Into the Land of the Rising Sun: CAMBODIA, PART II: PHNOM PENH, WINNER*

*Of the award for the worst place I have ever been.

THE INFERNO

Phnom Penh is no laughing matter

I flatter myself to think I've been to several of what could be considered the armpits of the world: Mexico City, Delhi, Beijing, Detroit. Poverty, sanitation, pollution, crime, poor infrastructure, lack of potable water- these are all factors that plague these areas. And yet, with the exception of Detroit, each city has its own redeeming virtue or virtues- architecture, food, history, the people, etc. Not so with Phnom Penh. Whatever charm the city might have had during the days of French colonialism or before has long since passed. Heaps of rotting trash, questionable feces, leaking batteries, broken furniture, and other unmentionables lay everywhere. I watched one Cambodian squat in a garbage pile in front of his (her? I couldn't tell) friends, defecate, and then pick up a rag from the surrounding pile and wipe himself. The stench and the fumes of the city overpower everything, though the noxious haze is occasionally cut by the sweet scent of the frangipani trees. After one night, we were ready to leave.

The city didn't improve upon closer exploration. Our first full day was spent walking around the grounds of the royal palace and the National Museum, on a day where the temperature was well into the triple digits. The former had no shade, and the latter no air conditioning, and by 1pm we were forced to retreat, drenched and exhausted, to our hotel. Remarkable, considering that we managed to spend entire days hiking and climbing in the sweltering heat of Angkor with little more than a quick lunch and a bathroom break. To make matters worse, we were continually thwarted by the arbitrary opening and closing times of various establishments in Phnom Penh, such as being unceremoniously ushered out of the royal complex when they decided to shut down (presumably for lunch) at 11AM.

Royal Throne Room

City folk were also a disappointment. People were brusque to the point of being rude; there was none of the graciousness or warmth of the people of Siem Reap. The few friendly overtures made to us were by people vying to sell us things or offer their services. We managed to get by speaking English the whole trip, because Cambodians seem to speak every language under the sun: English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, French. I heard one guide speaking impeccably accented Castillian Spanish. Linguistic abilities are far better in Siem Reap than Phnom Penh, perhaps because SR is more reliant on tourism as a source of income. I asked a few people how they had learned the different languages they speak. Books seemed to be the main tutor, though some listen to the radio or watch foreign television programs. No one mentioned having taken language classes in school.

It takes a while, but at some point you suddenly realize how young the population of Cambodia is. The middle-aged and the elderly are almost non-existent demographics. Given the history of the country, you have to wonder at the stories of the older people you do see. LAL remarked that the elderly deserved a badge of honor for having survived, but I wonder if for some of them, it's a burden to have lived through the things they have.

A common sight is older male expats with young Cambodian women. The inverse correlation at work is troubling: the older the man, the younger the woman. Yet it appeared as though these women were more than just an escort for the evening; in most cases, the couples seemed to be running errands, eating a simple meal, going for a walk, etc. This barely lessened the ick factor, which none of us could seem to shake. We stayed at a guest house situated above a popular bar, "The Lone Star Saloon." Every night we'd return to find a slew of foreign men in their 30s-50s sitting at the bar, buying drinks for heavily made up Cambodian girls who were probably a few years shy of the legal drinking age in the States. These girls would start hanging out in front of the doors starting around 4 or 5, waiting to meet up with someone.

Our one solace was the food. We ate fairly well (and cheaply) everywhere, but particularly in Phnom Penh. Though Cambodias are not the best at preparing meat or fish, they more than make up for their protein shortcomings with delicious fruit drinks. We even managed to sample a variety of Khmer delicacies, some more palatable than others. I ordered crispy tarantulas one night, and then about jumped out of my skin when my plate arrived. It turns out that they look remarkably similar in death as in life. This impression did not diminish when the waiter brought a live specimen to our table to show us. I managed to get it together enough to eat a leg, thanks to LAL's support. It turns out tarantulas are incredibly delicious, and soon I had eaten all the legs, and was left to conjure up the willpower to eat the rest of the bodies...reluctantly.

