Pensive in Phnom Penh
Trip dates: December 17, 2016 - December 19, 2016
Quick intro for this post - Phnom Penh contains memorials for mass killings by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from the 70s-90s and so the bottom of the post will contain some potentially disturbing pictures and stories.
I'm going to cover the normal general trip parts at the top here then save some of the more gruesome/sad stuff for the end, so if you aren't comfortable, feel free to skip the last part of the post.
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After wat-ing around Siem Reap, we took a bus down to Phnom Penh to wrap up our time in Cambodia. It took about 6 hours, but we had an air conditioned bus with wifi that was fairly comfortable. For only $16 a person, it worked out great. And they give you a pastry snack along the way!
We had a really short stay in Phnom Penh - only 2 nights. Since we took the midday bus from Siem Reap, we didn't arrive in Phnom Penh until the evening so we actually only had 1 day to sightsee.
While in Phnom Penh, we generally ate more expensive food because we weren't as comfortable with the street food options. On the plus side, the city was a lot less dusty than Siem Reap, but it was still pretty dirty on the streets (lots of rats/cockroaches) and crowded with motor bikes, cars, and people.
Some of the top places we ate:
- Mok Money - allowed you to send back any dish no questions asked and replace it with something else. We tried some new things here because of that policy and got some new flavors. We did end up sending a dish back too and it wasn't a problem at all.
- Black Bambu - super fancy shmancy place because I picked it and felt like something a little more western-y. It was our most expensive meal in a while! Pretty much US prices even though we ordered small plates. But the food was really delicious!
After our brief stint in Phnom Penh, we were headed to Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). No land transfer this time, we were flying in style. Ok not really, just Vietnam Airlines. But we did manage to stop by the Plaza Premium lounge at Phnom Penh's airport. We have a Priority Pass membership which provides access to many different lounges in international airports (thanks to our Citi Prestige card), and the lounge here was voted the best out of the Priority Pass lounges recently. It was definitely one of the nicest lounges we've been to in terms of comfort and food! It was too bad we had eaten a small breakfast already and didn't have a ton of time to relax and enjoy the lounge. Phnom Penh airport lounges, who knew?
Warning: the following section contains disturbing pictures or stories about the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge as well as our thoughts from viewing the memorials.
For the full day that we had in Phnom Penh, we did a pretty standard tuk tuk tour (aka find a tuk tuk driver to take you to these sites) which consisted of:
- The Killing Fields at the village of Choeung Ek, which is a mass grave site that has been designated as a national memorial.
- Russian market - this was an old Russian market where people would trade goods and now it's just a dense, crowded tourist market. We came because we wanted to stop by the DVD stands to get Westworld season 1, since it finished up on HBO and we want to catch up on it.
- Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, also known as S-21, which was a prison that housed and interrogated prisoners before transporting them to the Killing Fields.
Neither of us had a lot of information about the Khmer Rouge before we came to Cambodia, other than knowing vaguely about Pol Pot and that there were many atrocities committed. We watched parts of the movie, The Killing Fields, in Siem Reap because our hotel had it, which gave us some idea of what happened.
To summarize the impact of this regime: the Khmer Rouge established a communist state and had a heavy focus on agrarian society (all rice farming, no other plants) and anti-intellectualism (having glasses, knowing English etc. were all reasons to be an enemy of the state and executed). Current estimates are that up to 3 million out of a total population of around 8-10 million in Cambodia were killed over the first 5 years of the Khmer Rouge rule from 1975-1979. That means that roughly 1/3 to 1/4 of the population was either killed directly by the regime or died due to the poor living conditions (starvation, malnutrition, disease, forced labor). That is insane.
The Killing Fields is one of thousands of mass grave sites that were found as the North Vietnamese liberating army came through Cambodia. On heavy rainy days, and even on our visit, bone fragments and pieces of cloth continue to surface from the ground. A memorial Buddhist stupa was built recently to house many of the bigger bone fragments (skulls take up a large portion of it) which is a central fixture of the area.
The site has a very tranquil and somber feel, as it is pretty quiet since most visitors are listening to the included audio guide, narrated by someone who lived through the regime. The guide contained many heart-wrenching stories and details on what went on at the grave. It's actually quite unnerving to visit, as the site is actually very beautiful and peaceful now despite the atrocities that had happened not so long ago.
It was a very sobering experience to realize that this happened so recently and that many in the western world were (and still are somewhat) blind to it at the time. One of the most common comparisons we heard was that of the plight of civilians in Syria/Aleppo and how many in the world are not doing anything about it. At an individual level, one of the important messages that was conveyed by this memorial was to remember that we are all humans and to have compassion for your fellow man. That compassion was missing from Cambodia for a long time and the country is still recovering from the brain drain and misfortune caused by the Khmer Rouge.
From the Killing Fields, we stopped by the Russian market to get lunch and our DVD. It was good to take a break from the sad memorial to prepare us for the next step, though the market itself was literally a hot mess. It was in the upper 80s and humid and there was basically no circulation in the market. So we scoped it out, then grabbed food at an air conditioned restaurant outside the market, before heading on to S-21.
The last stop was the Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum, often referred to as S-21 (Security Prison). This was one of many processing centers where intellectuals, dissidents, or basically anyone who was viewed as a possible traitor, were brought to be interrogated, tortured, and to 'confess' to crimes and name their 'co-conspirators'. While many then went on to a mass grave site, several prisoners also lost their lives here due to the inhumane conditions and violence that occurred.
There was another audio guide here and many pictures of the incoming prisoners, staff, and general documentation of the experience at the prison. I actually found the closeness, the intimacy, the despair of the prison even worse than the mass grave. There were so many different people, children, innocents, that lost their lives for nothing here; housed in impromptu cells of wood or brick that were barely 8 feet x 2 feet across with a munitions tin for waste.
It's easy to be sucked up in the grind of daily life and to disconnect from events such as these, thinking that this is all in the past. After spending time in SE Asia, what we've come to realize is that the wars and atrocities that have ravaged this area were not so long ago and it seems all too easy to repeat. It's just crazy to think how much evil man can do to others and this experience made us cherish each other and our loved ones even more. It also helped provide a visceral reason to do things that help move us back in the direction of compassion, love, and hope, even if it's just a renewed consciousness and empathy for others.
