a stall for lunch which looked to have a nice noodle and spring roll thing going on…
Except it was served cold. With some kind of *gag* ‘porridge’ thrown on top! Actually, i really quite liked it, but Kieran wasn’t so keen. Well, you can’t win ’em all.
So, to the first really difficult part of our trip; Tuol Sleng, Genocide Museum. Or S-21 as it would have been known, was a high school that the Khymer Rouge turned into a security prison and torture chamber, the largest incarceration centre in the country. Walking around it is hard to believe the horrific things that happened here; the torture that men, women and children were subjected to for days and weeks on end for no reason, and for many it was the end of the road.
A small cell made from wood.
The barbed wire is to stop the prisoners from jumping to attempt suicide.
Everything was documented and has now been preserved, and the faces of tortured souls stare at you as you walk through.
Needless to say, there are plenty of things we haven’t taken photos of as they were too horrific, many pictures of bodies that have been tortured literally to death, and children, as the KR wanted everything documented in pictures. It’s hard to comprehend that this all happened such a short time ago, and that the rest of the world let it happen at all….
On a more positive note, there are wonderful pictures that children drew to inspire peace, and I shall leave you with these as i pass you over to Kieran, and drink a much needed beer.
Have a second one Bex. So, having visited Tuol Sleng and lunched we had been told about an Irish Bar which coincidentally happened to be two blocks from where we were staying.
We headed to “Rorys” and sidled up to the Bar.We soon made ourselves known to the owner Chad from Seattle and had a few pre dinner drinks
Michael Collins there above the bar, Dublin Jersey to the right.
We paid our bill but Chad very kindly bought us another after which we had to make our excuses and flee to dinner.
Upon arrival on Sunday night we had discovered that we were two blocks from Ph 172 which features lots of backpacker friendly places with happy hours etc, and I had noticed a Shwarma place. So with Bex’ permission we headed there and got a warm welcome. It was lovely to put noodles aside and enjoy some hummus and eggplant. We had a lamb and chicken Shwarma followed by an Apple tea.
I think she’s happy.
For 40 minutes we could have been in a corner of Istanbul (kind of). We loved every bite and then it was back to hotel and Bed.
Having experienced the museum yesterday we decided today would be our trip to the Killing Fields of Choung Ek. Everybody has heard the name and it does evoke Humanity at its most barbaric.
We organised a tuk tuk there and braced ourselves for what we would discover.
These killing fields were the place of execution for thousands of prisoners of the KR. They were brought here by trucks and usually executed within minutes of arriving and dumped into pits. They didnt use any bullets as they were expensive, instead the executioners (murderers) would use whatever was to hand to get the job done. Pieces of Bamboo, garden hoes, axes would be utilized. Choung Ek is just one of hundreds of Killing fields around this country.
Upon arrival at the entrance everyone is given an audio guide which in a very sensitive way aims to help you understand the magnitude of the Horrific deeds committed here.
The haunting fact is that within this City and indeed this country anyone over 40 would have been affected by what happened. 1 person in 4 on average were exterminated by this utter madness.
Please forgive the graphic nature of some of these images, we would be lying if we tried to sugar coat anything we heard or saw. Needless to say we were both overwhelmed.
After leaving such a site we decided to visit the Wat Phnom, meaning Hill Temple, it is a place locals flock to for good luck. We climbed the steps and enjoyed the peaceful tranquility of this place of worship.
Despite the sad sights of history we have enjoyed our first taste of Cambodia, the Khymer people are absolutely wonderful, they are incredibly friendly, helpful and welcoming. A smile goes an awful long way here when negotiating and our hope is that they can overcome the dark past which so much of the West left them to endure. We head to Siem Reap tomorrow via speedboat (yeah baby!) we have been told to whack on the sunblock and enjoy. Angkor Wat, perhaps the greatest collection of Temples in the world, awaits us. Who are we to refuse?
One love.