The next morning Peram was waiting for me in full force. May be he took a vacation day the day before to rest up, so he could harass tourists that much better the next day. I decided I could no longer thwart his zealous desire to guide. As soon as I saw him before I could even say good morning he came up to me full of piss and vinegar and said, “if you want to go to the hotel now, I will take you.” I told him let’s go. He said that he was looking for me the day before, but he did not see me. Since he was not around I began to fear that he found someone else, so I had told another guy that he could take me. Now that Peram had showed up I knew I had to let him take me. The other guy new he was out of a customer and kind of moped around. I apologized to him, but told him I had to go with Peram. He asked if he could help bring me over there, but I told him that all of my bags could be placed on Peram’s moto-bike. He was not happy, but accepted his fate.
We packed up and Peram took me on his moto-bike to the new hotel. The lake area was nice, but I was craving some AC and hot water. Phnom Penh was just as hot as Thailand, and I had been walking around a lot lately, so I also had Peram drive me around today to some of the tourist areas. After settling in at the hotel, we headed for the Killing Fields monument. This was a 15km trip through some more pretty harrowing roads, but we made it there with no problem. I walked in and the cutest girl said to me “you take picture of me, and 1,2,3 smile.” They are so good at pulling at your heartstrings. I took her picture and gave her a dollar and then unfortunately another 5 or 6 kids mobbed me for money.
After that I walked around the grounds. They have this huge pagoda that is filled with skulls from the killing fields as well as remains from mass graves around the area. This was an area that the Khmer Rouge took their opposition, which included former government leaders and anyone in the intelligentsia and killed them. They used the most barbaric means possible too. I had a guide whose mother and father were doctors and were both killed when he was 10 years old. He survived because he was sent out into the countryside with relatives and worked in the fields. If the Khmer Rouge would have found out that he was the son of two doctors he would have been killed. My guide also claimed to have shown Kofi Annan and Francois Mitterand around the place.
Since bullets were at a premium the Khmer rouge killed their victims in the most barbaric ways possible. Inside the pagoda my guide picked up several of the skulls and looked at each one and identified the way they were killed. One had a clean hole through the top of the skull and he said bullet hole, another had a crack in the side of the skull and he said hammer, and a third was broken completely to pieces, and he said several jabs from the butt of a rifle. He also showed me a palm tree and told me to rub the side of the branch that leads to the plant, but do it gently. I did and it was pretty sharp. He told me they used these branches to cut people’s throats. I could imagine this would work, but it could not have been very clean because these branches were not razor sharp. There was also a tree he showed me that was used to kill children. They would swing the babies and hit their heads on a tree. It is insane that such a ruthless regime was able to do these things in this peaceful quiet country. It makes you kind of paranoid sometimes as the regime was almost like a Lord of the Flies type regime as they used young children and adolescents as their assassins. This meant that anyone walking around that is around my age or a little older could have been a ruthless cold blooded assassin twenty years ago.
The sad thing is that many of the perpetrators of this regime remain unpunished. The leader, Pol Pot reportedly died a peaceful death due to a heart attack at age 73. This is something that he deprived his more than 1.7 million victims of. Many of the leaders are still living free and rather peacefully including brother number two Nuon Chea and brother number three, Leng Sary. Nuon Chea is living near the Thai border and the Cambodian government agreed not to pursue prosecution against Chea. I believe that the Cambodian government is doing this in an attempt to forget the past, but it is important to pursue these criminals in order to heal and also in order to obtain justice for the victims and their families. I read a news report where a lot of the actual henchman for this regime are living rather close to the victims or the victims families of people they tortured and killed. A war crimes trial is supposedly going to take place soon. It is to be hoped that the UN can convince the reluctant Cambodian government to pursue these criminals and bring justice. Note: This trial has finally come about and is currently ongoing.
The evidence of this regime is everywhere. This country is the most backward place I have ever been to. When a country loses more that 15% of its population, it takes time for normalcy to return if it ever can. It is hard to explain unless you have visited this place, but there just seems to be an underlying sadness in the people that live here. It seems that there soul is hurting. With time and from help from the outside world, I hope that Cambodia can improve itself and the lives of its people.
After the depressing Killing Fields, Peram took me to a market. It was called the Russian market because it was near Russian Blvd. It should have been called the sweat your balls off market because it was just unbearable in there. It was actually underground, and there was not much ventilation in there and the whole structure was basically a giant oven and everyone inside was just baking. I felt really sorry for the workers in there, but I guess one can get used to anything. I bought a shirt and tried to buy some flip flops, but they were too expensive. I just want a really cheap pair to get me through the rest of my vacation, and I am sure I can get a cheaper pair in Vietnam, which is my next destination.
Peram took me back to the hotel, and I relaxed until later. I went back to the Heart of Darkness hopeful to hook up with Mark and Mike again as they said they would probably show up there again. Unfortunately, they never appeared and neither did Tan or Yan from the night before. It was basically the same scene as the night before. I grew bored of the place and returned to my hotel rather early.
Tags: Asia, Cambodia, Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh, The Killing Fields, travel
