To be honest, from a traveller’s point of view, Cambodia has a bit of an unfair reputation. The guide book writers cheerily remind you from behind their publishing desks how you’ll repeatedly be scammed and just how aggressive the local touts are. Ok so our entry from across the Laos border may have ticked both boxes – first a couple of uniformed men standing next to a “Quarantine check-point” sign, complete with prop surgical masks, charging tourists for health checks (I politely showed them our injection booklets which immediately made them falter and we passed through with dollars still in hand). The actual and official visa check-point was operated by six extremely aggressive officers again with a home-made sign overcharging the tourists but on this occasion they had the last word as I didn’t fancy a god knows how many km trip back to Vientiane. This said we have just spent the last two days in Siem Reap (ok so we got ripped off by the bus company to Siem Reap but bear with me) and are now en route to Phnom Penh with a rejuvenated belief in Cambodia and its people. The free (and delicious) breakfast at our guesthouse has probably softened us up but despite the pre-conceived notion that Siem Reap is 100% a tourist trap for westerners to the nearby world-famous and architecturally impressive Angkor Wat, we actually feel like we got to see a real city at work. I should also mention our arrival into Siem Reap - the rain was torrential so we ran to a local restaurant near our guesthouse. We were greeted by the son of the restaurant owner, about eight years old, at one o'clock in the morning, stark naked, a baby's bottle in hand, dancing to the Cambodian version of MTV. It was absolutely hilarious - what a welcome to a country!
Sunrise over Angkor Wat
Of course we did crawl out of bed at 4.30am one morning to see the sunrise over the above-mentioned Khmer temple, along with a hundred other tripod-wielding tourists, but we also found ourselves eating and chatting to locals eager to practice their English and keen to find out where we were from and where we were going which seemed far more genuine than the obligatory Thai schoolgirls with clipboards and camera phones...
The temples of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom are awesome. Dating back to the same period as Hadrian’s Wall they are well preserved (although the Japanese-funded renovations will take some time for wear and tear to blend in). One thing that does burst the glossy tourist bubble is the number of extremely poor and often disfigured local people selling cheap books, postcards and handmade flutes. We also turned around the corner in one temple in sweltering heat to find three little boys who must’ve been around the ages of four to nine but the size of two to five year olds, sat in a small patch of shade looking seriously desperate. We weren't really sure what the best thing to do was as they were clearly malnourished but unlike the other children around the temples’ car parks they weren’t asking for anything. We gave them our chilled bottles of water to drink as a small token of help. Later that day we were approached by a ten year old boy on crutches as he’d lost one of his legs in an accident, when initially we said “Sorry no” to his offer of postcards for just a couple of dollars he replied “Sorry doesn’t work today mister” which was spot on. Seeing children and adults totally dependent on the generosity of others is pretty hard to ignore and I think it was a reality check that we needed.
The temples used for the "Lara Croft" film set
Whilst in Siem Reap we visited the city’s children’s hospital – one of a kind offering totally free medical care - it was established and is run by a Japanese-American charity called “Friends without a border” (www.fwab.org). We were told how every single day more than 400 children and their parents make their way to the hospital from all over Cambodia, often having to borrow money for their bus tickets, with the hope of being treated mainly for malnutrition, diarrhoea and respiratory infections, which children in UK would easily recover from but can be life-threatening here if not dealt with, as well as treatment for AIDs. Again it was another very informative and inspiring place to learn about.
Back to Angkor Wat and its importance to the Cambodians. Not only is it clearly vital for generating revenue for the country’s economy but bearing in mind the recent brutal history that Cambodia has been faced with (details to follow), the magnificence of Angkor Wat helps to unite a country which 30 years ago was under the unimaginable rule of the Khmer Rouge and its barbaric regime.
We travelled by bus south from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. I remember when I first came to South East Asia quite a few years ago I was told by expats in Thailand that Phnom Penh was a “no go zone” with muggings and serious scams as common occurrences. Nowadays the city is anything but that and although the streets are frantically busy with motorcycles, taxis and market stalls, we found it to be an exciting and bustling place with lots to see and do (and completely safe).
I doubt they have many issues with shop-lifters!
