The Destruction of the Khmer Rouge...
Waking up in the morning and knowing that you are about to go see a museum dedicated to the torture of the citizens of a country by one of their own is a very ominous feeling. My stomach was in knots and I really couldn't eat but I knew this was also something that I had to do for myself to see firsthand the atrocities committed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. We had hired a tuk tuk driver for the day and off we went to see some morbid history. It was not a very talkative group that morning as we all had ideas of what we were going to see and I think everyone was dealing with it in their own way. Once we got to the museum, which had previously been a school we started our walking tour through the buildings. It is very hard to describe what I saw and do justice to the people who were murdered, starved and tortured in this prison. Suffice it to say that the Khmer Rouge was viscous and brutal in every sense of the words. At different points you are walking through a room and there are pictures of the inmates and you start to see photos of young children and babies. Now the thoughts going through my head are why do they have these photos of such small kids and I came to find out the Khmer Rouge were so paranoid that they killed the children of their "enemies" so that there could be no retribution later in life. Just absolute pure evil in my opinion. One thing that was very similar to the Nazis in was that the Khmer Rouge was meticulous with keeping records, which is why they have pictures and information on every single prisoner from S-21. It is bad enough what they did to their fellow countrymen but to keep the records which basically wrote the history is unconscionable. I made it through every building, every floor and every room that was open because I needed to see with my eyes everything that I could. I know that this brought all of us down that day and the girls were waiting patiently for me but I took my time to absorb the magnitude of all the details that I could muster that morning. 
I finally finished the museum and it was off to part two of our day, which was The Killing Fields. Many people know of this because of the movie with the same name. However, to see this first hand is a completely different experience than watching a film. When you walk through the front gate you see a beautiful Pagoda directly in front of you. As you approach and get closer you realize that this is no ordinary Pagoda but is a memorial to all the people murdered by the Khmer Rouge on this spot. Inside the Pagoda are the clothes, which were worn by the people murdered here, and then the different levels have different types of bone fragments. From one level with skulls to another with hipbones or one with leg bones or arm bones. It is truly a chilling and humbling site. After taking a few minutes to soak all of this in we continued around the grounds, and it is really an eerie site to behold. As I made my way around there was a strange feeling of calm and tranquility even though I knew we were in the middle of mass graves. It was a similar feeling to one I had back in 1997 when visiting Auschwitz. I don't know how to explain this or even do justice to these feelings. The things that you see when walking the grounds of The Killing Fields are some of the most atrocious and heart-wrenching things one could ever see. At one point we walked past a tree and the sign next to the tree stated this was where the Khmer Rouge soldiers would kill babies by swinging them against the tree trunk. Then there were all of the excavated mass graves each with a sign describing the groups of people contained in each grave. With very heavy hearts we finished our tour of The Killing Fields and headed back to our tuk-tuk to get back to town. Now after a day filled of seeing the horrors of what humans can do to each other our tuk-tuk driver started asking us if we wanted to go shoot machine guns or rocket launchers. Don't get me wrong I have no problem going to shoot a machine gun but it was definitely not the right time as we were all drained and we all felt that it wasn't really appropriate considering what we had just spent our day seeing.
My overall impressions of Phnom Penh are that it is a very beautiful city with a dark recent history. It's also very surprising how nice and friendly the people are when you consider that every family in this country was in some way effected by the Khmer Rouge. I highly encourage everyone to visit the S-21 museum as well as The Killing Fields as I believe they are both important parts of history that nobody wants repeated. The scenes are chilling, haunting, inconceivable and at times they simply take your breath away.
So now we are off to Siem Reap to see the Temples of Angkor which should be a little easier on the mind as far as sightseeing goes.
Brian
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Jenga!!!
Song for this post:
Lost! by Coldplay
So, I don’t know exactly what condensed milk is and honestly, the idea of it is borderline extremely revolting to me – semi-gelatinous milk from a can, um…yuck. I only mention it because condensed milk is a main component of my newest addiction – Southeast Asian iced coffee. Oh dear reader, if only you could lick up what I’m spilling out here – take one mug, pour in about 4-5 glops and glugs of condensed milk, add coffee and voila! You have yourself a cup-full of cold, sweet, creamy coffee goodness. But the idea of condensed milk on its own merit makes my duodenum pucker and want to crawl up into my large intestine, curl up in a ball, and lay there like a shot put.
