Southeast Asia: Slow like Cambodia

The Inns and outs of Phnom Penh 

I jumped onto an overnight bus from Vietnam which turned out to be a sleeper bus. A sleeper bus, I learned,  is where there's an upper deck and the seats... lie flat!!!! My goodness!!! And so from the relative luxury of my super sleeper big bus bunk I watched the lights of Saigon disappear in the darkness and Cambodia reveal itself in the early morning light. Now this is a cool way to travel. Like watching a travel show on TV with out those annoying commercials!
Peaceful quiet and seemingly a place forgotten in many ways, farms were soon replaced with buildings as Phnom Peng welcomed me to the banks of the mighty Mekong river. A land of Temples, Monks and rice fields its a slow easier pace than either Thailand or Vietnam. There is less commercial activity though traditions and spiritualism are in abundance. The people are conspicuously nice and the food is both inexpensive and for the most part delicious.







I chose a room for $7 per night and learned that in Cambodia as elsewhere you get what you pay for. I didn't look at the room first... though should have. It was certainly more of a living insect museum than a lodging area.... no windows or air conditioning so the night was a sweat filled swat-fest that even in my drunken state was impossible to cope with. I'd met some very hospitable Germans at the bar just down the street and thought it good strategy to talk long into the night and spend my money on beer rather than an expensive room. You win some - you lose some..... this one I definitely lost. The Inns and outs of Phnom Penh....

Phnom Penh is perched on the edge on the mighty Mekong river and has a wonderful wide walkway along it's bank. At night it's a great place to hang out and watch the Cambodian world go by. Monks and prostitutes, families and fishers - street Vendors and picnickers -  it's a busy place attracting all manner of Cambodian folks. Pictured on the right is some food I bought. It looked smelled and looked delicious enough - was well priced and from the comments of the chef, thought to maybe be pork...maybe.... It was not delicious - in fact it was startlingly bad tasting. Examining it carefully later - I have to say I have no idea what it was... but will watch that I am never temped to try this seemingly tasty morsel again..... Ever! I'm fortunate that my Africa eating experience has definitely improved my ability to "handle" some questionable food choices. Again you win some and lose some. Like the Hilton suite from the previous evening -  I lost on this one as well.

The draw of Cambodia for me is The Killing Fields. While the temples of Seim Reap are apparently even more interesting for different reasons I didn't have time to visit and... have run out of pages in my passport so am unable to travel more other than to get back to Kenya.

 I have never really understood the significance outside the fact that many died at the hands of the terrible regime led by Pol Pot. I visited on the following day and admit I was a bit tired from little sleep..and hung over from too many beers. It was likely not an ideal time to visit a memorial to one of the worlds' most horrific events.  Later I struggled to escape inconsolable grief and depression as the facts and realities hit me like waves on some demonic beach. What a seriously fucked up group of people these were. As many as 2.5 million died out of a population of 8 million. The idea that if you got rid of all the smart people (like those who wore glasses) and returned to a purely agrarian existence - the world would be a better place.  WTF? The ethnic Thai, Vietnamese and Monks suffered the same demise.

The killing fields are an industrial yard on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Somehow I thought it would be a grassy plain like the Canadian plains of Abraham or Flanders fields.... I didn't expect a commercial lot. Simply a large piece of land surrounded by tall walls and a series of outbuildings. There are still bones and bits of cloth revealed with each passing rain .... and the yard is as it was in many ways. And I expected it to be older... a lot older - even though I know that Pol Pot had led the Khmer Rouge for just 4 years from 1975 to 1979 it was not so long ago.The building above is full of skulls - yup - a shitload of them... below a better shot looking through one of the viewing panes.

Not only did many many innocent people die here - but died employing the most horrific and barbaric means. There was no funds for mercifully ending lives so the main choice was to get the smart guy close to the edge of the pit and whack him with an car axle.Worse - much worse - the tree below is known as the killing tree. Babies and young children were killed here by swinging them by their feet and smashing their little heads against this tree. Day in - and day out.

In my travels and work over the last couple of years I have enjoyed leaving the cozy cocoon of naivety behind and soberly embraced the astonishing way in which people can behave toward one another. The killing tree ended my day and I was reduced to a weeping boy ..... feeling utterly disconnected with my fellow man and the 54 years of learning about our world that surrounds me. If anything good came from this it's was my strengthening resolve to devote more time and energy to humanitarianism and maintaining a positive if not hopeful philosophy that the world is changing and we are learning to tolerate if not love one another.




Thanks for reading Layno!!