Day 5

Getting out of Vietnam early was rather easy and finding my bus posed no difficulty. As a side note, even though my bus ride was pretty fine and pretty clean, my Vietnamese seat mate said that one should try to get a Khai Nam bus to cross between Kampuchea (Cambodian for Cambodia) and Vietnam if possible. Since I have no experience, I can only say that since she has tons of experience living in both Cambodia and Vietnam (and most of her dozens of visa stamps are from the two countries), she may have some expertise you should consider. The visa process as always just comes with a feeling of annoyance but it took only a few minutes and cost $35 for a one month tourist visa for me as a US citizen. You will be peddled by tons of folk asking to “change money”; just ignore them but remember to change your money into USD beforehand. Cambodia has a dual currency system and you’ll get the small change in Khmer riel (where most Cambodians exchange with a KHR 4000 = USD 1). Try using your riel for tuk-tuks, snacks, and local meals so you’ll only have USD left (to exchange) when leaving the country.

Fair warning, if you enter Cambodia from the border, you’ll be hit by the poverty from the start. Now I’ve seen poverty in the US, Greece, Korea, Malaysia, and Vietnam, but they all seem fairly well off in comparison to Cambodia. The countryside goes on and on with few roads but large amounts of poorly-managed land, shanty-looking huts, and barefoot children. Plenty of this continues on into their major cities (if you can call them that) as I’ve seen in Phnom Penh and heard from others in regards to places like Siem Reap and Sihanoukville. During the Khmer Rouge regime, around 80% of Kampuchea’s population lived in intense poverty according to information from the Killing Field at Choung Ek. In 2012, according to the World Bank, 17.7% of the population lives under the national poverty line of USD 1.25/day (2005 USD values).  However, as that line has faced much criticism, I have seen exactly why. Just from taking a second to look around you can see that the 2005 USD 1.25 poverty line is quite a poor indicator, as many of the necessary resources to get by even on a daily basis cost much more than $1.25 (as Guanghan Wan indicated in the DW interview, the value of resources is based on the estimates between 1988 and 2005). You’re lucky to even get a meal for 2015 USD 1.25, which is as cheap as it can get in Cambodia and that price is far above the bare minimum needed in Vietnam, a country that is estimated to be much better off than Cambodia (and from visiting, I would attest to that).

Phnom Penh is the capital, but honestly you don’t really need any form of transportation to get around the town. I essentially walk around a third of the entire place in the few hours I was out my first night, getting the bulk of my site seeing out of the way. By the way, most of these sites are actually nearby each other making the need for a tuk-tuk pretty unnecessary. Waking around, you’ll notice that Cambodian very much holds much pride in its characteristic theme cultivated from Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Two deities one can notice, in particular, are the odd-headed Naga and the man-bird Garuda. According to mythology, the Naga King of the Pacific’s daughter and the ancient king of Cambodia gave birth to the Khmer people and the 7 headed naga one would encounter with most in Cambodia represent the 7 naga races. (The odd headed naga are male and the even-headed are female.) Garuda acts as the steed of the Hindu god Vishnu or Krishna. Similarly, Garuda also symbolizes the military strength of the Khmer people.

Just go to Wikitravel or Google what there is to see in Phnom Penh and select based on your own interests because you can see most, if not all, of Phnom Penh easily in two or three days. If you’re an architecture buff, you’ll probably be swooned by the motifs. If you’re into Buddhism, you may want to visit some of the institutes and interact with the monks (who are more open to interaction than one may expect). If you’re into monarchies, visit the Royal Palace, but I’d say the USD 6 for the entrance could be better spent on food.

Day 6

If you have ever visited any museum or site where genocide occurred, be ready for an extreme rush of emotion and tragedy. I’ve visited concentration camps in Germany and holocaust museums in both the U.S. and Germany, but genocide always shocks you. Seeing the remnants of those suffered under such horror can take a toll on you. Seeing photos of the faces of both those who were victimized and those who did the victimizing sends icy tingles down your spine. To understand that another one of your fellow human beings could go so far to commit such heinous acts on others acts as a clear reminder on the power of ideas and those who can manipulate them into action. When you walk through Choung Ek, you feel that you are walking around a park but there are ridiculous amounts of valleys and craters in the land from where they excavated tens of thousands of bodies. To really picture this, these craters were quite small, some of them about the size of small pool; most of these contained over hundred of bodies. Yet, the craters you saw throughout the complex were only about half of the mass graves at Choung Ek alone. After Choung Ek, around 300 killing fields remain scattered throughout Cambodia, the bulk of which exist in the land between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Only a portion of these camps have been excavated, mostly by accident by farmers planting crops. The rest of the fields are located deep in forest areas or blocked off by land mines. According to the Statistics of Democide, of the estimated 3.3 million people murdered in Cambodia during the 1970s, around 2.4 million were killed by the Khmer Rouge. As I believed with all tragedies of human history, being respectful of these sites and learning their history is crucial for a better society, but I am bothered by poorly applied rhetoric of “We must learn from history.” It is clear even today with Boko Haram, ISIS (aka ISIL, IS, DAESH, or Da’ish), the War in Darfur, and the situation in Myanmar, society really continues to fail to learn from our history. I am working on two Globalist pieces on both Cambodia and Myanmar, where I will elaborate my thoughts further.