The day we left Otres Beach, Aisha and I indulged in one last iced coffee at the Sea Garden bar. Maybe it was a bad idea to actually watch them open up the rusty can of generic condensed milk that had botchilism written all over it and leave it turned upside down, resting on the rim of the glass to let it gloop out to the desired level of milkness, which took an intolerable 10 minutes in the 90 degree plus 300% humidity heat, while flies swarmed all over it. Maybe it was just the watching of that whole process that made me feel ill and not the coagulated, over-heated, fly ridden milk itself, but never-the-less, the car ride was miserable.
Thank sweet baby Buddha that it was at least a car ride – private, comfortable, AC and no hobbit hole, squat pot of a stinking, festering toilet (oh the joys of the adventures of traveling!) – and we could stop when we wanted. And fortunately I only felt sick and made it to Phnom Penh without actually getting sick. Mike was nice enough to arrange the car and driver for us and even gave us a few suggestions of places to stay in the city, so the driver took us right to the first hotel which was a winner and we unloaded all of our crap and set up camp – easy!
Now I’d like to mention here that even though I had no idea what to expect of Cambodia, my expectations were quite low. The beach was really no kind of bar to measure from because a beach is a beach is a beach – you’re either staying in the nice, plush hotels or resorts or your in a hut with a bed and a fan. But of the city, I guess I was thinking – what with the not so distant history of this developing country – that it was going to be like some dystopic wasteland with shacks lining the over-crowded, polluted streets and Sally Struthers hanging out somewhere in the middle of it all. What can I say – for all my traveling, I’m still somewhat ignorant.
Let’s just say that the city was a little more forward than I had expected and far exceeded my expectations and let me further add that when we walked into our pricey $18 a night (well, pricey for our budget and pricey because it was the big city) hotel room, I felt like I’d fallen into the lap of luxury. It’s funny the things you start to appreciate on trips like this – closets or drawers to put your clothes in, hot water, showers that you don’t have to take standing almost directly over the toilet, bathroom sinks actually connected to the wall – this hotel had it all and more. It was spacious, clean, had AC, an actual shower stall, big, fluffy towels, new toothbrushes every day, they actually cleaned the rooms every day, AND it had a TV with cable and a refrigerator!!! AT this stage of the game I can’t even bother with things like closets, refrigerators, and TVs because it’s become the norm to not have them, but it’s nice to know they’re there.
So what to tell you about PP? Well, the first night we just kind of got settled and grabbed some food right by the hotel, we were all a bit worn out and I wasn’t feeling great. The next day, B, Aisha, Susan, and I started off to do some sightseeing close to the hotel and not too far into the walk Susan got sick and headed for home while B, Aisha and me continued on to the Grand Palace and National museum. While at the Grand Palace, we ran into Taig and Maeve – an Irish couple also traveling for 6 months that we’d met in Otres Beach and were staying at a hotel two doors down from ours also - per Mike’s suggestion – and we made plans to meet up with them later that night. Now I don’t know if I did the illustration of Mike justice in my last post, but I wanted to give you a little idea as to his character so you could appreciate this next part…
The 3 of us met up with Taig and Maeve, went to dinner, and then decided to go to one of the bars on the street where our hotels were since that seemed to be the only nightlife close enough to us that we wouldn’t have to trek around in unknown territory since none of us were really quite sure where to go. Now, I think I’d just taken it for granted that Mike - knowing that we were backpackers – had steered us towards the backpacker district. I should’ve suspected when he stated that these were the places he stayed when he went to PP that the backpacker area wouldn’t necessarily be his scene, but I think that I also figured that the city couldn’t be THAT big and Sally Struthers would certainly have some tips on where to go and would point us in the right direction. I was somewhat curious about the lack of backpackers spotted in our little neck of the woods, but being the self-absorbed egomaniac I can be sometimes I think I just assumed that we were possibly the only ones brave enough to explore Phnom Pehn. Such was not the case. What should’ve made me buy a vowel and get a clue was the fact that all the bars on our street (and our street was ALL bars) had names like The Pussycat Club, The Candy Bar, and of course, Club 69. Yeah, we were staying in the Red Light district. Our first night out, we pretty much spent the night getting our asses kicked in Jenga by hookers.
