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Other entries in Phnom Penh

Some Wats, National Gallery, S-21, Palace

It didn’t take me long to ascertain that Phnom Penh was certainly poorer than the cities I had visited in Vietnam. Some of the streets near the center were not paved and there were more than a few buildings that had been left to decay. The national psyche of Cambodia stilled needed generations to recover from the Khmer Rouge and that thought would be reinforced a few times during my stay there. I walked towards a large Wat or temple at the top of a hill. It was a very active site with various types of music and many devotees. At the bottom of the hill I ran into a group of the saddest beggars you can imagine. I remember someone saying that in a country as poor as Cambodia, its important to give what you can, otherwise someone very well could go hungry. I normally don’t give but when I saw a man with no hands and one foot, who was clearly blind with scars on his face, it touched something off in me, and after that I started giving money to beggars in Cambodia, but not the sort who become beggars by virtue of tourists feeling so bad at seeing poor people. I visited the national gallery which was mostly sculptures recovered from Hindu and Buddhist temples. It was a big timber building and mostly open air to the outside. I love the open airy feel of tropical architecture. It makes northern buildings feel so small because they need to be buttoned down so tightly during the winter. I then walked by the water front near the river with all its richness and the more upscale tourist zone for people in nice and midrange hotels. The restaurants were still cheap, but they were clearly aiming more up market. Even a poor town has its wealth and Cambodians loved their cars in ways that was unheard of in small motorcycle Vietnam. I walked past the gates of the Royal Palace and the stopped at a fast food style burger joint for some lunch. It had a few American NGO workers including one family with two teenagers. It also had a group who were spreading Christianity, I think they were Jehovah’s, and they were also probably American. As I was leaving I visited a fancy grocery store with only western patrons and bought an ice cream and a large chocolate bar. As I was eating the ice cream in the afternoon heat (and it was pretty hot) a street kid aged 10 came up and asked for it pretty nicely. I took one bite and then took one look at him, and he looked skinny and more so he looked hungry. I gave him the ice cream and thought that it was the first time I had seen a kid who was pretty hungry. Then like a good boy scout I did my duty and visited the Infamous S-21 Security prison. It was a high school constructed in the late 1950’s that reminded me of a smaller version of my own high school back home in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. It was such an unassuming spot. They left it completely as the Khmer Rouge had it when the Vietnamese Army kicked them out of Phnom Penh in ~1979. It was estimated that around 20,000 people were incarcerated their and out of that number only a few people survived. Remember that Cambodia is a small country with only 12 million people. They say 4 years of the Khmer Rouge killed about a third of the population. So I started poking around and within a minute I found a free tour that had started a minute before I got there. After about 15 minutes of the tour I had to leave it and go back on my own. The man’s account was too vivid and graphic, he told the story too well. The tour started in the interrogation wing of the prison. They had some scratchy black and white photos of what the rooms looked like when they found them. The only thing they had changed about the prison was cleaning up the gore and burying the corpses they found in the prison’s courtyard. The prison was not large by any means. I lost any semblance of composure when I went into the main gallery and it had little else but thousands of mugshots of the prisoners who were incarcerated their. It was some pictures of 7 year old girls that did it. To this day it was among the saddest things I have ever seen. I was feeling pretty somber and I wished after I finished that I had a good friend to share some coffee with afterwards. Maybe I just needed a hug after confronting that kind of evil. On the outside it was just a high school with a brick wall and some barbwire, but inside it was the sight of great evil and hardship. And before I came to Cambodia I was worried about whether I should visit the killings fields, which was where they executed and buried many of S-21’s victims. I then walked on back towards the palace and decided I had just enough time for a visit. I ran into some folks that I had met on my boat tour and they nicely took my picture. One of the temples in the palace was famous for its floor made out of thick silver tiles. It was millions of dollars worth of silver at market prices. They had some beautiful shrines and temples and it was a lovely spot, quite a contrast to the surrounding neighborhoods of poor. They had a big stone model of Angkor Wat that I spent some time studying. They started closing the place off as I was finishing and I had a hard time just escaping. I ate some dinner down by the water in a nicer cafe. When I was finished I started walking back until I realized my feeling earlier in the day that there was one neighborhood I shouldn’t walk through alone after dark so for the last half of my journey I took a pedal rickshaw ride. I negotiated hard for the ride and then gave him the money he originally asked for anyways, I am silly like that. But when an old man pedals you around on a bike, you have no illusions that he is a rich man or even has a comfortable lifestyle. After the S-21 Prison I certainly needed a beer so I took a well deserved one and hung out in the bar for an hour before retiring to an internet cafe and sending a few emails to make me feel better. I was dreading visiting the Killing fields, but I felt like I had a responsibility. Its hard not to feel older when you see something like that and are forced to confront the great evil that we are capable of.

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