Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia is a large metropolis, home to over 2 million people. In the 1920's it was known as The Pearl of Asia but those days are sadly long gone. It is an over-crowded, polluted, traffic-congested city that unfortunately has nothing going for it in the looks department anymore. Alot of foreign tourists find Phnom Penh very difficult to deal with, as the poverty and begging is very much in your face. Sat at a restaurant, 7 or 8 different people will come up to you trying to sell you sunglasses, photocopied books, bracelets. Most of these will be children. The majority of these children are actually under the direction of one chap, with all the money going to him, not the children. Tourists are encouraged not to buy anything from these hawkers,as it keeps them on the streets making a profit,though alot do. There is a massive amount of genuine destitution too, though these people will only beg off locals. You see them sleeping in the streets at night. Just around the corner from my hostel, we saw two very young children asleep in an abandoned pram surrounded by rubbish. Mind you, there are those that fall in love with the place. I met a number of backpackers in the hostel who had intended staying a couple of nights and had been there 3 weeks. As sights goes, Phnom Penh has three main attractions. The first is the Royal Palace.
The King stays here when in the city but as he is not here at the present, I was able to wander around some of the grounds. I got to peak into the throne room too, but the throne was so far away I couldn't really make it out. Next to the Palace is the temple. This is commonly referred to as The Silver Pagoda, not because of a silver roof but because the floor was tiled with silver tiles. Now when you go in the floor is covered in rugs but I did get a glimpse of a couple of tiles - they don't look very silver anymore - they need a good clean. The temple houses the Cambodian Emerald Buddha which is made out of crystals, a 90kg gold buddha and a life size buddha which is covered in over 9500 diamonds. It was extremely sparkly. The other two attractions are far more sombre. They are Choeng Ek otherwise known as the Killing Fields and S-21 a former school, which was turned into an interrogation prison by the Khmer Rouge and is now a museum of genocide. The Killing Field is quite simply a small field 15km out of Phnom Penh. It is one of many hundreds of such sites where the Khmer Rouge sent prisoners to be killed. During the Vietnam War, what is commonly not known is that the U.S. dropped nearly 3 million tonnes of bombs on neutral Cambodia (they bombed Laos too). Hundreds of thousands were killed and as a direct result the revolutionary group the Khmer Rouge came to power. Pol Pot was the leader. On 17th April 1975 he came to power and promptly appeared to go mad. He made everyone leave the cities - this was accomplished in only 3 days. He ordered rice production to be tripled - impossible. Soon thousands were starving. Then despite being a teacher himself, he ordered all the teachers and other educated people killed alongside all the monks. Within 4 years 3 million out of a
population of 8 million were dead. Some of his party slogans were "its better to kill 2 innocents then let 1 guilty escape" and "don't just cut the grass, pull up the roots" meaning if one person is found guilty, don't just kill him but his entire family too. So after the party decided you had to die, people by the bus load were transported out to a killing field. They thought they were being taken to a new prison. On arrival, their names were checked off a list and then they were all killed. Bullets were too important to waste, so the victims were beaten with agricultural tools until dead and then buried in mass graves. Today the field looks just like a normal field but as you walk around you listen to the history on an audio tape. You see the place were the mass graves were discovered and you see collections of rags and teeth and bone that have risen to the surface of the field after heavy rains. A memorial stupa has also been erected. This contains over 6000 skulls of victims exhumed from here. The field was peaceful, respectful and silent with everyone listening to the guide or lost in their own thoughts. After the reflection of Choeng Ek came the horror of S-21. S-21 was the name of the detention unit the Khmer Rouge gave to a former school previously known as Tuol Sleng. You saw how former classrooms had been bricked up and sub-divided into tiny cells. The barb wire encasing all sides of the building is still attached (this prevented prisoners jumping to their easy deaths) and there is a photo gallery - the mug shots, of all the people who died there. (The ones who survived questioning were sent to Choeng Ek to be killed). As the Khmer Rouge was very keen on documentation, there are before and after photos and more hideously a few photos taken during interrogation. There are also paintings done by prisoners at the time and afterwards. Out of 17,000 prisoners, there were 12 survivors. You see how ex Khmer Rouge ranking officials were treated as well. The KR quickly turned in on itself and started killing its own officers. In the final room there are graphic photos / paintings not to mention equipment used, so unfortunately you are able to grasp exactly what went on. One of the survivors is still alive today and he sits outside in the courtyard selling copies of his biography. That certainly would not be classed as light reading.
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