The next day was devoted to more sightseeing. First up – S21, the location that had once been a school that had been converted into a torture and death camp during Pol Pot’s reign. I don’t know if it was the heat or the condensed milk finally kicking me in the ass (so to speak) or the subject matter we were dealing with or all three, but I only made it half way through the buildings. I saw the documentary film they show twice a day about life during that time and in that place, I saw the solitary cells where they took people to torture them and the pictures of the bodies that were found in those rooms when the place was liberated, I saw the hundreds of pictures of mug shots of the victims, the pictures taken of them right before they were executed.
One of the pictures that left a distinct impression was of this gorgeous girl, maybe 16 years old, who had the slightest, sweetest smile on her face. It was the image of a teenage girl who knows she’s pretty but who is humble enough to understand the power of that beauty and uses it as a gift for others rather than for herself. It was not the image of a girl whose life was going to be brutally taken her days, maybe even moments after the picture was captured.
We each seemed to have a picture like that, one that really stuck out in each of our minds. The thing that struck us all about the pictures of the victims though was the fact that there were so many of kids. Not just kids but toddlers and infants, none of us could understand why they killed so many children. It’s not as if they were holding onto information that Pol Pot’s people could torture out of them, it’s not as if they were able to rise up against the regime, it’s not as if they were any sort of threat. If anything, we figured the awful regime would rather keep them, brain wash them, reprogram them, have a whole legion of workers that they could train to do their will. All our questions were answered later that day when we visited the Killing Fields. 
I had to sit out for a good portion of S21 because even though I’m usually not too squeamish about this kind of thing, I couldn’t bare going on to see the mass cells or the bones of the victims they had on display with the way my stomach was feeling. I sat down in the shade and got some water and not too long after, Aisha and Susan joined me while B continued to discover the place inside and out. Aisha spent a good 20 minutes discussing our feelings about the place and reading some of the literature on it at the little bookstand by the entrance. (I was very interested to learn that the tour guides that work there and are on hand to answer all of your questions about what went on there had actually been guards there – many of them teenage boys at the time – and members of the Khmer Rouge.) I’m going to mention now that Susan was not at all really engaging in our conversation and at the time I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she just hadn’t been feeling well and was therefore quiet. It was actually becoming increasingly clear in a very short amount of time however that Susan wasn’t just not feeling well, she was miserable.
None of us had much stomach for lunch so we headed off to the Killing Fields. When you enter into the Killing Fields, there’s a huge Pagoda that holds the bones of all the bodies they’ve found thus far buried there. From a distance, the Pagoda looks impressive and enchanting and the land stretched out around it is impressively beautiful and serene. Even when you start walking around and see the big craters in the earth left by the excavation of the mass grave sites, or the ancient, tranquil trees that have signs on them indicating that they were used to smash babies against, (which we discovered when we were there that they killed all the children so they could not in fact later rise up and exact revenge for what had been done to their families) and you hear the children singing in the nearby school, if you had no clue as to what had transpired there little over one generation ago you would think the place to be an Eden. But that idea is quickly smashed as you walk on the marked paths and realize that the hard, white bits just barely sticking out of the dirt on the path are not stones but bones and the scraps of colorful cloth protruding up from the worn down earth were clothes that people were executed and buried in and that every step you take is upon one huge grave.