Apart from lots of markets and a very pleasant river front where we had a drink watching the world go by from the roof at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (made infamous during the American war), the main tourist “sights” are related to the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia during the 70s. We first went to Choung Ek known as the ‘killing fields’ where tens of thousands of Cambodians were sent to be executed under Pol Pot’s extreme regime. Later in the day we went to S-21, an incomprehensibly brutal facility formerly a residential high school turned into torture prison where hundreds of people were taken to be executed. For those who want a short history lesson and a bit of context of what happened in Cambodia I will summarise briefly below:
The Khmer Rouge was a radical political group that seized power in Cambodia in 1975 following a civil war and utilising the turmoil left by the US bombing campaign which obliterated most of the country (the US illegally bombed Cambodia as well as Laos in the so-called “secret war” as part of their war with Vietnam). This caused so much anger in the village populations that the Khmer Rouge was able to successfully recruit members and stir up hatred. The Khmer Rouge stormed Phnom Penh and took power in 1975 immediately forcing the entire city, some 3 million people including hospital patients still on their beds, to leave their urban and “Westernised” lives (deemed to be traitors to the “real” or “base” people of Cambodia) and were forced to walk for days on end into the countryside to huge slave camps. The entire city like other urban areas stood empty for the next three years. People were forced at gunpoint and the KR lied saying the Americans were planning to bomb the city to get them to leave. As part of the extreme communist doctrine followed by the KR things like money and ownership of anything private ranging from property to colourful clothing was banned and therefore totally worthless. The KR set-up forced labour camps for the entire population of Cambodia, practically the whole population being forced to work in back-breaking rice paddies as part of an insane plan by the leaders of the Khmer Rouge to create an agrarian based, self sustained economy.
The plan failed dramatically and as a result 1.5-2 million people, approx 20% of the population – nobody knows exact figures, died as a result of starvation, disease and execution. Peasants were seen as pure whereas anyone with previous wealth or an academic background was seen as a threat and executed - wearing glasses was enough to get you killed. This is hugely hypocritical since most of the Khmer Rouge leaders were well educated in Europe and from wealthy backgrounds. It was communism at its most extreme and implemented with ruthless barbarism. The Khmer Rouge forced people to abandon family ties and friendships, at times having children execute their parents. The leaders were also exceptionally paranoid believing there were people in the population continuously working and plotting against them (in reality the people were so frightened of the KR soldiers and weakened by lack of food that this was at best a rare occurrence) but as a result they sent over 14,000 people to S-21, a former high school turned prison for severe interrogation and execution. The prisoners were immediately assumed to be guilty on arrival and tortured until they “confessed” to something. Often these “confessions” were fabricated stories with the terrified prisoners just saying whatever they thought their interrogators wanted to hear. All prisoners were executed and in the whole time of S-21 there were only seven survivors who were freed when the Vietnamese invaded. The horrific reign of terror went on for three years from 1975-78 until the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and defeated the Khmer Rouge, liberating the Cambodian people. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the world that sat back and watched without doing anything. To add insult to injury the US forced the UN to give the Khmer Rouge a seat at the UN General Assembly until 1991 because the Khmer Rouge were anti-Vietnamese and anti-Russian. Therefore the murderers represented their victims for 12 years at the UN.
Just some of the photographs of female prisoners taken to S-21
We went to both the prison and the killing fields where the executions took place. I won’t go into too much detail here as its not exactly happy reading and to be honest I don’t really know how to put it all into words. Suffice to say it’s one of the most horrific things we have ever been confronted with and some of the stories of what went on there are unimaginable. Even scarier still is how recently it all happened.
Anyway, on a happier note we really enjoyed the rest of our time in the capital especially eating and drinking at various roadside cafes after sundown, drinking beer (constantly being topped up with ice cubes) and being amused by the Cambodian food tastes - “Large beef penis with big red ant”?! I asked for beef at one restaurant when I was served white meat I assumed it must be pork and happily munched on. I then saw the animal being spit-roasted and went for a closer inspection. Although I was assured otherwise, this animal looked very much like a dog and a lot less like a cow. In fact it looked nothing like a cow... I felt a little queasy, the short charred tail was the confirmatory give-away!
Motorbikes are everywhere in SE Asia
Two friendly street-kids
