Phnom Penh

We left Koh Phi Phi @ 9am in the morning, then we flew from Phuket to Bangkok @ 2.50pm, then from Bangkok @ 5.30pm landing in Phnom Penh @ 6.40pm.

We had a transfer booked with the airport, so as they were not there myself and Elliott found a cash machine and tried to figure out money. The Cambodian money is Riel, but we knew that for some things you need American Dollars. Anyway the cash machine only gave out $'s, so we took those out and then had to change some into Riel. I changed $40, and that gave me 148,000 Riel, and it was quite a stack. By the time we had done that the transfer had still not arrived so we asked a passing man and he said that the hotel never picked up but he could take us for $7.

Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, Phnom Penh has been the national capital since the French colonization of Cambodia.  

During the Vietnam War, Cambodia was used as a base by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, and thousands of refugees from across the country flooded the city to escape the fighting between their own government troops, the South Vietnamese and its allies, and the Khmer Rouge. By 1975, the population was 3 million, most of who were refugees from the fighting. The city fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975. All of its residents, including those who were wealthy and educated, were evacuated from the city and forced to do labour on rural farms as "new people".  Tuol Sleng High School was taken over by Pol Pot's forces and was turned into the S-21 prison camp, where people were detained and tortured. Pol Pot aimed for a return to an agrarian economy and therefore killed many people perceived as educated, lazy, or political enemies. Many others starved to death as a result of failure of the agrarian society and the sale of Cambodia's rice to China in exchange for bullets and weaponry. The former high school is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where Khmer Rouge torture devices and photos of their victims are displayed. Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields), where the Khmer Rouge marched prisoners from Tuol Sleng to be murdered and buried in shallow pits, is also now a memorial to those who were killed by the regime.  The Khmer Rouge were driven out of Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese in 1979,  and people began to return to the city.

On the way to our hotel our tuk tuk driver said that he could take us on a tour the following day to some of the sights for $10 each.  So the following morning we met him @ 9am outside the hotel (which for $11 a night is very plush, with a proper mattress, hot water, a flushing toilet and air con!).   We were told that one thing that you must do in Cambodia is shoot a machine gun, so that was the first place he took us, as apparently nowhere else was open at that time on a Sunday.

When we arrived at the shooting range a man handed us the ‘menu’, which was a booklet with all the weapons and the cost of using them. On the menu there was more than just machine guns, there were hand guns, shotguns, grenades and a RPG rocket launcher.  For those with a more sadistic side, you can even blow up a cow with an RPG…for the right price of course (approx $300).Only after we went to see the Tuol Sleng S-21 Genocide Museum, and the Killing Fields did we understand why our driver wanted to take us shooting first – There is no way either of them would have felt like playing around with deadly weapons after seeing what happened to so many Cambodian people.

So Craig shot a coconut with a AK47 and Elliott an M-16, it looked noisy, painful, scary and i wasnt entirely comfortable with the whole thing, so i watched.  The stockpile of weapons is a remnant of decades of conflict dating to World War II.  By the mid-1960s, Cambodia had allowed the North Vietnamese to set up bases within its territories, from which it carried out attacks on U.S.-backed South Vietnamese forces.  By the early 1970s, the tables had turned: Cambodia was now fighting communist North Vietnam and also combating Khmer Rouge guerrillas. In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge wrested control of the country and began a genocidal campaign and killed nearly 2 million people, the country was awash in weapons.  Now 30 years later, the weapons that shaped Cambodia’s violent past have resurfaced at firing ranges such as Kambol and some others near Phnom Penh.

The Cambodian government publically say that you can’t fire these guns here.  Government officials have repeatedly denied the existence of the firing ranges operating near the capital, insisting they have been closed for nearly a decade. But the owners of the ranges say that the government is aware of the operations and those of soldiers from the nearby army base who use his range for target practice in the morning. They say that the government takes a percentage of their profits, an accusation officials dismiss.  Another difficult topic..........

 

The next stop was Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields).  Some people may not want to read this or look at the pictures as it is very disturbing.  The killing fields are where people that where "traitors" to the Khmer Rouge where taken to be executed.  The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees. The reasoning was to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents' deaths.

