One of the strangest days

I awoke looking forward to my one full free day in Phnom Penh which was to include visiting sights not to be definitely included in the group tour, and I eagerly anticipated the birthday party. I ate the minimalist Voile Rouge breakfast and then got in the tuk-tuk parked in front of the hotel with a negotiated price of $7 to take me out and back to Choeung Ek Killing Fields. The drive took about 40 minutes.

The site somewhat outside of the city is really a memorial to those who died at this site at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The experience of visiting was sobering and sad. There are many signs explaining what happened, fragments of cloth, bone, and teeth that surface on the earth in the rain, a large stupa filled with bones and skulls of those who died. The small museum has pictures related to discovering the mass graves.

In the afternoon, I visited S-21 or Tuol Sleng Prison largest center of detention and terror in Cambodia. People were kept before being taken to Choeung Ek. Many of these were Khmer Rouge suspected of disloyalty. 17,000 people were estimated to have been imprisoned and when the prison was liberated in 1979 by the Vietnamese, only seven persons were alive.

Visiting these two sites reinforced the feelings of despair and despondency I had been fostering with books I had been reading about the history of Cambodia and memoirs of survivors. What the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia killing 2,000,000 people has been compared to what Hitler did in Germany. However, it is so hard here to have any comprehension of how these people could kill their own countrymen and women and destroy all those who had any possibility of making Cambodia better (the convoluted goal of the Khmer Rouge through communism). Because of such massive upheaval and destruction, this country and its people face so many challenges.

So, after visiting Choeung Ek, the tuk-tuk driver dropped me off at Swensen's Ice Cream at the Sorya Mall where I was to meet Ara, the Cambodian women who had invited me to the birthday party. I was prepared, having brought an English coloring book about animals that I had brought with me for the home stay I didn't do. She was there and called her brother who arrived quickly. Away we went on the motorcycle to her home which was neat and clean. There was no birthday party, but she informed me that her family would come over after her nephew got out of school at 2 PM. This was all new information to me and I wasn't sure I would stay that long, but I decided to see where things went. I spoke for a short while with her brother who told me he was an optometrist. She had prepared a very nice lunch for me and when the food was served, her brother left. Shortly after we started to eat, another man arrived and she said he was her other brother. He joined us; he spoke English quite well and in the course of the conversation informed me that he worked as a casino dealer for a large Chinese company with many hotels and cruise ships in Malaysia. We continued conversing and somehow the subject got back around to the casino and my knowledge of blackjack. (Now I know how to play blackjack and have played a few times in casinos, but this is not my thing, really). Then he told me that if he and I worked together, he could teach me how to break the house. I thought to myself there was no likelihood he and I would ever play together, but I followed him in the conversation and the next thing I knew he was going to teach me. So he and I and Ara, the sister, went upstairs to his bedroom. He had a table and chairs in the room and pulled out a case with several decks of cards and casino chips. We played a few hands of blackjack and then he showed me how we could work together if there was a third person playing; he could show me cards while dealing and taught me hand signals to indicate what the third person had. While this was happening, I thought it interesting but of no use to me. Suddenly he said, Mr. Aziz would be arriving and we would play with him, and then there was a knock on the door and Mr. Aziz of Brunei arrived. Now I knew little about Brunei (other than of its existence) but it is an island with very rich people, mostly due to oil.

Just before Mr. Aziz came in, the "dealer" gave me two $100 bills to play with and said I would win and we would split the winnings. The "dealer" explained the ground rules to both of us and told Mr. Aziz that I had been playing all morning and had lost a lot of money and was hoping to win playing with Mr. Aziz. He asked me how much in chips I wanted so I said $200 and Mr. Aziz matched this. We played a few hands and I seemed to be winning (as I concentrated very hard on the signals, etc. I was getting.) Then Mr. Aziz said he won a lot of money the previous evening and wanted to cash that in for chips. With that, he reached in his briefcase and pulled out $50,000 in U.S. cash for which he wanted chips. I was flabbergasted and not sure what to do. The "dealer" said I would play on credit while I waited for my driver to return with more money. We continued to play and I won most hands (except when Mr. Aziz got blackjack). Finally we got to a point where it was supposed to be the last hand. I knew Mr. Aziz had 20 and I had 21 and there was $100,000 on the table. Mr. Aziz then said he never played with credit and wanted to see my cash. The "dealer" assured him I was good for it, asked me to show him my credit cards (which I did very quickly). Mr. Aziz was not comfortable with this, so we ended up not finishing this hand and sealing our respective hands in envelopes, signing them, and locking them up with the cash in a safe. Mr. Aziz said to call him when I had the money and left. I was so incredibly uncomfortable and distressed by this whole experience and had no idea what I had gotten myself into that I just got up and said I was leaving. Ara, the sister offered to give me a ride back on the motorcycle to wherever I wanted to go and, as I really wasn't sure where I was, I agreed, and then I was dropped off in the wrong location near the wrong museum. That was the end to that, but I was sure I had been the potential victim of some kind of scam and that if had gotten the money (which I never would have done) they would have robbed it and maybe killed me. No more 7 year old birthday parties for me.

After visiting Tuol Sleng Museum, I went to the Russian Market about ¾ mile away. Unfortunately, I arrived just as the shops were closing. This is supposed to be the real bargain place in Phnom Penh for clothes and souvenirs. Outside there were many food vendors and I sampled from a few ( rice cakes, fruit shake) and then took a moto back in the general direction of my hotel (which was some distance away.) I had passed the Lucky Supermarket earlier and wanted to go there to try to find something to take for lunch for the next day's bus ride. The supermarket was comparable in scope of products and prices to any western supermarket. I really couldn't find much, so bought an imported U.S. Granny Smith apple. There were some restaurants nearby, so I walked down the street and found one and had a curry dish and a mojito (I thought I deserved a drink) and then after took a moto back to the Voile Rouge. The desk clerk had purchased a ticket for me for the bus for the next morning to Battambang which would leave at 8:30. Of course there continued to be water on the bathroom floor, but it was just one more night there and I was prepared for the challenge of not slipping on it for any needed trips to that room.