![\"\"](\"http:\/\/2ndcupoftea.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/train.jpg\" "\\"train\\"")
<\/a>NOT first class - again!<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cI know a great place\u201d. The famous words uttered by Becs that morning which ended up with us going on an unusually quiet metro train (we now know why) to downtown Bangkok, near Lumprini Park to have coffee in an, also unusually quiet, Starbucks-style wifi, a\/c, Thai coffee bar. Unbeknown to us, whilst we were googling \u2018great bars\u2019 in Phnom Penh or ordering seconds of our excellent banoffee coffee smoothies, just a couple of hundred yards down the road a Thai Red Shirt General was executed at point blank range (see the BBC report\u00a0here<\/a>) whilst being interviewed. As we left the bar a little later all we noticed was some razor wire and the fact that any westerners in the area were carrying lots of big cameras and looked very journalist-like. Only later did we discover that of all the coffee bars in all of Bangkok, Becs had to take us to this one, right in the middle of the civil war.<\/p>\n Cambodia or Kampuchea as it is sometimes called is of all the places we have visited the lowest on various rich lists we checked out before going. The average yearly income is only $480. This puts it below Nicaragua, Guatemala and all the other places we went to in Central and South America. I guess then paying $9 for a tuk-tuk from the airport to our hotel could seem a lot. It was a fantastic journey through rush hour traffic, with bikes, cars, trucks, mopeds all whizzing all over the place in all directions. It seems fair cop in Phnom Penh that if one side of the road is too busy, you can just drive down the other, right into the oncoming traffic- nuts! However, when you add that the journey took 45 minutes and the cost of gas is the same as in Australia it becomes hard to argue with \u00a34. In fact throughout our stay tuk-tuks were the chosen means of getting around. We ended up hiring tuk-tuks and their death-defying drivers for a total of 16 hours, paying \u00a322 for the pleasure (a ten minute taxi ride to the train station back home, with which most of my \u00a0journeys begin sets me back about half of that).<\/p>\n Cheap? Yes. Comfortable? Certainly. Safe? Hmmm...<\/p><\/div>\n How do you like the odds of 7 in 20.000? Better than the national lottery for sure, but when the 20.000 is the number of people thrown in S-21 the notorious Khmer Rouge prison and torture centre in downtown Phnom Penh and the 7 is the number that made it out alive, one feels less inclined to \u2018be in it to win it\u2019.<\/p>\n Visiting Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum as it is now called and the associated \u2018Killing Fields\u2019 was just about the main reason for my wanting to go to Phnom Penh and not head straight to Angkor Wat as most seem to. I did reflect later that having such a short time in a city like this, the decision to focus so much of it on two sites that cover only 4 years of a country\u2019s history, and a part they\u2019d probably like to forget at that, is certainly debatable. I guess it\u2019s a bit like flying into Poland and just seeing Auschwitz or trip to Germany where one just goes to Sachsenhausen. \u00a0Is it still relevant? However, pretty much all I really knew about Cambodia was in fact from the excellent book by Jon Swain River of Time<\/em> and the fantastic movie The Killing Fields<\/em> both of which cover these 4 dramatic years and so there was never really any doubt where the tuk-tuk that waited at the gates of our hotel that morning was going to take me. Becs ummed and ahhed a little, the temptation of the \u2018Russian Silk Market\u2019 proving quite a draw, but eventually succumbed I think a little because of feeling she ought to. Whatever our differing motivations, although the following four hours were not easy, at times horrifying and sickening, at times deeply moving, there are absolutely no regrets.<\/p>\n We decided not to take a guide but to wander the halls, rooms and cells of what was in 1975 a school, ourselves and try to take it all in. After Pol Pot took over on 17\u00a0April 1975, the school was converted to a centre for detention, interrogation, torture and killing. In an almost Orwellian move Pol Pot named himself \u2018Brother Number 1\u2019 (all brothers are equal, but some are more equal than others) and put the 1 in the name of the centre; S-21 in \u2018honour\u2019 of himself. During the course of the next 4 years an estimated 20.000 Cambodians from all walks of life, but especially the educated, were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured here. Many died during torture. A favourite was tying the hands of prisoners behind their backs and using a wooden pole to lift them upside down. This action was repeated a number of times until the prisoner lost consciousness. Then the interrogator dipped the prisoner\u2019s head into a barrel of filthy water, shocking him (or her) back into consciousness only for the process to repeat itself. We saw cells with photos of the dead lining the walls, old cartridges, portraits of the dead, graphic paintings drawn from the memory of one of the 7 survivors and in a fifty degree sweltering room watched a documentary about a Cambodian woman who had been tortured to death across the hallway in \u2018C\u2019 Block. She had no idea that at the same time her husband was meeting the same fate in \u2018B\u2019 Block.