An entry in the TFS Travel Journal
Ugh, a terrible sleep in this dump of an airport hotel. We heard every conversation in every language, including the flight attendants at 5am! (note: we’ve noticed that when people speak the local language around here their voices seem to go up an octave or two, as compared to when they’re speaking english) We worked our way through all the various acts required to leave the country, then waited to board the flight with a 7th Day Adventist woman from Michigan who was en route to visit (and try to bring back) her son who’s been a missionary in Cambodia for two years and seems to not want to leave as there’s still work to be done here.
We arrived after the one-hour flight and stood in the line for getting our Cambodia visas. What a scene: a long counter with 9 uniformed policemen sitting in a row; the first would take your passport and look at it, the next would do the same and somewhere along it would get stamped and filled in, the $20 would be collected, but all 9 would be somehow involved. Then you go through passport control, then collect your bags, then through customs declarations. The whole procedure was amplified for Milton, as they couldn’t find a satisfactory blank page on which to use their large stamp, and so were going to send us to the American embassy to get some new pages added or something, but they finally found an open space in which to squeeze it into.
We were met by Kim, our very nice guide, and a driver, who took us to the hotel where we had a quick lunch at the buffet before setting off on our afternoon city tour. Lunch was actually darn good, with a nice variety of fish, vegetables, some dim sum, and other assorted local specialties. Definitely not as spicy as Thai food, but very fresh and tasty. We then climbed back into the small sedan (with seatbelts!), which thankfully was air conditioned, as it was in the mid 90s and humid. First stop was the center of town - and of the country, actually - to the phnom (hill) for which the city is named (a holy woman, Penh, chose the hill in the mid 14th century). We walked around inside the big temple atop the hill (containing the usual large Buddha image, surrounded by dozens of little Buddhas and other offerings), and saw the monument to Penh, with a little wooden statue of her.
We then drove to the Central Market, which is housed in what looks like a large, cavernous train station, and is teeming with hundreds of small stands with showcases containing seemingly everything including electronics, calculators, clothes, meats, fish, jewelry, etc. We just looked.
Next stop was the National Museum. At all the tourist places in this city, one is constantly met by beggars, most of whom are missing limbs as this country has so many land mines and consequently the highest concentration of amputees. The museum was quite interesting, though also quite sweltering, and a good tune-up for Angor Wat tomorrow. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed but the building itself is beautiful — red, with roof tiles and ornamentation made to resemble the naga (sacred snake), and with an open courtyard containing 4 square pools of lotus flowers and lily pads, and a large Buddha in the center. It is also home to a million bats who live in the ceiling, and we could hear them constantly squeaking. We saw much large and small sculpture of bronze and various stone, of Buddhist and Hindu images, along with some animal figures and mythical creatures (ganeshes, garudas) Included in the latter category were several representations of Hanuman, the King of the Monkeys, who was depicted as a great warrior and whose image is found today on the building of the country’s defense forces. Most of this was from the Khmer people of the Angkor period, 900-1300 — yet another advanced civilization with remarkable constructions, significant art works and a reasonably complex societal structure, that existed over 1000 years ago and then just disappeared.
The next stop was one of the more overwhelming of our travels. It was the genocide museum, housed in an old school which had been turned into a prison and torture chamber by the Khmer Rouge during their reign of terror from 1975 until the Vietnamese invasion in 1979 (as depicted in the movie, “The Killing Fields”). As we walked from room to room, seeing the pictures (looking like mug shots, but with the fear apparent on the faces of many) on the walls that were taken of the victims before they were killed in some horrible manner, Kim told us the history of the country and of himself. Over 1.5 million citizens were executed by Pol Pot’s forces (out of a population of 7 million), including the most educated, the elderly, children, monks, etc. Kim, who was born in 1967 and is one of 8 children, lived in the forest with a group of similar-aged boys. His entire family was separated, including his parents. He (and most everyone) lived in basically a state of war — they ate any vegetation that they thought was safe (”leaves from trees, like an animal”), had no health care and knew nothing of the rest of his family. After 1979, the family was reunited, miraculously (and highly unusually) all still alive. The country then went through 12 years or so of guerrilla/civil war and unpleasant life under the North Vietnamese Communists, but with some normalization of services. Finally, in 1992 a peace accord was reached (as the country finally became exhausted of fighting) and since 1993 democracy has been (more or less) established and money has begun to trickle in. There is just now the first serious construction of underground electricity, traffic lights, and other infrastructure. The city appears quite dynamic, though, filled with myriad motorscooters zipping about every which way and neverending roadside stands selling anything and everything. It is, however, obvious that it had recently been a war zone, as bombed-out, destroyed buildings are the majority. We also couldn’t help but to compare in our minds the Cambodian Genocide Museum with the Holocaust Museum in Washington. While the latter is undoubtedly the paragon - in presentation, architecture, the use of different media - the former is so sparse, simple and unrefined that it serves to further heighten the decimation of the country.
As we went back to the hotel, we marvelled at Kim’s pleasant demeanor in the face of what he’s lived through and seen. He attributes this to his Buddhist ethos of inner-peace, and his happiness with his marriage and his 3-year-old son. He said he enjoys being a guide, as he doesn’t like to sit in an office and he welcomes the opportunity to talk about his country and its history.
After that experience, we needed a drink, so we stopped in the hotel’s Lobby Bar, where we had some local fruit-juice concoctions. Turns out it was happy hour, so we were given a second round, which we couldn’t finish. Kim picked us up for dinner around 7, and we went to a local place known for its Khmer food. (One great thing about driving around these third world places is the names: “Ecstatic Pizza”, “California II”, “Tex-Mex Fast Food”, “Wagon-Wheel the Friendly German American Restaurant”) As we sat outside on the second-floor veranda overlooking the Mekong river and the street below filled with bicycle rickshaws and the ubiquitous scooters, we were joined by several locals and a few dozen pale-beige lizards on the pillars and eves.
Dinner was a smorgasboard of Khmer specialties: frogs legs, a lemongrass-beef soup, elephant fish (fresh from the river), chicken, deer, and shrimp. It was all really delicious, fresh, and subtly seasoned, and the local Angkor beer was nice and light. It was still pretty steamy, though, so we enjoyed, but didn’t linger over dessert which was some fresh pineapple slices and some sweet tofu in glass-noodle dumplings.
We then returned to the hotel for an early bedtime, as tomorrow morning’s flight is at 6:30!!