 

The whole area has been turned into a very peaceful memorial of what happened.  Everyone gets an audio tour, so there no talking, people are just sitting listening and thinking about what happened only 30 odd years ago.  The utmost respect is given to the victims of the massacres through signs and tribute sections throughout the park. Many dozens of mass graves are visible above ground, many which have not been excavated yet. Apparently bones and clothing surface after heavy rainfalls due to the large number of bodies still buried in shallow mass graves. It is not uncommon to run across the bones or teeth of the victims scattered on the surface as you tour the memorial park. If these are found, you are asked to notify a memorial park officer.

 

 

 



 

After we left, we had to find our tuk tuk driver in a resteraunt where we stopped and had lunch.  Here all the local people where glued to the tv, they were showing a mixture of the thai boxing and the preperations for the funeral of the Former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk, who was monarch for more than 60 years until his abdication in 2004.  He died in October in Bejing and his funeral is set to honor an ancient tradition for Khmer kings based on rituals not put into practice since the last funeral for a Cambodian King took place in 1960.

 

The last stop of the day was the S21 prison. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill". Tuol Sleng was only one of at least 150 execution centers in the country, and as many as 20,000 prisoners there were killed.

 

The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex "Security Prison 21" (S-21) and construction began to adapt the prison to the inmates: the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes.  In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc. Later, the party leadership's paranoia turned on its own ranks and purges throughout the country saw thousands of party activists and their families brought to Tuol Sleng and murdered.

 

 

 

Upon arrival at the prison, prisoners were photographed and required to give detailed autobiographies, beginning with their childhood and ending with their arrest. 

 

 

Out of an estimated 17,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only seven known survivors.  As of September 2011, only three of them are thought to be still alive: Chum Mey, Bou Meng and Chim Math. All three were kept alive because they had skills their captors judged to be useful, some as photographers and painters. 

 

 

After that our driver took us back to the hotel for an early dinner and bed, all in a very complatative mood.

 

The next day we decided to walk around the Royal Temple complex, we had been warned that some areas may be out of bounds due to the preparations for the Royal funeral. 

 

 

 

It was quite strange and special at the same time to be in Phonm Penh at this time as you could feel that there was something going on.  There were loads of children selling comemrative ribbons with the former Kings face on, and there were a lot of armed police everywhere.

 

The details of the funeral are a traditional Buddhist ceremony which has looked the same from 19th-century.  A Khmer king’s funeral essentially follows the same custom as every Cambodian funeral, but on a much grander scale.  Everything becomes longer and everything is spectacular.  The Brahmanist element of Khmer tradition is dominant in the funeral rite—which bears a resemblance to the funerals of Thai royals—but there are influences from Buddhism and animism too.  The body is always kept in state for a number of months, during which prayers are said for the dead king, a period that serves both practical and spiritual purposes.  There has to be a special building built on which to cremate the body. But Cambodians believe the king needs time, death is a transformation…. You need to prepare every ritual so you can direct the journey in the right way. You push the destiny in the way you want: All this is the duty of the living.  To aid this spiritual transformation, the late king’s face is covered with a golden mask, when you die, you have to change, you have another individuality, another personality.  As the date for cremation nears —often after a 100-day ceremony—the body of the late king is placed inside a golden urn.  Traditional practice is for the king’s body to be seated upright in the urn, which is about 3 meters in height, in the fetal position, symbolizing rebirth.  That the urn is placed at the top of a five-tiered pyramidal pavilion and taken on a procession around Phnom Penh.

 

 

That afternoon we walked around the city and outside a reateraunt we saw these monkeys.

 

 

I just love this picture........

 

 

Phonm Penh is very lively, exciting, dirty, smelly, hot and full of character.  The main reason for leaving was that travellers were advised it best not to be in the city for the funeral weekend.  But i think that we may be returning, the people are so friendly and it is a crazy place.  So after 3 days in the very hot and humid city we need to head back to the coast.  We have a coach booked to take us to Sihanoukville for $6, so until then....