Day 15

May 5

Phnom Phen

Perhaps just the right day to be here as in Holland they celebrate Liberation day. The connection will become obvious later. At times one realizes what one wants or desires may not always be the best decision viewed from a later time in the day. The moment you step out into the street your are accosted with a "tuktuk Sir? Where you go? At first you answer them and, after wards you get tired of it and just look away. The tuktuk driver who had taken me to the hostel had given me a reasonable price to take me around to the sights @$10 for the day. For that you can just sit back and relax and let the world go by. You can have your camera in a handy position (in your hand) and shoot away. You can ask the tuktuk driver to stop anywhere on route and make a friend for the day. However, independence has a price at times. Around the corner I arranged for a 100 cc automatic scooter for the day. It was hot as usual with a midday temp of around 36 degrees. Yes in the tuktuk you even have a roof over your head hail, rain or shine (oh well forget the hail in this case) Riding in my T-shirt felt good but even 30-40km an hour my arms where still wet of perspiration . I made my way past the magnificent Royal Palace stopping across the road at the Royal jetty (which is a magnificent building by itself with ornate and intricate carved statues and stairs leading to the Mekong river.) I sent my SPOT message and continued with map in hand to the infamous high school which was transformed into a interrogation (read torture)camp during the Pol Pot regime in the seventies. I have seen places like this before. Concentration camps like Dachau, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen . The persons who ran those camps could have taken lessens here. The pictures tell the story as it is said ,and so it is. One thing I noticed was very different. There was a no win situation at all times. They put your there under suspicion of being an anti communist. The suspicion was enough. Whole families we picked up at the same time. The children would be blatantly murdered as they would never be in a position to tell the tale later in life. If you confessed than it would be best because they would simply transport the person outside the city to a place which is now known as “the killing fields". If you resisted you were given a list to read how to answer questions. It was best to agree and utter the prescribed answer s and sign the statement after which the person would be taken away and executed. Now if you resisted things would be different. Water treatment like drowning a person and reviving just before the point of death was one method, electric shock treatment another. Hands were placed in clamp and fingers cut of one by one. Women would be tortured by other women with the same treatment and also cutting off the nipples with pliers. A section of the school, rooms were transformed and rebuild to make room for dozens of small cells of 1 by 2 meters in which the prisoners were chained to the ground. Thousands upon thousands were treated like this and in the end were executed at the “killing fields” To save on ammunition baby's were simply taken by their feet and smashed against a tree. Indescribable what had happened there. I remember hearing about it on the news when the liberated this school. Only 6 people survived. With the wars we have come to hear and know about ,this one was very different. Pol Pot and his regime killed nearly half the population, which were his own people.

I didn’t feel like lunch after leaving the site and headed for the killing fields. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because I found myself on a very long dirt road with powdery dust which made visibility a bit difficult. Crazy thing though, this was in the middle of a build up area with small shops on either side of the road. Everybody in sight was wearing dust masks except me of course. At a junction I pulled into a service station to check my position on the map. I was heading in the right direction and needed to make a left turn. Back on the bitumen and after cleaning my sunglasses my vision returned to its usual level to reveal… black clouds ahead of me, and I mean black! I stopped to check the wind direction. Hmmm it coming my way. Lightning flashes everywhere . After a few km the cloud sudden changed to brown. Strange I thought, until a wind gust hit me that almost blew me off the bike. The dust storm hit very suddenly and great force. Sand, boxes, plastic bags, roadside umbrellas, advertising sign and people’s hats where flying all over the place. I stopped and made u-turn trying to outrun the storm, (as if… )People were hurrying everywhere and in all direction. I just headed back as fast as I could. I arrived at a junction and noticed that the map I had kept folded under my left hand was missing. Somehow I lost it although I had held on to the handlebars tightly. I just went with the flow and kept on riding and riding. I had absolutely no idea where I was , but sensed that I was heading toward the city centre. It was best to look for a hotel, any hotel, as they have maps. Suddenly I saw a sign stating “Royal Palace” and an arrow pointing to the right. Just keep following that I thought. 20 minutes later the Palace came in sight and did I know how to get back to the hostel.

Now….if I would have taken a tuktuk this morning…

So I missed viewing the killing fields. There was no tomorrow as I had already booked the bus to Ho Chi Min City and the accommodation. Anyway missing the killing fields may have been a good thing because I had seen perhaps enough misery for the day .

Reflecting back it is difficult to imagine that in the Pol Pot years they marched out the entire population of the city into the country side and worked them as slave laborers. Schools were closed, education unnecessary , it was said that a bachelors’ degree would not get you anywhere and that everyone is now a bachelor of the land ,called the “democratic republic of Kampuchea

Phnom Phen has the most magnificent boulevards, all elaborately decorated with ornaments , statues and sculptures. Traffic is busy but fairly orderly. As with Vietnam the traffic light have counters on them so you can relax as you know how many seconds you have until the light change to green or for that matter no need to rush when you see a green light as it also clearly shows how many seconds until it changes to red. Many buildings have a typical Cambodian shape with pointed roofs and many gold coloured decorations, even bus stop or insignificant buildings To sum up, if you look beyond the garbage it is a beautiful city.