Day 27: 5/7/13
The air conditioning wasn't great last night either so we were well sweaty by this morning! Channa had told us that the sun rose at 5. Our hotel was by a river and we had a balcony looking out over it so I set the alarm for 5 so I could see it, but it was still dark at 5 and there was a really bright street light shining towards the window so the sunset wouldn't have been great anyway! I lay down again and checked out the window around twenty past 5 and it was fairly bright but I didn't see any sunrise really. I don't think it was that impressive this morning!
We didn't leave until 7:30 this morning- a sleep in at this stage! We had a tuc-tuc again to carry our luggage. It was the same man who's house we went to last night. I don't know how the motorbike can pull a tuc-tuc full of 16 heavy bags! We walked to the bus stop then but it wasn't there yet. We only had to wait about 15 minutes.
We were asking Channa if the kids had toys as the young boys last night only had the teddies. She said that they would have been from tourists and they generally wouldn't have any toys- they just play outside with their friends. They play with the plants and run around and things. They seem perfectly happy, I'd say a lot happier than all the kids at home! They don't celebrate birthdays either. They cook some food for their Mum in honour of the suffering they went through to give birth. Also, they are 1 when they are born and they count their new age at the New Uear which is in April. They celebrate New Year from the 13-15 or from the 14-16 of April. They clean all their houses and put up decorations. They put fruit outside their house and they play some games together. They all go to the temple aswell- Channa said it's all about Unity and celebrating together. They defintely don't have Christmas either. Restaurants and hotels will put up decorations for the westerners but it isn't a holiday for them. They have three holidays to celebrate here- New Year, spiritual day and dragon boat racing.
We got on the bus anyway and drove towards Phnom Penh. They say the name of the capital city in a really funny way where Penh is like Ping and they say it so the ing resonates. It's quite funny!
We stopped after about an hour at another rest stop like yesterday with stalls of food, tables and squat toilets. In the front of one of the stalls they had a bowl of live tarantulas there because they cook them and eat them. The guide picked one up and held it. She passed it around then for us all to hold! I held it but it started crawling around my hand then and I was freaked out! I had to pass it on to Ann-Marie fairly quickly!! Then the guide brought over a cooked tarantula and we all got a leg to eat. Apparently it's really good for you! I tried a leg and it was burnt and crunchy again, just like the cricket was. It was a little bit hairy though!!
As soon as we got to Phnom Penh we checked in and then were picked up shortly afterwards for a tour of the killing fields and the S21 prison. The guide gave a whole history of Cambodia, particularly in the 1900's throughout the day on the bus so I'll write as much as I remember now and then write about the killing fields and prison afterwards.
Firsly, Phnom Means mountain and Penh is a lady. There was some lady in the 1300's that had something to do with a lot of statues on the mountain and its named after her! It is now the capital of Cambodia- it was built between 1963 and 1975 but then the city was emptied and was a ghost city. It's slowly making its way back to what it was.
In the early 1900's Cambodia many people went to France to study, one such man was Pol Pot, although that isn't his real name. He joined communist activists in France and when he came back to Cambodia he taught in a school and taught them all about Communism.
Cambodia though was a kingdom with a king called Sihanouk. At the time the war was going on between North and South Vietnam. The North was communist and was supported by China. The south was a democracy and was supported by the US as they were worried about the spread of Communism. King Sihanouk didn't want to enter the war but realised that eventually the Vietnamese would probably enter Cambodia anyway so he decided he'd have to pick a side. He picked the north, ie the Chinese side, as he reckoned they would probably support Cambodia for longer, being closer than the US is. He was the king but at one stage let his father be king so he could be prime-minister and make all these decisions. He chose another man to be a joint prime-minister with him. After a while he decided to leave altogether and he went to France and became a movie star- acting and directing in 10 films! Meanwhile the guy who had been prime minister took over the country and the king couldn't get back in when he wanted. This new guy made the country a democracy- the people's republic of Cambodia- and became a president.
When the king had negotiated with the North Vietnam side of the war they gave him land around the Mekong river that used to belong to Cambodia. The Vietnamese had been living here but now as it was Cambodian the president guy started to kill/evict the Vietnamese. There was a big war between the Cambodian and Vietnamese (while the North/South Vietnam war was going on anyway).
Meanwhile, (back at the ranch) Pol Pot and his communist friends had escaped to the jungle as this new democratic president didnt tolerate communists. This group became the Khmer Rouge, Khmer being the word used for a Cambodian person. In the jungle they were able to round up many farmers. They told people that the war between Cambodia and Vietnam was the cause of the president and they were in contact with the king who wanted to end the war. So people joined up willingly. The US were aware of the problems in Cambodia and bombed parts of Cambodia. This worked wonders for the Khmer Rouge who were able to round up even more troops, saying that the Americans would keep bombing unless they overthrew the present government. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the communists in Vietnam grew stronger and stronger and in April 1975, they both took control. North Vietnam won the war over the south- the Americans had pulled out at this stage and the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and took over the government. There was huge rejoicing as the people were sure it was the end of all the fighting!
