Phnom Phen 1

Found a not so hotspot in the airport here in Taipei. I got here 3 hours early why? Hopefully I can catch up. Facebook exporter has been dodgy so unable to post the last entry on Facebook.

I would have liked to have spent more than 2 days in Phnom Phen. I spent a half day too long in Siem Reap and did not reach Phnom Phen until aroun 3 p.m. I found a great rate at the Intercontinental, the cities only true 5 star and lived it up a bit. Beautiful oasis in the sea of madness that is Phnom Phen.

The city is more of a sprawling slum. There are some decent central areas that are tourist friendly, mostly on the waterfront where most of the lodging, pubs and restaurants can be found. With only about 3 hours to get anything done on day one I hired a tuk tuk driver with the ambition of seeing the Killing Fields exhibit, the S-21 prison and one of the other sites mostly related to the Khmer Rouge atrocities. It didn't quite work out that way.

What we know as the Killing Fields is called the Choeng Ek extermination camp. Those who saw the film of the same name will have some idea of the history. In short, when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, after the Americans abandoned the City, Pol Pot and his cronies ordered the city to be evacuated in total. Executions of government officials began almost on the spot. Over the course of the next few years the Khmer Rouge engaged in a killing rampage designed to create a true agrarian communist society.

To the KR this meant the need to dispense with anyone that had even the slightest amount of education. All professionals and the educated class were murdered. Anyone that the KR didn't see as fitting in to this new society were killed at random. But not before being tortured in the most grizzly manner. Families were killed so there would be no reprisals for killing other family members. Even babies were killed, many of which were simply smashed against trees.

Millions were killed and the country was ravaged before the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and tossed the KR out of power and installed a puppet regime. Civil war continued on in the country for more than another decade. In 1999 when, I was in Cambodia last, there were still pockets of KR resistance out in the remote jungle.

The KR is gone as a fighting force but sadly not gone from the country. Many sit in the existing government and except for a few token trials no Khmer Rouge leaders have ever been brought to justice. The Khmer Rouge were a creation of the Chinese while the Russians supported the Vietnamese led government which led to the 2nd civil war and even more deaths.

The exhibit at Choeng Ek was not what I expected. There was a large gallery in the center of the field complex containing hundreds of skulls of the dead. Otherwise the facility is more or less empty fields and ponds with mass grave markers at different locations. There is a small museum which explains the use for the fields. But I found the history that was offered to be lacking. I was left with the feeling that no one really wanted to press the issue too much with the KR because of the underlying terror that still persists in the society. Cambodia is still a tragedy playing out and appears to be a country that will always be a failed state.

Short on time, and with all the other exhibits closed for the day I asked my driver where I could go. His response. "you want go shoot?" It had long been rumored, and I know people who have done this, that for a price there was a place in the city you could go and fire off Vietnam War era weapons. Primarily the Ak-47. When in Rome.......