One of the things that strikes you in Cam­bodia is the lack of any social ser­vices.  Thus, it is very com­mon to be approached by beg­gars miss­ing vari­ous limbs or even their eye­sight.  Indeed, it is so com­mon that since exper­i­en­cing Cam­bodia I have been totally imper­vi­ous to other coun­tries beg­gars; none could reach the suf­fer­ing of these poor souls.  There was some­thing in the eyes, some­thing in the nervous­ness of Cam­bod­i­ans that was not quite clear.  They are a charm­ing, excel­lent people, but I felt some men­tal anguish was locked into their souls.  In such a case, Cesca and I, can­not simply play the “tour­ist” and ignore it; we wanted to under­stand it.

So, after check­ing out of our amaz­ing Christ­mas Day hotel, we went back to nor­mal levels of accom­mod­a­tion across the river and away from the main tour­ist areas.  The Babel Guest house, Siem Reap turned out to be the very best room I had in the whole of South East Asia.  A very well appoin­ted, large room, with a com­fort­able bed was only the start.  The build­ing was con­struc­ted in an eleg­ant, mod­ern style, and more than wel­com­ing.  On our first day there we had much blog­ging and work to do and so headed down the Singing Tree, which was some­thing of a trav­el­lers insti­tu­tion.  There we enjoyed free WIFI, great food and drink while we caught up with things online such as the Credit card bills.  As the night fell the café reg­u­larly put on a show and today’s per­form­ance was by a dis­abled act­ing troop.  The story was about an aspect of their suf­fer­ing I had not yet con­sidered.  Sure, the gov­ern­ment leaves them to them­selves, but I had not real­ised that loos­ing a limb, or being nat­ur­ally dis­abled, car­ried a massive social stigma here.

The dis­abled act­ing troop in Siem Reap

The play ended and I had one of those moments one often gets in the cinema – when you sud­denly snap out of the movie and become aware of all the people around you.  I was sud­denly aware of where I was, that all around me rich tour­ists sat and watched these unfor­tu­nates’ act.  I was struck by the dis­par­ity between the two groups and my place firmly in the richer.  After watch­ing this play I could on longer simply be another blind tour­ist.  I needed to under­stand this coun­try and this set the tone for the rest of our journey.

Our first step was to visit the fam­ous Siem Reap night mar­ket, which has a small cinema show­ing a film about Cam­bodia and its recent his­tory.  We were very early and so sat at a local open air bar and chat­ted to the bar­man who taught us a few very cool bar tricks.  Then we entered the cinema, which was really a pro­jector moun­ted in a dark room made of metal sheets.  The film was a simple homemade doc­u­ment­ary, obvi­ously a labour of love for the cre­ator, it was short and mostly a col­lec­tion of news clips with Power­Point text over the top.  Its mes­sage, how­ever, was unmistakable.

It spoke about the Khmer Rouge.

The Red Devils

The KR flag

The Khmer Rouge took con­trol of the coun­try after two main events gave their insurgency/armed-revolution enough pop­u­lar sup­port to win the war.  The first was the dis­pos­ing of the king Sihan­ouk and his exile to China.  From there he was impressed by the Mao revolu­tion and aligned him­self with the Khmer Rouge.  This led to many people sup­port­ing the com­mun­ists in order, they thought, to restore Sihan­ouk.  How­ever, this was some­thing that Pol Pot had no inten­tion of let­ting happen.

The second event was the Amer­ican car­pet bomb­ing of Cam­bod­ian sites, mainly vil­lages. This led to a massive anti-American feel­ing that played straight into the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

Even­tu­ally they won the war and gained power, but then what they did with it shocked the world.  In power, the Khmer Rouge car­ried out a rad­ical pro­gram that included isol­at­ing the coun­try from for­eign influ­ence, clos­ing schools, hos­pit­als and factor­ies, abol­ish­ing bank­ing, fin­ance and cur­rency, out­law­ing all reli­gions, con­fis­cat­ing all private prop­erty and relo­cat­ing people from urban areas to col­lect­ive farms where forced labour was wide­spread. The pur­pose of this policy was to turn Cam­bod­i­ans into “Old People” through agri­cul­tural labour. These actions res­ul­ted in massive deaths through exe­cu­tions, work exhaus­tion, ill­ness, and starvation.

Any­one who argued, spoke up, looked smart, or even had nos­tal­gic feel­ings for the old régime was murdered.  Even­tu­ally, when city folk dis­played a sin­gu­lar lack of abil­ity at farm­ing, Pol Pot star­ted mur­der­ing people who were com­mit­ting “eco­nomic sab­ot­age” by not meet­ing the quotas he set.  This murder claimed the lives of 1.7 mil­lion people.  Either by work­ing them to death in the fields, shoot­ing them for minor crimes in the camps or tak­ing them to the centre of hor­ror – S21 and tor­tur­ing them mer­ci­lessly before tak­ing them out to the killing fields and bash­ing their heads in.

