Phnom Penh
I arrived at the bus station in Siem Reap early, so there was time to have breakfast before getting on the road to Phnom Penh. My tuktuk driver, Visut, made another excellent restaurant recommendation.
After breakfast I stopped at a roadside market to get some snacks for the long drive. I browsed around, picked a few items, and stacked them in front of the shopkeeper who surveyed the pile vaguely and asked for a dollar. It's an interesting pricing system.
When I got on the bus, there was already someone in my assigned seat. This had happened to me in Spain, and I had decided then to just move on and find another seat, but when the seat I chose turned out to belong to a passenger who got on at a later stop, I found myself in an awkward game of musical chairs. This time I decided to inform the bus driver, who was not particularly courteous about chasing off the other passenger. I was grateful that I held onto my assigned seat toward the front of the bus when the AC stopped working about an hour into our seven hour drive.
We got stopped a few times to try to get the AC running again, but eventually the bus driver gave up and drove the rest of the way with his own window and the passenger door open at the very front of the bus. Since it was supposed to be an air conditioned bus, none of the other windows opened. At 91F and 94% humidity, it was not a pleasant ride.
Although it was a tremendous relief to get off of the hot bus, Phnom Penh didn't impress me much after the beauty of Angkor. It's a city of over two million people, but there's very little infrastructure and it feels cramped and dirty, even by Southeast Asian standards. I also got the sense that it was much less safe than either Siem Reap or Bangkok, so I rarely took my phone out to take pictures or even navigate.
When I checked into my hostel, the hostel manager made a big push to sell bus tickets, tour experiences, and anything else I assumed they earn a commission on. The hostels are so cheap that I assume they're only profitable when the guests are buying lots of food, drinks, and services. I figured I was just passing through Phnom Penh and didn't have a strong interest in touring anything, but the hostel manager was cute and spoke great English, so I stuck around to hear the whole pitch. (I noticed that her phone's lock screen was a picture of her and her much older western boyfriend, who I later learned was the owner of that chain of hostels.) I ended up signing up for the group tour of S21 and The Killing Fields since it was only five bucks.
The Killing Fields
"The Killings Fields" commonly refers to both one specific memorial site and museum outside of Phnom Penh (Cheung Ek) and also generally to any one of the many killing fields across Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge murdered a quarter of their own countrymen between 1975 and 1979. Pol Pot sought a "pure" form of Communism free from the influence of intellectual elites, so the victims of his genocide included anyone with an education, anyone who wore glasses, anyone with soft hands, and anyone with religious affiliations such as monks.
I wasn't prepared for how overwhelming the experience of touring these sites was going to be. Instead of tour guides at the Killing Fields, everyone receives an audio headset. Since everyone is listening quietly to their headset and exploring at their own pace, the grounds are very peaceful. There are mango trees, butterflies, birdsong, and a tranquil lily pond with frogs hopping around. In brutal juxtaposition, there are still bones and teeth protruding from the ground. In 1980 The Killing Fields were excavated in hopes of identifying and counting the victims, but there were so many remains that some still get uncovered as the soil shifts after a rain.
The audio guides were exceptional. I've been subjected to audio tours that raise more questions than they answer (not in a thought-provoking way—they're just unclear) but these were produced beautifully. The history is well laid out, there are stories from survivors of the camps and families of its victims, there's a beautiful classical music composition, and it closes with a message about the path to overcome trauma, find personal peace, and extend forgiveness. This is particularly moving when you consider that the perpetrator of this genocide lived a long healthy life, was never tried or imprisoned, and died only a few years before this memorial was developed.
The heat was intense while I waited outside for the rest of my tour group, so I purchased a sufficiently electrolytic beverage. I felt quite frivolous sitting outside of the Killing Fields sipping on my coconut.
S-21
Security Prison 21 is a museum created at the site of a former Khmer Rouge detention center, which originally had been a high school. Before being sent to the Killing Fields, people who the Khmer Rouge deemed undesirable were sent here to be tortured and interrogated. Most were forced to sign false confessions of their crimes against the country and to name their supposed co-conspirators.
S-21 was extremely graphic. The audio guide openly encouraged people to skip certain exhibits and just sit outside and listen. One building contained so many photos of people who had been tortured to death that I tapped out and took a break to listen to the musical selection before moving on to another exhibit.
The most haunting detail, though, wasn't a gory one. An exhibit of personnel files and photos of the Khmer Rouge interrogators pointed out that the oldest among them were in their early twenties. The audio guide called my attention to some scratches on a wall where prisoners had been held. The scratches, which were above hooks that held the keys to prisoners' shackles, looked like this:
The audio guide speculated that the guards probably had so little education that they didn't know how to write numbers.
The Holocaust was an awful chapter in human history, but its perpetrators grew up with generations of anti-Semitic culture. The most unsettling part of the Cambodian Genocide is the fact that it came on so suddenly. How is an impoverished twenty-year-old who can't write numbers supposed to resist the appeal of a group that has placed him in authority over people he's been told were responsible for his poverty?
Like the Killing Fields, the message of this museum is to first absolutely shock the attendees with the severity of what happened here, then to surprise them with a call for peace and forgiveness. The closing monologue of the audio tour compels visitors to understand that anger only harms the person who's angry. Anger inhibits true justice. Anger is the same feeling that led to genocide.
Night Market
Later that evening I ventured off on my own to go find some authentic dinner. I walked along an uncharacteristically pretty promenade along the river to a night market with very few tourists. There was a dining area where you sit on mats on the floor and the surrounding food vendors come around with their respective menus.
I had planned on moving on to Vietnam the next morning, but my visa hadn't been approved yet, so I decided to spend a few days on the island Koh Rong Samloem. I got pink-eye on my way there and had to head back to the mainland in Sihanoukville to acquire medication and more sanitary living conditions. I spent most of my time lying down with my eyes closed and don't have much to say about either place, so I won't make a whole extra blog them.
Sihanoukville is a coastal city filled with abandoned high rise construction projects. Chinese investors made a big push to turn the area into a tourist destination a few years ago, but COVID completely halted their efforts. The area by the beach has very few Khmer signs and no English signs—nearly everything is in Chinese.
Koh Rong Samloem is one of the islands just off the coast of Sihanoukville. There's no internet and they've only had power for the past few years. A decade ago there were no structures on the island whatsoever. Here's what a $5 per night beach front hostel looks like on the island:
Next stop: Ho Chi Minh City by way of Phnom Penh. I'm still not feeling 100%, but now that I have enough visual acuity to leave my hotel room and my eyes aren't constantly weeping mucus, I can take a bus up to Phnom Penh tonight then HCM City tomorrow. I'm hoping that by Saturday I'll be feeling 100% and can explore Ho Chi Minh City freely.