Speaking of my Globalist field research, one should very much go to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in unison with Choung Ek to get a large picture on how Angkar (as the Khmer Rogue government referred to themselves) ran S-21, their largest and most infamous prison. At Toul Sleng, which used to be a high school, I spoke with Visoth Chhay, current director of the museum, for my research before touring the complex on my own. If you anything about solitary confinement in prisons in the US, it’s terrible and permanently scarring. Imagine and even smaller space and you’ll have an idea of how isolated prisoners were confined here. For group confinements, people were layered naked on the ground in rows with their feet shackled next to each other and were beaten if they made a slight movement. Many were tortured just for eating a bug that died in the room. If guards failed at even one of their specified duties or broke even a minor policy, they would receive the same fate as the people they imprisoned. Forms of torture included being lashed and cut on the back and having the wounds washed with salt water, being hung from the gallows just by the wrists, being forced to eat their own excrement and that of others, and being put under water torture with a steady stream of a single drop of water of falling on one’s forehead. Throughout the regime, anything and everything was considered a weapon and combatants (as soldiers were referred to by the Angkar) would kill prisoners with things like hoes, garden shovels, and even bamboo.

When the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge (most of their leaders escaped to the dangerous, guerrilla-filled Thai border), it was not until 1998 when the UN stopped recognizing the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s government when their civil war was considered over. Many nations failed to recognized the communist Vietnamese-established government in 1979. Much of the international delay came from Sweden’s prolific support for the Khmer Rouge, based off of recognized delegates like Gunnar Bergström and Jar Myrdal of the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association when they were provided a Khmer-Rouge tour during their regime. Following WWII, how could there be another horrific genocide, right? It is clear that the 20th century f***** up. To make things worse, from the Swedish faction that supported the Khmer Rouge until its end in 1998, only Gunnar Bergström publicly admitted how wrong and shameful he was for providing his support. At that time, Pol Pot had the fortune of dying in his own bed at the age of 78 under house arrest in Thailand, supposedly by a heart attack, but since his body was cremated shortly thereafter, the rumor that he committed suicide with poison may be plausible.

As always, I happen to get lucky and meet people randomly. Often enough, they tend to be pretty chill and I have some company for the day. I met a trio. A Canadian dude dating a Japanese chick and a Polish fellow they met in Laos just two weeks ago, named Mark, Miyaku, Karol, respectively. So we walked and chatted for quite a bit around the Independence Monument, the river front, the Central Market, and then the Wat Phnom area. The couple met around three years ago and they just actually started their Southeast Asia tour after leaving Australia in January. From conversing, I actually did not find out how long Karol has been traveling but after hearing that he had been at the Himalayan base camp not just too long, I’d say it’s been a while.

So like I’ve been to tons of markets now throughout my stops in Asia. I have to say, I got tired of them pretty early on and have really no idea why I still visit them. Yeah, at times, I can find some pretty cheap snacks and get an okay deal on them, but like at the same time, I can also almost always find another shop that sells something comparable. You can bargain at times, but normally it’s for something fake anyway. Additionally, they’re far from the cleanest. So why do I bother? I don’t know. I guess I might something worth my time, but that slight optimism is only occasionally met. I guess it’s that random success that keeps me going. Habits are silly.

Day 7

Hey guys! Surprise, surprise, the school that helped establish extensive research on the Khmer Rouge genocide: Yale. That connection comes with great perks, namely the ability to meet people impromptu and get a good amount of information from such resources. I can tell I’ll have a bulk of information for this article, but if you ever visit Phnom Penh, you can get such resources in person at the Document Center of Cambodia, otherwise known as the Sleuk Rith Institute (thanks Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program). I met Kokthay Eng, the Institute’s Research Director. Admittedly, I guess he was rather quite busy because the answers I received did not seem complete, but I was grateful for the help I got anyway on such short notice (as in 10 minutes before we talked). To amp my research before I left the center, I read “Victims and Perpetrators? Testimony of Young Khmer Rouge Comrades” by Meng-Try Ea and Sorya Sim. It gave a research and interview-based viewpoint on the role of combatants, most of who were at an adolescent age during Angkar’s “conscription”.

The rest of my day was just relaxing before going off to Siem Reap by overnight bus. On that note, it’s high time I talk about Khmer food.

It’s all in the sauce. Outside of the sauce, I feel most of the food is pretty plain and simple. It’s actually kind of hard to get good Khmer food without either paying a rather high price in the city at few locations or going out to the countryside to try it homemade. However, I’ll just do a quick rundown of things I did have.

Khmer Noodles: Out of the things I listed, I’d say this was my favorite. The key here is the killer lemongrass soup that the noodles and veggies are layered in. It’s somewhat creamy and a tad opaque but after you mix it all up, you’ll have a happy time.

Morning Glory: The meat in this dish can be changed up but I guess the key here are the lettuce leaves used and the juicy sauce it’s layered in. Super simple and your best option if you want a clean and light meal.

Lotcha: More of a snack than an actual dish. It looks pretty nice but without any sauce or chili pepper, you’re going to have a bland time.

Buffalo: Be wise in where you get this because some peel leave it out in rather no-go areas. If you find a good place, get ready for some gamey and juicy meat. The sauce that normally comes, well, on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a yasss (insert yasss gif).

Green Mango Salad: Honestly, judging a salad kind of seems silly.

Fish Amok: Maybe the most Khmer of all the dishes I listed, the fish in my fish amok wasn’t too shabby. The soup has lemongrass and coconut flavors through giving it a character taste. To be real though, I guess it could be summed down to meh.