Phenom Penh, Cambodia (Post #88)
Michele here writing about Phenom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.
After arriving by bus in Phenom Penh (pronounced “penom pen”) at night, we decided to have a tuk tuk driver take us to the riverfront. We read in the guidebook that there were some mid range places there but when we got there, many of them were booked. We ended up taking a river view room that was really out of our budget at $35. It turns out that the river front area is the one of the nicest parts of Phenom Pehn. Many European, Australian, even American people live and frequent the restaurants and bars in this area. I got up at 5:30 the next morning and took this picture of the sunrise from our roof top balcony.
The next day we visited the Royal Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The Temple of the Emerald Buddha houses several buddhas in glass cases that are made out of gold, silver, and bronze, and have diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds in them. One of the buddhas even has a 14 carat diamond inlaid in the gold body. We spent one more night in our $35/night hotel but then checked out the next day.
We didn’t know where we wanted to stay but had heard that many backpackers stay by the lake on the edge of town so we asked a tuk tuk driver to take us there. We were not prepared for what we saw. This part of Phenom Penh was in stark contrast to the river front. Yes, there were a lot of backpackers there and the area was crammed with restaurants, bars, and guesthouses but it had a feel of complete lawlessness. It looked like a shanty town with narrow dirt alleys, dilapidated buildings, and people strung out on drugs. We looked at a couple of rooms on the lake. They were only $4 but they were also pretty bad. Plus, the environment there seemed really weird. We decided this was a fine place to visit but not stay. In fact, even though we eventually settled on a guest house in the middle of the city for $15, we visited the lake a few times. There are about a dozen restaurants and bars on stilts that sit over the water on the lake. These are nice places to watch the sunset. This photo was taken while having a beer at sunset at one of the lake bars.
The same tuk tuk driver that drove us around to look for places to stay also took us to two very well known places in Phenom Penh: S-21 and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. (Some people may have seen the movie, “The Killing Fields” based on actual events that took place in Cambodia.)
S-21: In 1975, Tual Svay Prey High School was taken over by the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge and his security forces turned the high school into a prison known as security prison 21 (S-21). It became the largest center of detention and torture in Cambodia. During the four years the Khmer Rouge were in power, there were no businesses, no schools, no stores, no gas stations, and no way for people to live unless they worked for the Khmer Rouge or in rice fields. Thousands of Cambodian people were brought to S-21 and tortured until they confessed to crimes against the Khmer Rouge that they didn’t commit. Once they confessed to these crimes they were killed. During the first part of 1977, S-21 claimed 100 lives per day. S-21 is now a museum that Mike and I went to visit. The first floor of the school-turned prison contains photos from the day the prison was discovered. The day it was discovered there were 14 people who had just recently been tortured and killed. Pictures of the way these people were found are hanging on the walls above the places where they were found. You can’t even tell that the bloody messes in the photos are actually people.
Each prisoner had to get permission to do anything and everything, even change sleeping positions, and if they didn’t get permission they were tortured via electric shocks, pulling out fingernails, beatings, and hanging by their wrists with their arms behind their backs until their shoulders dislocated and/or they passed out. If prisoners passed out when being tortured their heads were dunked in insecticide which woke them up. Then the beatings began again. Barbed wire is all over the school buildings to prevent prisoners from trying to jump and commit suicide in order to end their suffering. Each prisoner was photographed prior to being imprisoned. Of the 20,000 individuals that went to S-21, only 7 lived. Here is a picture of some of the people who supposedly committed revolutionary crimes against the Khmer Rouge and who were tortured and later killed.
Yes, those are all photos of children.
Killing Fields of Choeung Ek – Between 1975 and 1978 about 17,000 men, women, and children detained and tortured at S-21 prison were transported to the extermination camp of Choeung Ek (15 km from Phnom Penh). Many were bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting bullets. The remains of 8985 people, many of whom were found bound and blindfolded were exhumed from mass graves in 1980. Fragments of human bone and bits of clothing are still scattered around the pits today. Mike and I visited the killing fields and saw these pits along with more than 8000 skulls of the people that were killed there. The skulls (shown below) are stacked inside a memorial. For me, it was a very emotionally draining day. I couldn’t help but think about what these people must have gone through. I felt sad for them, their families, and all Cambodians that suffered during this time period.
Tags: Category #23: Cambodia
Michele Harmon
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