Border crossings on land always seem to be overly complicated and elaborate affairs and the move from Vietnam to Cambodia was no exception. It went something like this: (1) clamber off the bus, hand your passport to a complete stranger then stand around feeling confused until you hear your name being yelled then reclaim passport from aforesaid stranger. You have now officially left Vietnam, (2) climb back on bus and drive about 20 yards, (3) get off bus again, hand passport to another stranger and wait for your name to be yelled again. (4) Stand in a queue and get fingerprinted by stern looking Cambodian official (unless you're over 70 when they consider you're not likely to constitute a serious threat. They've obviously not met many British 70 year olds). (5) get back on the bus and drive another 20 yards. Congratulations, you're now in Cambodia. Thank God Sam was there to walk us through it all otherwise I think we'd all still be in Vietnam.
From the border it was another couple of hours drive to Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, and, truth be told, I was feeling pretty ropey. I had the first signs of a throat infection which made eating, drinking, swallowing, breathing etc painful and after a night of very little sleep I was exhausted to boot. So I was only paying rather drowsy attention to the countryside zipping past my window but it occurred to me that this was the sort of landscape I'd expected to see in Vietnam - paddy fields, thick fringes of jungle, water oxen, small clutches of wooden homes. Things were looking good for Cambodia.
And things only improved when we headed out on to the streets of Phnom Penh on our second cyclo tour. Hardy veterans of the vehicular death traps by now, we could concentrate on enjoying the sightseeing, led by local boy Sam. As we cycloed (is that a word?) towards our first stop we saw wide avenues, numerous green parks, impressive ancient and modern architecture and a great riverside promenade buzzing with local life, including mass outdoor aerobics classes. On the basis of first impressions PP was shaping up to be my favourite of the big cities.
En route we stopped at the Independence Monument, built in 1958 to celebrate Cambodia's freedom from French colonial rule, and where, while we snapped photos, we also became the subjects of some Asian tourists' photos who thought they were being discreet as they clicked away. As dusk fell we cycloed along the river front and past the Royal Palace, brightly lit with thousands of golden bulbs. The massive plaza in front of the palace was thronging with people, locals clutching lotus bulbs and monks wearing their best saffron robes. Rhythmic chanting filled the air and Sam pointed out that they were 'moaning'. It seemed a rather harsh description for the musical sound but when Sam added that it was to commemorate the upcoming funeral of the former King, Norodom Sihanouk, I realised he had said 'mourning' not moaning. Known as the 'King Father' (as he was the father of the current King), Sihanouk had died way back in October, but royal tradition dictates a long period of lying in state before an extended funeral and mourning and then the cremation. The latter stage wouldn't take place until we had left Cambodia behind us. For us it just meant that a visit to the Royal Palace wasn't on the cards.
What was on the cards the following day was a sobering dose of Cambodia's dark and recent past. Warned that the two places on the itinerary would be distressing, not all of our group, for very valid personal reasons, opted to join the tour. The remaining members soon found themselves outside the gates of Tuol Sleng Museum. At first glance the buildings behind those gates look like an innocuous, if run down, apartment or hotel block. Only the metal fencing topped by razor wire hints at it's true sinister history. 'Toul Sleng' means 'Hill of Poisonous Trees' but until 1975 it was more simply called Tuol Svay Prey High School and was home to hundreds of students. After 1975 it was taken over by the Khmer Rouge security forces who turned it into one of their main prisons and interrogation centres, Security Office 21 or S21. For the next 3 years S21 was a house of horrors as more than 17000 people were incarcerated and tortured within its walls before being transferred to the nearby 'killing fields' at Choeung Ek were they were summarily executed.