That night I was physically and emotionally ill so I decided to have a quiet night in while the others went out for food and drinks. I didn’t dwell on what we’d seen that day too much; in fact I was hoping they would replay Finding Nemo on HBO that night, just to lighten the spirits a bit. “Just keep swimming…” If I let myself begin to even entertain the idea of injustice in the world and the unfathomable depths of darkness, hatred, and cruelty one human heart, mind, and soul has the capacity to exact on another, I would’ve done my head in!!! “Just keep swimming…” But what I was starting to give a considerable amount of thought to was not life or death, but birth and the coincidence, luck, or accident of the whole damn thing is such a fucking kick in the pants.
By the next day I was physically feeling better but my mind was excitable. While the others went and got food and massages, I sat in a coffee shop and Skyped with my sponsor, Jill, back in San Francisco. While at Otres Beach I’d finished writing out the first part of my 4th step (Made a searching and fearless moral inventory) and was ready to do my 5th step with her (Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs). This is a humbling and ego-crushing exercise on its own merit, but given what we’d seen the previous day, I was ever more so humbled about my own outlook and perspective on life. Jill and I talked for nearly 4 hours and it was a great relief from all the things that had been rumbling around like a tsunami in my head the weeks prior to this. I cry and whine and fret and worry about the person that I am when really in the grand scheme of things, what we worry about in the western world, what I myself spend so much energy stewing over, is just not that fucking important. 
Jill gave me a lot to think about. I was already thinking far more than I probably should’ve been, but now I had a little more to chew on. That night Brian, Aisha and I went to our locals – Club 69 where the three of us taught about 6 of the hookers a fun and simple card game called “Pass the Trash”. We had a bunch of small bills so we gave all the girls money to put into the kitty and made sure that one of the girls won the jackpot. (I was relieved and grateful that it was the youngest looking girl who won.) We also paid all of them about $1 for playing with us. It was truly a blast – they all really got into and tons of laughter marked the entire event and it wasn’t much money but at least for and hour they didn’t have to worry about draping themselves all over fat, old western men for a pittance and could just have some fun. After that we headed to the Candy Bar where Aisha and I purchased ping pong balls – actually they were more like rubber bouncy balls – and we stood on the balcony and threw them out to the girls who would good naturedly fight over them as they received 50 cents per ball they retrieved. More hilarity ensued at this scene – two western girls throwing rubber bouncy balls at a mob of about 20 working girls. 
It’s such a bittersweet notion to try and describe how much fun we had that night with all the girls we met and how different and refreshingly enjoyable it seemed to truly be for these women – they were all eager to be around us and the ones who knew the tiniest amounts of English clamored to talk to us, ask about us, tell us bits about themselves, show us pictures of their kids. It was an incredible, amazing, surprising experience being around these girls but all too easy to forget the reality of what their lives are and most likely always will be. What detracts from the experience is the fact that what made it such a novelty and at all possible in the first place was the fact that they were hookers, most likely girls from the country whose best hope for providing for themselves and their families is what in the western world is viewed mostly as a worst case scenario, last ditch effort, bottom of the barrel means of support. It was nothing more than an accident that any of us were there in the first place I suppose.
Birth – what a fragile, mysterious, teetering thing it is – one piece pulled out of order and the whole thing can come toppling, crashing down - and yet we so easily take it for granted. I have taken it for granted and at times I’ve resented it, something you’ve seen me struggling with on this journey, putting the pieces back together. The Cambodians – from what I’ve seen so far – don’t seem to be the kind of people to shout at the rain however. All the pieces might not be there, but make do with the ones they have and are unshakeable at their core with no expectation or sense of entitlement for better, just a hope for it. Maybe it’s not about frantically trying to grasp at pieces to fill the holes in us – how would there be any hope if all the pieces weren’t there to begin with? How would there be dreams if they were all there for our asking? Maybe it’s about having the foundation and building anew, from the ground up. Maybe being given too many pieces to begin with makes it even more difficult to forge a strong foundation from the start. 
What an accident birth is. In the end I guess we are all winners and all losers from the start. It all just plays out in the end how you place the pieces together. Jenga!!! So what to do with all these thoughts, all of these accidents surrounding you, the walking accident that you are, the jumble of pieces that make up the world? I guess…”Just keep swimming…”
xoxoM
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