Pol Pot and his crew had other ideas though. He envisioned a Cambodia like that before the French colony. He wanted people to be farmers and self-sufficient and not be Westernised. He wanted to eliminate all corruption. Unfortunately his policy for doing that involved kidnapping, torturing and killing.
A few days after the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh they forced all the people to leave, telling them that it was going to be bombed by the Americans, which it wasn't and everyone had to leave and live in the countryside. It was a ghost city for the whole Khmer Rouge period- 1975 to 1979.
Anyone who had any contact with the Western world was kidnapped and placed in prison. This included anyone with higher education, anyone who had contact with foreigners, even people who wore sunglasses or watches. People were also suspected of being spies for the CIA or the KGB (the Russians were involved in the Cambodian Vietnam war somewhere aswell, obviously not on the Khmer Rouge side). If they suspected anyone of being a spy or being Westernised they didn't just take them away, they took their whole family, or sometimes even the whole village so that noone could try to get revenge at a later stage.
Sometimes there were up to 10 people in each family and they would cut all roots in the family. When they were taken away the commoners had no idea where they were taken to or what happened to them.
In Cambodia there were two types of people- the newer people who lived in cities and the older people who were traditionally farmers. The newer people were considered Westernised so a lot of them were killed. Also, a lot of the country were highly educated. The Khmer Rouge offered them study or work opportunities but instead they took them to prisons. The guide we had that day- his own grandparents disappeared that time. The population of the army then was limited and they picked people that were easily 'brainwashed' so a lot of the army were children, often only 10 years old. When the regime fell apart a lot of them were forgiven as they hadn't known any other ways to behave. In turn they were able to explain about the atrocities they had had to commit, which is why we now know so much about the tortures they forced on people.
Even outside the country, other leaders or countries didn't know what was going on and didn't question it or try to get involved as the government was very powerful. Also the Cold War was still evident so countries were reluctant to get involved.
People were taken to prisons where they were blindfolded, interrogated and tortured in various ways to extract information from them about their contacts with the west. As many of them had no contact with the west anyway, they were tortured repeatedly. When they weren't being tortured they were locked using leg shackles into tiny cells and couldn't talk to each other. Many people stayed in the prison for 4-6months. Then they were moved to one of the killing fields. They were blindfolded so that they wouldn't know where they were, killed and put into mass graves. Sometimes they had to watch members of their families being tortured or killed before being killed themselves. Sometimes they had to dig their own graves or dig graves for their family members. People were believed to have said they preferred the killing fields to the prison as it didn't last that long- 15 minutes of torture compared to 7 months of torture. 25% of the population died in this era- 1.7 million were killed and up to 3 million died, including those that died from disease or starvation.
In 1978, the Khmer Rouge occupied Vietnam for a week. Vietnam pushed back and entered Cambodia and then retreated, bringing some Cambodians with them. Pol pot was worried about how easily the Vietnamese had entered and thought that there were Vietnamese spies everywhere so kidnapped even more people, including lots of his guards and associates. In 1979, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and liberated them, for which the Cambodians are very grateful. Many soldiers and leaders were arrested, many fled towards the Thai border and remained in the jungle there. Pol Pot fled and noone knew where he was. His wife found him dead in bed, in 1998 which meant the genocide was finally over.
Phnom Penh was still empty afterwards but bit by bit people came back and just claimed any house for themselves.
A new government was formed in 1979 and they are still in power now. Elections are coming up soon though and many want to see a different party in power but most don't think it will actually happen. There are rallies on for that election all the time and posters everywhere. The people are very exited about the possibility of new people.
There were 343 killing fields in Cambodia with 20,000 mass graves. In the biggest mass grave there had been 20,000 bodies. It was Mostly Khmer people that were killed at that time but there were 9 westerners who were journalists also.
The killing fields we went to was called Choeung Ek. Our guide for the day brought us around. Without looking too closely it looked just like a park. They had a big decorative tower in the centre. When you got closer to it though you could see that that tower was full of skulls of people that had been killed there. You could go in there and walk around the shelves tower structure which just had layers and layers of skulls. There was only room for one person which made it a very tight, narrow space which somehow made it even eerier. You could light some incense outside then to respect the people that had died.
There was a school beside the killing field so you could hear children laughing and playing while you were walking around. Their school seemed to finish while we were there and lots of them came in to walk around the museum area with the skulls.

S21- security office 21.

Phnom Penh from 7pm to 5am stay inside up to 1987 as there were spies. Have to show authority to travel within Cambodia

Lots of landlines, hard to travel. 1993- no 1 in the world. Now it's not. They spend 10 million Us a year destroying them. 60,000 lost their legs from the landlmines.

Chose killing field as it was quiet, now it's a suburb

Opposition party car- announcements

126 mass graves, found 86.

Killing fields- graves, clothes, bones, teeth, speaker, killing tree. Museum

Prison- cells, shackles, types of torture, survivors, old man, books

All this of course is in the past and Cambodia is becoming more and more successful and powerful.

Dinner, drinks, do same as Khmer Rouge?
Home early