After we checked out of suicide hotel in Ho Chi Minh, and waited around for a while until, a monster arrived!
The beastly bus had tyres that looked like they had been taken off of a tractor, it looked ready for some serious off-roading! After they loaded up the bus with hundreds of large packages, we boarded. After roughly 3 hours of driving through the rural countryside we arrived at the Cambodian land boarder. The process of getting a visa on arrival was straight forward and simple, just a little bit of waiting around and some slaps (that's what the sign said the fingerprint taking process was called)!
After calling out our names one by one and getting our Visas approved and our passports stamped, we jumped back on the bus and entered into the Kingdom of Cambodia. The lofting palm trees and rice fields of the countryside roads continued, however the tarmacked roads quickly became dusty and progressively more bumpy, and with wooden shacks littering the landscape it was clear to see Cambodia was going to be a lot less developed than most parts of Vietnam (It was difficult to get good photos at this stage as the bus was gunning it!)! Three hours later, we reached the outskirts of the capital. Rain and traffic made the place seem even more gloomy in the poverty stricken city, then the first thing we witnessed was an older lady urinating on the side of the road! As always the bus dumped us off a little out of town so we had no choice but to take an extortionately priced tuk tuk to the centre (holding on to our bags extra tight).
Lucky Boy, Dream girls and Happy Happy Bar would be to name just a few bars in the sleazy centre, the roads and marketplace was busy but other than a few seedy old men with creepy moustaches with a weary look in their eyes, the place seemed to be strangely quiet.
It seemed to lack a variety of places to eat and 'normal' bars, with locals burning plastic on the side of the street, our first impression of this place wasn't a good one, definitely a place to keep your wits about.
After annoying our tuk tuk driver (Mr Tuk Tuktastic) by refusing several offers of his suggested guesthouses and city tours, we found a cheap place with an unbelievably powerful bumgum. We dumped our stuff off and went for a wander. The river was quite pleasant with wide walking paths, statues, the odd boat cruising past, fancy hotels and expensive restaurants. After navigating the dodgy feeling streets (the city reminded us of India), over a traditional Khmer curry dinner (a typical kind of curry, made with coconut milk and a lot of vegetables, also quite spicy) we put together a plan of action.
Killing Fields
Pretty much the only reason we headed to the capital was to engross ourselves in Cambodia's dark and tragic past.
Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge, a communist party inspired by Pol Pot, or Brother number 1 stormed the capital and forced all the citizens to leave for the countryside. Their goal was to restore Cambodia to it's ancient roots and idyllic past! Almost every Cambodian worked in the rice fields and labour camps. Given barely enough food to survive they worked ridiculously long days. Pol Pot turned pretty much every citizen (everyone from accountants to doctors) into a peasant farmer! The Regime was responsible for around 2 million executions, in dozens of locations all over Cambodia. After 4 years of suffering and mass genocide, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and ended the Khmer Rouge.
We organised a driver for the day to take us to the Killing Fields located close to Phenom Penh. With the weather still grey and raining, we embarked on probably the same route as many prisoners of the Khmer Rouge did to the infamous execution site! £0.25 plastic bag style raincoat and headphones in, we pushed play and approached site number 1. The place reeked of wrong doing and deep sadness and you couldn't help but sympathise for the victims!
The large site led us to numerous mass graves including all women graves and victims found with no heads. To save money on ammunition the Khmer Rouge would use anything from hand tools to rope to murder men, women and children. Probably the most upsetting area was the Killing Tree, where they held babies by their feet and smashed them against a deep rooted tree then tossed them into a pit whilst huge tannoys playing brotherhood chants echoed around to suppress the screams!
Wandering around you could listen to stories told by survivors and even some of the Khmer Rouge soldiers. We spent over three hours walking around in the rain, taking in all the gut wrenching facts, figures and the artefacts (especially the bone fragments, they say that every monsoon the staff still discover bones in the mass graves) inside the large monument. This large monument housed hundreds of skulls recovered from the mass graves, they have been cleaned and colour coded by the way they were killed, also separated by age, it truly is an eerie but fascinating place. We left feeling with an element of disbelief (It's horrible to think humans can do such a thing to each other), anger and just general sadness.
