feldmanlarry

This post is filled with very gruesome pictures of death in Cambodia so you may wish to skip it.

The day began with the high of driving through the craziness of Cambodian traffic. It felt so good to be in Asia and to see the King’s Palace with its stunning architecture. We had a tough trip getting here and the hot air felt great. Keith and I both love hot weather. It’s a joy to be on the road again, especially with Keith. We travelled together extremely well last year to Peru and there’s no reason to think it will be any different this time.

I was really excited about our guide’s telling the history of Cambodia. I’m reading a book called “The Embers of War”, which describes the background to the Vietnam War. It reads to me more like a novel than a history book. Cambodia’s history had much in parallel with Vietnam but some significant differences. Basically, the French came in and built roads and buildings but exploited resources for their own gains. The communists merged with the nationalists to fight France then the US. The colonial powers set up puppet governments that never got much traction among their people. In both Vietnam and Cambodia, the governments are leftist. In both cases millions died in wars and were left with destroyed fields and unexploited landmines. It seems like Vietnam may be doing better than Cambodia now economically.

Wow, that was a severely short telling of 30 years or so of complicated history.

We moved fairly quickly through the Royal Museum, which was worthy of much more time. Keith and I weren’t feeling it. We had been standing while the guide talked for long stretches and were ready to move on. Since my baggage didn’t make it, we went to the Central Market to buy some shirts and underwear. I was surprised that they had clothes that fit me since the typical Cambodian is very short and thin.

I saw durians being sold at the market, which is a fruit famous for emitting a foul smell but tasting good. I have been fascinated with durians for years and could not pass up the opportunity to buy one. This was a small item on my bucket list (I don’t have a bucket list). We both took a taste and it wasn’t bad. They put the rest in a box and after a while the taxi smelled a little foul. Later Keith’s backpack smelled a little disgusting. It turns out that there are two types of durians: wet and dry. We had managed to get the dry durians, which are not as foul smelling as the wet ones.

I loved this sign at our hotel – no smoking, no guns, and no durians. Amazing that durians merit the same status as smoking and guns.

The picture below shows the most dramatic moment of the day and perhaps of the trip. Our guide told us the story of how he saw his mother being raped and tortured as a 3 year old during the Killing Fields era of Cambodia (1975-1979). The Khmer Rouge decided to create a classless society by killing many of the educated people and city dwellers. About 3 million Cambodians died out of a population then of about 7 million. Hard to imagine.

We were at a former high school that had been converted to a torture center. It is now the Tuol Sleng Prison Museum and is truly scary. They tied prisoners’ hands behind their back then hung them upside down using the gallows below. When they lost consciousness, they put their heads in fertilizer water to wake them up. Prisoners could either give up names and have their family and friends be tortured before being tortured and killed themselves or not confess and be tortured and killed.

Our guide was obviously very passionate about explaining what happened here. To cheer us up, we went to the Choeunk Ek Killing Fields memorial out of town. These pictures give only a small sense of the massive stacks of skulls unearthed at this site. The first picture is the bottom layer for victims over 60 years old. The other picture show the rest of the 60+ skulls. There are also body parts stored in rows above.

There were several excavated areas, each with depressing stories. The sign for the picture below says “Mass grave of more than 100 victims children and women whose majority were naked.”

From here we had to head directly to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap where Angkor Wat is. This was a first full day in Asia and it was mind-boggling. It was dominated by the Cambodia tragedy of 1975-1979 but there was also the thrill of being in Asia after the long 16-hour flight (plus a flight before and a flight after). The architecture and the feel of Cambodia made it worth the pain.