<\/p>\n Inside S21 and skulls at the Killing Fields<\/p><\/div>\n About two hours of this and most people have had a stomach full. Despite our lack of firm commitment our tuk-tuk driver from the morning had waited patiently outside the gate for us and now was keen to complete the standard \u2018tour\u2019 by taking us about 12 kms outside the centre to the \u2018Killing Fields\u2019, so taking his earnings up from $3 to $20 for five hours of private taxi-ing.<\/p>\n It was certainly tempting to call it a day as far as genocide, torture and death was concerned, but doing so seemed somehow wrong. So once again loaded into the back of our personal moped-trailer, we were whizzed outside the city down incredibly hot, dirty and smelly streets. Until now the view of Phnom Penh had been of the ex-colonial streets, green trees, embassies and bars and restaurants. It didn\u2019t quite tally with the $480 yearly income. About five seconds into this ride, it tallied! Our guide book had suggested we rent bicycles and do it ourselves: another perfect example of guide book writing from the comfort of the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club), happy hour beer in one hand, the other \u2018googling\u2019 distances on via Michelin. \u2018Bicycle it yourself\u2019? Bollocks more like! If we hadn\u2019t melted, we\u2019d have been hit by any of the following: other mad tuk-tuk drivers, bullock drawn carts, crazy-fast taxis, huge trucks and all these coming down either side of the road, with no respect for traffic lights, one way systems, each other or let alone bike riders. In the food chain that is Phnom Penh traffic we\u2019d not have been plankton, but whatever plankton eats! Oh and mister guide book writer; exactly which \u2018plenty of signs\u2019 were we supposed to follow?!<\/p>\n Anyway Mr Tuk-tuk knew the way and took us right to the entrance. Between\u201975 and \u201979 the Cambodians who were taken here and whose shattered skulls now fill the enormous memorial just past the entrance did not have the luxury of strolling round what now looks a little like and park and take pictures, reading signs about it all as we did. Already blindfolded, they were unloaded from the trucks, taken to pre-dug pits and whilst loud speakers blasted out deafening music in a futile attempt to drown out screams and moans, they were shot or later, as bullets became scarce, had their heads bashed in using machetes or poles. If you happened to be a baby and you were taken here, the guards would take you to the ‘baby killing tree’, where they\u2019d bash you against its trunk. There were no survivors at the \u2018Killing Fields\u2019.<\/p>\n The 'killing' tree<\/p><\/div>\n That was enough. Time to tuk-tuk away, downtown where monkeys play on the streets, there are cheap souvenirs, the FCC serves extremely cold happy hour beer and, guide book writer forgiven, bust out the RG and start planning the next couple of days \u2013 Angkor Wat!!! Away from the days horrors, beer in hand it was impossible not to reflect. Less than 24 hours previously we had left the site of an execution where one group of people dressed in red were on the verge civil war with another dressed in yellow. I needn\u2019t have \u2018worried\u2019- the world is still messed up and I had the answer to my earlier concerns about the relevance of such places and the importance of visiting them. Rouge, Red, terrorist, the names change but that’s it. So, in the un-edited words of the guidebook at S-21:<\/p>\n \u201cKeeping the memory of the atrocities committed on Cambodia soil alive is the key to build a new, strong and just state. Furthermore, making sure the crimes of the inhuman regime of Khmer rough public plays crucial role in preventing new Pot Pot from emerging in the lands of Angkor or anywhere on Earth.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Seemingly like so much else in Cambodia they haven\u2019t quite got it right (\u201cPot Pot\u201d?!?), but in a country where not quite getting it right is such a big part of its charm and things just somehow work out anyhow, it simply doesn\u2019t matter. This laid-back attitude suggests the age of tyrants, at least on this side of the border, has vanished. In Cambodia a different, safer, \u2018huggier\u2019 kind of \u2018Pot\u2019 rules now and he doesn\u2019t care if you\u2019re Rouge, red, yellow or farang coloured. Peace!<\/p>\n (If you want to see more of my pictures from S-21 and the Killing Fields, click here<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>Share this:<\/h3>