S21
After a depressing previous day we set ourselves up for another!
Opting for the budget method of travelling, we decided to walk to Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng, S21 was the Khmer Rouge code name. A former school turned into a prison and torture complex. The weather was completely different, blue skies and the sun was scorching the littered streets and tuk tuk roofs. It took us over an hour to get to the museum and on route we passed the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda and the Cambodian Independence Monument.
It was the same style audio guided tour as the Killing Fields, we walked through the barbed wired gates and saw a lot of people sitting around the grassed, well maintained courtyard staring into space, we thought it was a little strange until we hit play on the old school devices! S21 is comprised of five main buildings, from the outside it looks like a run down high school, inside, the building was chilling.
The guided audio tour took us around 3 hours. Taking us through torture and confession rooms (Victims were tortured to give false confessions to justify their execution!), also the prison cells. These tiny 6x2ft cells were made from wood, had a small metal box as a toilet and fittings in the ground to lock captives up, some of the cells still had blood stained floors. Another way they held the prisoners was just to chain them all together in rows, absolutely horrendous living conditions, again all you could feel was sorrow and sadness! After listening to peoples stories (there was an Australian who was detained here which was an interesting story) and seeing thousands of black and white portraits of victims throughout the complex, we left, with a similar but stronger feeling of dejection. Because of the pictures and artefacts like beds and cells you could walk into, S21 seemed to be more palpable and hard hitting than the Killing Fields. Despite the sunshine, the day was a dark and depressing as we'd anticipated and again, we left feeling off, and with an all round negative outlook on the world!
Pradal Serey
After a heartbreaking afternoon, we got lucky.
Our final evening fell on a Saturday and after having a quick chat with our hostel staff we organised a tuk tuk take us to see some traditional Cambodian Boxing. We left and arrived after 30 minutes of battling through the hectic streets of the capital, unfortunately there was a lot of confusion and we were over 2 hours early, the driver then decided to take us on an adventure. We sat in traffic for over an hour then found out the second venue didn't have a show that night. We were feeling a little annoyed about all the confusion,
especially after we stopped outside the drivers house for 10 minutes until his son took over and took us back to the original venue. Irritated after the better part of 2 hours, we finally walked into the venue.
Pradal Serey is very similar to Muai Thai, however the elbow is more commonly used, the sport dates back to ancient times and Pradal Serey translates to free fighting! Entrance was free and the warehouse type building with tiered benches and plastic school chairs with metal legs was heaving! From children running riot and babies being breastfed to serious looking enthusiasts waiting for lights to go down. There wasn't another foreigner in sight only us two, we felt like extras in the film Kick Boxer! We got stared at a little but everyone was living up to the Cambodian reputation of being really friendly! We opted for the school style seats closer to the Ring and almost straight after sitting down the large screen flashed on showing two fighters and the tale of the tape, after some booming club music the fighters entered the Ring.
The two fighters prowled around the ring, performing tribal dances and addressing the crowd with traditional (the music made you feel uncomfortable with anticipation) live music as the soundtrack. The lights around the crowd dimmed highlighting the square ring, the bell was struck, and the music began with an increased tempo!
We enjoyed the intermittent but violent exchanges! There was a lot of cautious sizing up during the rounds, however we were rewarded with some explosive and exciting action (the whole thing was televised so we could see some decent action replays!), unfortunately we didn't see any knockouts, but it was a brilliantly authentic night and a great way to cheer ourselves up after learning about the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian genocide and the dirty, crowded streets!
Our time in Phnom Penh was completely different from anything we have done so far on this trip, it was a lot to take in, sad but yet fascinating at the same time, for the city itself, we wouldn't rush back too!
Three nights in Cambodia's bustling capital was enough for us, the next morning we headed for the small riverside city of Kampot.