When the Vietnamese liberated the prison at the end of the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror only seven prisoners were still alive inside, most of them having used their skills, such as photography, to cheat death. Fourteen other prisoners were found dead inside their cells, too decomposed to be identified. Their remains are now buried in the old schoolyard. As a stark reminder of the Khmer Rouge's brutality, photos of those dead bodies now hang in the cells where they were found, alongside the beds they were still chained to. The photos are horrific and don't bear close examination, but rooms filled with other photos are chilling in a very different way. In several rooms large boards are covered with individual portrait photos of hundreds of men, women and children. Each has a haunted look of fear in their eyes and it's no wonder. Each of these photos represents a person who was arrested, interrogated, tortured and killed at S21. The Khmer Rouge was as professional and organised in its recording of its crimes as the Nazi regime in wartime Germany and the meticulous nature of its detached ruthlessness is what, to me, was the most disturbing element of this whole visit. Pol Pot's regime eventually turned on itself with many of the portrait photos showing members of the Khmer Rouge party who had suddenly, for no reason, been labelled traitors and who were also slaughtered. Not even the executioners themselves were safe and many suffered the same fate as those they had murdered in the past.
In another block of the old school the original razor wire can still be seen covering the front of the building - placed there to stop desperate inmates from killing themselves to escape further torture. This block also has some of the original cells left in place - the school's old classrooms had been blocked off with bricks or wooden panelling to create corridors of individual cells, just long and wide enough for a single prisoner to lie or sit down. Claustrophobic beyond measure and hard to imagine that this was in use only 40 years ago.
For me though, one of the most unsettling parts of the visit came at the very end when we were told that two of the seven survivors of S21 were outside in the courtyard selling their books to the passing tourists. Some of our group were keen to meet them and buy the books but I couldn't bring myself to. What can you say to someone, knowing they've suffered atrocities in the very spot you've just been visiting as a well-meaning but still gawking tourist? It had, for me, an element of the freak show about it and a large part of me wished that these men, who'd suffered so horribly, could have found another way to support themselves that didn't involve revisiting the very place that had scarred them, mentally and physically, every day.
With S21 behind us, you might have thought that we would have sought out something lighter for the afternoon but no, we were determined to pile misery on misery and set off to find the notorious Killing Fields. Named the Killing Fields by the Cambodian journalist Dith Pran after he'd successfully escaped the regime, there were many of these execution zones littered across Cambodia. The one at Choeung Ek has become the most famous, thanks in part to its connection with S21 and also in part to the memorial park that is now based there. The atrocities that took place there are as hard to imagine as they were in S21 - the park is a lush, beautiful place with a striking Buddhist stupa and gently rolling fields. But when you look closer you realise those rolling fields are not landscaped features, but mass graves that have been excavated and left open. These mass graves, opened in 1980, contained the remains of over 8900 people. Some 43 of the 129 graves still remain untouched today but it is estimated that 17000 people met their ends here. Many of those who died were bludgeoned to death as the Khmer Rouge didn't want to waste money on expensive bullets. All these facts are horrific statistics that are hard to digest and fully understand. But the truth is quite literally at your feet - heavy rain often washes bone and clothing fragments to the surface and you find yourself stepping delicately round items that are buried just too deep to be removed carefully by the park wardens.
There are many more chilling things to be seen and dwelt upon at Choeung Ek but I'm trying not to make this blog too bleak. It was only later that day that I read, quite by chance, that it was Holocaust Memorial Day, a day designed to give people pause for thought about the many counts of genocide that have taken place around the world. The horrors of Cambodia's past are still in very recent living memory, as are those from Serbia and Croatia, Rwanda and the Sudan. All of us had certainly found a lot of mull over in Phnom Penh and all of us dealt with the emotional rigours of the day in different ways. For me, though gruelling, it was a vital part of my trip to Cambodia - to not visit would have been to ignore not only the scars which are still healing in the country but also the personal experiences of those we met, including our tour leader Sam, whose own mother died of starvation during the regime, and our guide for the day, who was forced to hide in tunnels and live on insects as a young child.
But there is hope in Cambodia - Phnom Penh is a thriving city that throngs with tourists, both local and international, and the increased access to popular tourist sites such as the Angkor temple complex is bringing much needed money to the region. The people are unfailingly friendly and curious and while there is still some political uneasiness, the darker days have been left behind.
Still to come: a chance to eat tarantulas and a night a rural homestay.
Photos below: Phnom Penh's glowing memorial to Cambodia's late king; S21 detention centre;
an S21 cell; the sign says it all at the Killing Fields.
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