Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We made our way to Phnom Penh as a jumping off point for Angkor Wat in Siem Reap. Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, is still reinventing itself since it was decimated by the Khmer Rouge in the '70's.

We crossed into Cambodia by boat from Vietnam, via the Mekong River. The boat we were on was small—fourteen passengers and our luggage, but it was nice and breezy; the trip was quite pleasant. The border checkpoints for each country were nothing more than small docks with a man in a tiny hut checking papers. As we arrived at the borders, there were plenty of local kiddies trying to sell everything from chips to sodas, and while we were waiting on the boat to leave, they had a captive audience (see the Phnom Penh photo album). With visas and stamped passports in hand, we continued the remainder of our five-hour boat ride to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

We arrived in Phnom Penh a little after noon—we were very pleasantly surprised by the city. We had no real expectations and had only planned one night here, primarily to go to the S21 prison, but we really loved what we saw. The riverfront area includes a wide grassy park with flags flying from all countries to welcome visitors and announce Phnom Penh's capital status. The riverfront area is lined with busy restaurants and hotels with French colonial-style architecture. We were surrounded by a hodgepodge of east meets west, from pizza parlors to street vendors selling beetles and crickets for snacks, and from the Foreign Correspondents' Club to little street kids begging or selling trinkets.

We quickly settled into our guesthouse and headed with our enterprising tuk-tuk driver, Mr. Ya, to the former S21 Prison (Tuol Sleng), where the Khmer Rouge annihilated thousands of people over a four-year period.

In 1975, a high school in Phnom Penh city was taken over by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces and turned into the site of brutal interrogation and torture of thousands of Cambodians—it was called S21 Prison. Approximately 20,000 Cambodians came through this detention center between 1975 and 1979. All but seventeen of them were tortured to death in the prison or taken to the Killing Fields outside of town for execution. The site is now a museum with very graphic descriptions and pictures.

During the four years of Khmer Rouge reign, about two million Cambodians were killed throughout the country, including women and children. There are several really good books out here that were written by survivors of this period in Cambodia. The one I (Bev) read was written by a woman two years older than me. It was called "First They Killed My Father." She grew up in an upper middle class home in Phnom Penh city. When she was five years old she was forced by the Khmer Rouge to flee the city with all the other residents. Her story is about her and her family's struggle for survival against starvation, assassination, and illness. What struck me the most is a sentence in the beginning of the book: "This is a story of survival: my own and my family's. . . . If you had been living in Cambodia during this period, this would be your story, too."

The museum contains four buildings with kids running and playing through relatively scenic and serene grounds, which mask the horrors that unfolded here in the 1970's. The Khmer Rouge systematically catalogued those who passed through the prison and in one display, rows and rows of portrait shots of victims staring blankly into the camera gave us a particularly creepy feeling (see the Phnom Penh photo album).

The rooms housing the final fourteen victims at the prison contain the original beds they were tied to along with the instruments used to torture them. To cap it off, a picture of the victim as found by the Vietnamese army adorns the wall above the bed in each room. There was a somber gravesite on the grounds for these final fourteen victims. It was hard to believe that all of this happened only 30 years ago. We have had ups and downs on this trip, but with the museum's history combined with landmine or white phosphorous victims begging in front of the museum, this was a major emotional low point.

We had little knowledge of the details of the Khmer Rouge prior to the trip, so with some of our pre-trip time in December, we watched the Killing Fields (excellent movie) and a documentary on Pol Pot. Here is a brief history: the Khmer Rouge leadership envisioned an agrarian communist society independent of outside influences. Once the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, defeated the Cambodian army and took over Phnom Penh, they told the entire city that an American air raid to flush Viet Cong was imminent and that everyone needed to leave their possessions and evacuate the city.

In fear, they left, ended up in labor camps, and the lives of all Cambodians were changed forever. Anyone considered an enemy of the regime was killed—this included anyone who had been "corrupted" by education, exposed to outside (western) influences, worked for the former administration, or spoke out against the new way of life. The time period was considered year zero, as all other memories of previous lives and loves had to be disavowed.

The killings at the S21 prison were particularly nefarious, even for this horrible time period. Pol Pot became more and more paranoid about spies infiltrating the Khmer Rouge, particularly spies from the US (CIA) or the Soviet Union (KGB). Those taken to S21 were brutally tortured, and whether or not they confessed to being a spy, they were executed, usually with a blunt instrument to the head or a knife across the throat. When one family member was considered an enemy and brought in for interrogation, usually the entire family (including babies) was later tortured as well and then executed to prevent revenge killings.

Despite the recent gruesome history, the city is rebounding, quickly becoming the undiscovered pearl of Southeast Asia. There are plenty of great restaurants and guest houses, and the people are really nice and quick to smile. There are several interesting sites, including the Royal Palace with its silver pagoda (so named because the floor is made entirely of silver), the riverfront, and various museums. We explored as much of the city as we could in a 24-hour time period, but we had to leave to catch our bus to Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat. We shortchanged Phnom Penh, though, and we would definitely add more time here in any future visit to the region.