KathleenPnom Penh, Cambodia – March 2-5, 2016
Having missed Pnom Penh and gone directly to Siem Reap on our trip to Cambodia in 2002, we felt like we should make a stop there and see what the capital is all about. First order of business, unfortunately, was to witness some of the reminders of the atrocities committed in the country during the scourge of the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979. It is difficult somehow for me to comprehend that this mass genocide happened within my lifetime. While I was having a happy childhood in the US, Cambodia was undergoing one of the worst ethnic cleansing activities of all time. In four short years, over 3 Million people died under Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot dictatorship both of starvation from a nonsensical economic plan and from torture and murder. A major precept of the Khmer Rouge was that anyone who was educated and a city dweller prior to the revolution was an enemy of the state, and people were killed for no reasons such as the fact that they wore glasses, or that one of their family members was a teacher. Schools were made into makeshift prisons where the incarcerated were tortured until they would confess to any nonsense that the Khmer Rouge wanted them to write. A written confession was genrally a death sentence, as once this was obtained, the victims were finished off. Pol Pot tought that it was better to kill an innocent than to risk the “enemy” survive. It was shocking to learn that our government continued to recognize the Khmer Rouge as the official government of Cambodia even after the North Vietnamese had helped Cambodia liberate itself from this maniacal leadership.
Our first stop was a high school in Pnom Penh (about a 10-minute walk from our hotel) that had been one of the highest profile prisons during that period, to say that the experience was sombering would be a huge understatement. The next morning we toured one of the “Killing Field” sights outside the city, essentially these were mass graves in areas cordoned off from the public so that people did not understand the extent of what was happening. These tourist attractions were not fun to visit, but it seems important to learn the history of where these people and places have come from and what they have been through, which gives us a much better feeling for how far they have come and how exciting it is to see things getting better all of the time.
Pnomn Penh is a rather small city, but the population are fiercly proud about its development, especially that which is actually Cambodian-owned and not belonging to big foreign investment companies, who have taken over some important cultural heritage sites and are building some rather out-of-place looking new development. It is a place where you can stay in a fancy boutique hotel with a palm-tree lined pool area, but also see people begging for money, living in shantys or small boats, and barely eeking out a living Selling the same 10 items on the street as the person next to them. We actually enjoyed our stay in the city more than we expected. We went to some markets that were fun to explore, took a lovely boat cruise to learn about the city and see the sunset, and walked along the banks of the river at night peering at all of the bars and restaurants. It is definately a place on the rise and you can’t help but feel that the next decade will bring a lot of changes and a better way of life to most everyone.
Our 2-day stay flew by and soon it was time to head back to Siem Reap and the wonders that are Angkor Wat.
