Welcome to Cambodia

We arrived in Cambodia on January 9th and spent the afternoon exploring Phnom Penh. Our first stop was for a local lunch of fish in palm sugar and ginger beef which was delicious. We had a treat awaiting us, which was to see a good friend of mine who now lives in this part of the world (purposefully vague because she travels all over). So I had to head back towards the internet cafe to see if she had responded to my email. On the brief walk we were surprised by several things, but unfortunately I don't have pictures for all of them. We saw an elephant walking down the side of the road (apparently not normal even in Cambodia, but only Matt got the picture), a standard gas station,

a snack vendor selling fried crickets, bird eggs, grub worms, beetles and tarantulas, and a government office,

and we had only been walking for five minutes. Then, we arrived at the internet cafe and whose head popped up from behind a computer but Jenn Brown! Just the girl I wanted to see! An hour later, we had concocted cocktails, and an hour after that, we were at a lovely restaurant trying all sorts of local dishes. The amok was fantastic and I liked the tarantula legs, but not the body.

If anyone is reading this with children or if you are sensitive to gore, you should stop here.

I'm going to insert a brief synopsis of recent Cambodian history here, stolen from Wikipedia and edited by me:

Cambodia gained independence from France on November 9, 1953. It became a constitutional monarchy under King Norodom Sihanouk. As the Vietnam War progressed, Sihanouk adopted an official policy of neutrality until ousted in 1970 by a military coup led by Prime Minister General Lon Nol and Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, while on a trip abroad. From Beijing, Sihanouk realigned himself with the communist Khmer Rouge rebels who had been slowly gaining territory in the remote mountain regions and urged his followers to help in overthrowing the pro-United States government of Lon Nol, hastening the onset of civil war.

The Khmer Rouge reached Phnom Penh and took power in 1975, changing the official name of the country to Democratic Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot. They immediately evacuated the cities and sent the entire population on forced marches to rural work projects. They attempted to rebuild the country's agriculture on the model of the 11th century. They also discarded Western medicine, with the result that while hundreds of thousands died from starvation and disease there were almost no drugs in the country. Estimates vary, but roughly one million people were viciously executed during the reign of Pol Pot. An emphasis was put on murdering anyone in a position of power, or anyone educated. The Khmer Rouge discovered this by research or by feeling the hands of victim, if they were rough, they were a worker and should be sent to labor in the country, if they were smooth, they were educated and should be killed.

In November 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to stop Khmer Rouge incursions across the border and the genocide of Vietnamese in Cambodia. Violent occupation and warfare between the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge holdouts continued throughout the 1980s. Peace efforts began in Paris in 1989, culminating two years later in October 1991 in a comprehensive peace settlement. The United Nations was given a mandate to enforce a ceasefire, and deal with refugees and disarmament.

The following day was going to be a long and sad one. We took a tuk tuk (small 1-axle carriage pulled behind a motorcycle) to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and then to Tuol Sleng Museum. I'm going to keep the description of these sites to a bare minimum.

Tuol Sleng had been a school before it was converted to become Security Prison 21 by Pol Pot's cadres in 1975 (this happened so recently, it's atrocious). It was used to torture prisoners for information and as a holding area before prisoners were transported to Choeung Ek.

Choeung Ek was used for execution and burial and there's a shrine near the entrance which holds hundreds of skulls. A large portion of the remains have still not been disinterred and it's obvious that not all of the pebbles in the dust under your feet are made from rock.

After the day's learning was over, Matt and I went wandering around by the Mekong River before eating and hitting the hay. The following morning we were up early for a boat ride to Siem Reap. The trip was gorgeous, but it was obvious that people were living in poverty. You can see video of the boat ride here.

When we arrived outside of Siem Reap, we saw more of the same. Upon reaching Siem Reap, we found a hotel and then dinner before interviewing a tuk tuk driver who would take us to see the temple ruins the following day.

I think the pictures in this post are self-explanatory.