Avoiding white slavery…

Well I made it to Cambodia. And if there ever was a place with some seriously bad mojo, this is it.

After a bumpy and eventful ride, I’ve arrived in Siem Reap via the capitol city of Phnom Penh. The border crossing from Vietnam was as confusing as one might expect, but eventually we got put on a small shabby bus and driven down the worst road you can imagine. A ferry crossing was particularlly difficult - i know it sounds uncharitable but I couldnt help but think of Night of the Living Dead, all these touters and disabled people and small beggar children moaning and chanting and pushing their hands through whatever open window we had on the bus… It was sad. But I was expecting them to start moaning “braaains”.

On the upside i made friends with the vietnamese monk on our bus… Remember I mentioned happy monks? They are! All of them. I am making a blanket generalization here: monks are fun guys. He spoke a bit of english but he also had a reall nifty electronic dictionary. why didnt i get one of those 2 months ago?!?! We had about 3 hours to chat and we used his e-dictionary a lot. At the end of the trip, he gave me the prayer beads he had used for 30 years. I asked him several times “Are you sure you want to give these to me?” and he insisted. He pointed to his chest than my chest and said “same”, then typed something into his e-dictionary and showed me the translation: “good heart, kind-hearted”…

SUCKER!

They’re lovely big wooden beads with a saffron tassel. I told him I would promise to meditate more.

Okay, a moto with a trailer just flipped outside the internet cafe and it was really scary. But no one was hurt. Looks like an old lady is about to kick someone’s ass though.

Cambodia has been pretty emotionally draining. And physically! I couldnt imagine worse buses or roads than vietnam but my god. the monk laughed his ass off when we hit a really hard bump and I went “my god!”in vietnamese… the good news is that scheduling has worked out really well and i know my family will be happy to know that I am once again traveling with a partner.. partners really. I met Irish Salena on the bus, a really nice and mild-mannered girl who is Janice’s long lost twin - the physical resemblance is mild but the voices and expressions are identical (except, of course, Salena’s got that irish brogue). We’re rooming together and doing all the normal girl stuff that I couldnt do with the dutchman - fingernail painting and pillow fights. I’m kidding of course. I did that with the dutchman too.

We’ve also hooked up with a couple crusty aussies, 2 brothers named Tony and Frank who are in their 50s and 60s. they’re real weathered and fun and I get the feeling they are thrilled about going home to brag about traveling Cambodia with 2 20-something sheilas.

I really had just planned to stay in Phnom Penh for the night and get the morning bus to Siem Reap, but as it turns out there was an unlisted bus for 12 noon, which meant that we could sight-see in PP for the morning. So we decided to go to the Killing Fields.

I can’t say that i have ever seen anything so horrible as thousands of skulls piled about 3 stories high. And what shook me up so much, what made me unable to breathe and made my eyes water and throat burn, was when i lit incense to pray and bent to put it in the ground next to one of the mass graves and saw human teeth littered all over the dirt. And bone fragments and clothes, but the teeth gave me chills that still haven’t left my body.

The Stupa, memorial

Teeth

Ironically enough, the Killing Fields are really beautiful. It’s hard to imagine the genocide that happened there. it’s about 15 km out of PP and very quiet and if it wasn’t for the monument filled to the top with exhumed skulls, you would think it was lovely. I let some kids take me around (since we bypassed the $5 guide) especially since i made a promise to the Dutchman that I wouldn’t walk anywhere in Cambodia if I wasn’t directly following a local - due to the estimated 6 million unexploded landmines. One of the guidebooks actually says “if you can’t get the local children to walk with you somewhere, don’t go”. The kids were cute and informative and I asked if there were landmines around the area and they said “Yes!” (although i was still techinically on the Killing Fields, which have been cleared for tourists). They wanted $2 to take me on a long walk but I said no thanks, paid one kid for the incense (even though i saw him steal it for me) and gave them a dollar to share.

Still. There’s just not enough incense in the world for places like that. Even Tony, a confirmed atheist, said he fought the compulsion to cross himself when we first saw the skulls.

We had taken a tuk-tuk out of town, which meant it was a dirty and bouncy ride back. I really need to buy one of the nifty checkered scarves the locals wear to cover my face. Our driver was great and got us to our next location, the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. In keeping with the theme of the Killing Fields, Toul Sleng is a high school that the Khmer Rouge took over and made into a prison camp, where most of the prisoners were housed and interrogated before finally being executed at the Killing Fields outside of town. Again, and maybe especially after the Killing Fields, it was heinous and awful. From the outside it looks like any southeast asian school (except for the barbed wire), and you go inside and all the rooms are set up either as prison cells or interrogation rooms. All the photos of the victims were very moving, there were SO many. They used the children’s exercise frames for rope climbing as gallows. And when I walked up the stairs, I saw rusty colored splatter stains still on the walls. The place is unbelievable.

Interrogation room

The Gallows

Photos of the Khmer Rouge victims

Blood on the walls 

The prisoner regulations are chilling as well:

THE SECURITY REGULATIONS
· You must answer accordingly to my questions — don’t turn them away.
· Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
· Don’t be a fool, for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
· You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
· Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
· While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
· Do nothing, sit still, and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
· Don’t make pretexts about Kampuchea in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
· If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.
· If you disobey any point of my regulations, you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

PP itself isnt the type of place i want to hang around. Salena and I went to a highly recommended restaurant last night (that employees unfortunate children and teaches them about the hospitality trade), and got soooo lost. The streets are really confusing, and it doesnt help to have an english map and khmer street signs. But we found it eventually and it was really really worth it - excellent (though trendy) food like pumpkin soup and roasted eggplant dip. By far the most expensive meal I have had since coming to SE Asia - a whole $20 for 2 people!

Tuk-tuk… It gets dusty back there!

Right now I am in Siem Reap. After Tony and I fought off the touters, possibly the most aggressive I have seen yet, more aggressive than Hanoi - we ended up at a really charming guesthouse. A huge step up from the pit Salena and I slept in last night. We’re willing to fork over $13 for a double with AC and hot water and MY GOD A REAL SHOWER - most SE asian showers are just you standing in the bathroom with a nozzle on the wall and a drain in the floor, meaning everything gets wet.

We are planning a long day tomorrow, since Salena, Tony and Frank are committing the worst crime in Cambodia and just getting a one day pass to the temples before moving on to their respective destinations (thailand and back to vietnam). Myself, I am going for the 3 day pass which means I will be on my own again after tomorrow, and hopefully I can get a seat on the sought-after Sunday flight to Vientiene… Laos, baby!

We’ve arranged 2 tuk-tuks to pick us up at 5 am… whoa. but everyone, EVERYONE, needs to see at least one sunrise over Ankor Wat, right? Me and Salena are also planning to look into the tethered balloon that takes over the temples… that has cool potential, although many purists argue that balloons are the first step to Disneyfying one of the world wonders… I’ll wave at them from 200m up!

Tags: Travel

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