Any­one over 35 in Cam­bodia has sur­vived the Khmer Rouge, and it was this that we could see in their eyes.

The film stopped and Cesca and I exchanged looks.  That such things have happened to these charm­ing people was almost bey­ond belief.

New Year 2009

The next day we caught another bus down to the south coast to be able to cel­eb­rate New Year’s Eve in style.  We trav­elled along the north south road and the coun­tryside was simply beau­ti­ful.  Green palms and rice pad­dies; just like your ima­gin­a­tion con­jures up.  Even­tu­ally we passed south of the cap­ital and into the Sihan­ouk­ville region.

Arranged around a num­ber of beaches, Sihan­ouk­ville is the hol­i­day cap­ital of the coun­try.  We aimed for the cheapest and most tour­is­ted beach of Serendip­ity.  The Lonely Planet warned of dangers in that area, but we had little choice as we knew that rooms would be in short sup­ply this close to the New Years. On arrival we found that rooms were actu­ally in exceed­ingly short sup­ply and we had to spend half a day hunt­ing one down.  We passed by many other couples try­ing the same thing, and most hotels simply laughed at us and said that we were the ump­teenth couple try­ing for a room that day.  How­ever, luck was with us and we found a room in a mainly Cam­bod­ian hotel right on Serendip­ity beach.

The Serendip­ity beach in a quieter moment

We checked in and checked out the beach.  A four mile strip of sand was entirely developed with seem­ingly end­less café’s and bars all right next to each other.  Not an inch of sand lacked a deck­chair or table and we walked for only a short while before find­ing some sun loun­gers and relax­ing with a cold cof­fee.  This was the cue for the touts.  Tout­ing in Cam­bod­ian beaches is legendary, and mostly the remit of small groups of girls selling brace­lets.  Cesca pur­chased a num­ber of these and had a great time chat­ting to the young­sters.  In a little over a hour we had been touted and sold at by over fifty passing chil­dren and ladies.  This, com­bined with the mul­ti­tude of leg­less beg­gars miser­ably crawl­ing across the sand, takes a spe­cial sort of per­son to over­come.  You either just ignore them, or you feel ter­rible for ignor­ing them.  Actu­ally buy­ing some­thing or gift­ing a dol­lar to a beg­gar incites a ver­it­able hoard of the afflic­ted to des­cend upon you.

If this sounds like it was ruin­ing the relax­a­tion, it didn’t.  All in all that day on the beach was a lot of fun.  Cesca even talked me into hav­ing my back hairs pulled out by cot­ton.  A tech­nique that, in all my travels, has only been sur­passed in pain by my one (and only) Thai massage.

That night we pre­pared for the party.  We were expect­ing a West­ern inva­sion of the beach, but in actual fact the Cam­bod­i­ans had got there first.  All the West­ern­ers were block­aded down one end of the beach by the abso­lute throng of Cam­bod­ian fam­il­ies hav­ing what must be a yearly pic­nic.  I wish my child­hood pic­nics had been like this one!  It seemed as if every single Cam­bod­ian man women and child, a num­ber approach­ing 20 thou­sand easy, had a hand-held fire­work.  The night sky was aflame with bright col­oured stars being shot into the sea in unima­gin­able num­bers.  It looked for all the world like Cam­bodia was try­ing to bring down some air­craft by bar­rage.  I have never seen any­thing quite like it.

The amount of fire­works is amaz­ing (-ly dangerous)!

We wanted an authen­tic exper­i­ence and so made our way along the Cam­bod­ian throng look­ing for a west­ern­ers friendly spot, but try­ing to get through the fire­works was not easy.  In fact the sens­ible part of my soul, the part that senses danger, was des­per­ately try­ing to get my atten­tion with two infal­lible facts,

• 1) I am very tall and hav­ing to duck under all these fireworks.
• 2) Cam­bod­ian emer­gency rooms on New Years eve are prob­ably packed already.

After another rocket missed my face by inches, Cesca and I pulled back and reluct­antly joined the West­ern­ers in the tour­ist bars at one end of the beach.  There we danced, drank and on the stroke of mid­night went for a swim in the sea – it was one hell of a night, lit con­stantly by fire­works for the entire time.  That was the end of 2008, one of the most inter­est­ing years I have spent on this planet.  2009 beckoned.

A few days, and a few more hotels in quieter beach areas later, we left Sihan­ouk­ville for the cap­ital Phnom Penh.

Buddhist sights abound in the Cam­bod­ian cap­ital city

The cap­ital of Cam­bodia has the most mixed his­tory of the coun­try.  Host to the Khmer Rouge’s fam­ous S-21 prison and tor­ture facil­ity, while at the same time con­tain­ing some of the worlds greatest Buddhist mon­archs’ palaces.  We spent our first day in the city get­ting to know this history.

WARNING If you don’t like hear­ing this hor­rible stuff skip ahead now.

The hor­ror of S-21 is belied by the sim­pli­city of the build­ings them­selves.  We arrived at the gate and hired a guide to take us around.  I was glad that we did as he explained at length what had happened in each of the now bare rooms.  The entire site reminded me of a dis­used flat block from the 60’s.  This is close to the truth as the site was ori­gin­ally a middle school.  The blood­i­ness of the mur­der­ing here is almost bey­ond belief.  The young killers were all chosen for their age and the abil­ity of the Khmer to influ­ence their minds.  Acts com­mit­ted here include rape, burn­ing, ham­mer­ing, star­va­tion, beat­ings, sim­u­lated drown­ing, hanging by the limbs for hours, and being clamped in pain­ful pos­i­tions.  The vic­tim was pho­to­graphed before and after and then dragged out of town to the Killing Fields and beaten around the head until dead (to save on ammo.)

The tor­ture room and some of the victims.

The guide explained all this to us with a lazi­ness of a man who does this twenty times a day.  At one point we passed a sign:

The sign at S-21

I asked what it meant.  He said that it was a sign telling the vis­it­ors not to laugh.  I wondered how any­one could find this funny.  He then intro­duced us to one of the very few sur­viv­ors of the hor­ror.  This old man smiled and shook my hand.  He was also a tour guide.  I sup­pose that in com­ing here every­day he is excising his demons and indeed I saw no pain behind his eyes.

After the guide left we went upstairs to the photo exhib­i­tion.  This was a col­lec­tion of images by a European journ­al­ist who had vis­ited Cam­bodia under the Khmer Rouge.  He had been a sym­path­iser for the Khmer and a com­mun­ist him­self.  Under each photo was two little bits of text, one writ­ten at the time, and one writ­ten with the full weight of hind­sight.  It was not pretty.  It was clear that the Khmer Rouge had stage man­aged his entire visit from start to end.  I looked at the faces of the smil­ing Cam­bod­i­ans work­ing in the fields.  I remem­ber think­ing that most of these are now dead.  It really brought it home to me.

The photo gallery

The next gal­lery was pho­tos and text provided by fam­il­ies of those who went to war for the Khmer and helped run the coun­try after their vic­tory.  This gal­lery spoke of the deeper truth in the story.  Many of the people worked for the Khmer gladly and thought the gov­ern­ment a good thing.  It was only the fact that most are miss­ing pre­sumed dead that spoke of a greater truth.  How many Cam­bod­i­ans simply “got on with it” in small jobs?  How many woke up to the what they were doing to their country?

How many have yet to wake up?

I left S-21 with a low heart and couldn’t face going to see the Killing Fields them­selves, instead we decided to visit some­thing positive.

The New Cam­bod­ian Children’s Life Asso­ci­ation (NCCLA) is an orphan­age in the heart of the city.  It was setup by a sur­vivor of the Khmer Rouge who has ded­ic­ated his life and the profits of his two busi­ness to mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the rebuild­ing of Cam­bodia.  We got chat­ting to one of his man­agers when vis­it­ing Cam­ory Foods, which is a bakery and café a short walk from the main bus stand.  Cesca quickly got us invited to have a per­sonal visit.  We walked about half a mile along the strip, past mul­ti­tudes of res­taur­ants and café’s and then turned down a side street.

Cesca has a nat­ural gift with children

Here we met many of the people involved; they were mak­ing the children’s lunches.  Many hel­los were exchanged and smiles and Cesca snapped off a few images, then we were led down a suc­ces­sion of increas­ingly grim alley­ways.  These were the sort of alleys that any nor­mal per­son would avoid, espe­cially in Cam­bodia, but we went any­way.  At the end a non-descript stair­case led up to the orphan­age proper.  Built over three levels the setup was a tight fit for all the inhab­it­ants.  At first you had the sep­ar­ate boys and girls dorms, then a classroom with three very old com­puters in it that led out onto a large oblong bal­cony over­look­ing the city.  Above this we found another room with a class in pro­gress.  About twenty chil­dren were being taught Eng­lish and we sat quietly at the back and were very impressed by the qual­ity of teach­ing.  After this another class star­ted up, this one was teach­ing Japan­ese.  We quietly left them to it.

Learn­ing is good

Most of these kids are vic­tims of things such as extreme poverty and the AIDS virus rather than the Khmer Rouge, but it is all indir­ectly con­nec­ted.  While we hung out with some of the older kids, I did some much needed main­ten­ance on the com­puters.  Two were a write off and kept elec­tro­cut­ing me, but the third could be sor­ted out.

I have spent much time since try­ing to think of a way I may help more, and have come up with some­thing a little spe­cial.  I am going to make a series of high qual­ity com­puter wall­pa­pers and sell them on this web­site at $1 a set.  Then all the money will go to these poor kids.  Stay tuned for the announcement.

We left the little hordes as they were piled into a small bus to take them to another les­son.  I felt the entire exper­i­ence had been one of hope and it quite made up for the his­tory of S-21.  This coun­try needs to for­get the past hor­rors and look to the future.

Places like the NCCLA are doing just that.

Regards,

Basho.

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