THE 9TH CIRCLE

In 1975, the French-sponsored government of Indochine was overthrown by Communist forces led by Pol Pot. These revolutionaries called themselves the Khmer Rouge- Khmer from the largest ethnic group in Cambodia, rouge ("red") from the color most associated with Communism. Pol Pot's vision was for a pure Communist state, where the people would work and live off the land. There would be no need for doctors, lawyers, or teachers. In fact, these learned individuals were viewed as the enemy, along with capitalists, the CIA, and the KGB (by this time, the Soviet Communists were at odds with their Chinese brethren, with whose tenets the Khmer Rouge identified). One of the great inconsistencies of this policy was that Pol Pot and all the top leaders of the Khmer Rouge were highly educated individuals, many of whom had even obtained degrees while studying in Paris.

Pol Pot's first act was to expel people from the major urban areas into the countryside. In Phnom Penh, people were settled in different quarters of the city under the French (the French and other diplomats in one quarter, the Chinese in another, the Vietnamese in a third, and Cambodians in a fourth). Soldiers took over different quarters, and marshaled people out, irrespective of whether those people lived in that quarter, or simply worked there or were passing through on there way to someplace else. As a result, many families were separated in the forced exodus, and there are some who are still unsure as to what happened to their loved ones.

Farms were commandeered and collectivized, and people forced to work the land- men, women and children. The crops grown (mainly rice) were then sold to China for arms and munitions, even though the workers themselves were starving. Pol Pot expected to triple rice production through these measure- an impossible feat. As the paranoia of the regime increased, various detention centers were set up for interrogation to ferret out the disloyal- those not working hard enough, those working for the CIA, the KGB. One such center was S-21, or Tuol Sleng. Formerly a primary and secondary school, it was transformed into a holding area used for torture and questioning. At one point, rooms in the prison were remodeled so as to insulate the sounds of the screams coming from inside. When the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh in 1978, they found only 7 survivors, all of whose lives had been spared due to their utility as artists, engineers, etc. Liberators also found the remains of 14 people, including 1 woman, who were unidentifiable due to decomposition. These bodies are buried on the grounds in front of the building in which they were discovered.

Despite being poorly curated, the museum of Tuol Sleng is powerful. Little has been done to renovate the place, which has certain benefits. The oppressive heat in the close rooms, coupled with the dirty, stained ceramic floors, immediately cause you to feel the proximity of death. The rooms are barren, save for a few displays- a rusty bed, shackles, black-and-white photos of decomposing bodies. Then there are the series of photographs mounted on larger boards. Some are of guards, young men and women in their early 20s. Then there are the rows of inmates. Men, women, children, and some foreigners- there are hundreds of them. The perverse thing is that some of them are smiling, as though posing for a portrait. Others look out hollow-eyed, as though they can see into their future. They are all wearing numbers, and all I can think is that these episodes in history always seem to involve numbers. Detailed records of names, ages, family histories, etc., are reduced to a combination of digits, and I hate them almost as much as I hate the looks on these faces. To become a face on these walls was remarkably easy- someone simply had to report some kind of suspicion of you, and away you went. Not even members of the Khmer Rouge were safe. As the years went on, the suspicions turned inward, and revolutionaries became inmates themselves. Eventually, those who survived questioning were transported to a "new home."

About 30 minutes from Tuol Sleng is Choeung Ek, or "The Killing Fields." People were sent here by the truckloads to be executed. Since bullets were expensive, people were usually lined up on the sides of pits and then beaten or hacked to death. Some infants were clubbed against trees in front of their mothers. Unlike the Nazis with their crematoriums, the dead or dying bodies were covered in DDT to conceal the smell and left there. After Pol Pot was toppled, locals went onto the grounds looking for food to forage. What they found were tracts of ground bubbling up from the gases of the decaying bodies below.

When the rains are heavy, the soil is washed away to reveal what is left of those who died at the Killing Fields. It is truly horrifying to walk along the dirt paths of the area today, watching for a stray root or stone that might trip you, only to realize that you are stepping on bones. Or the remnants of someone's clothes. Or their teeth, which are still all in a line. Every few months, these artifacts are collected and deposited with all the rest that have been found. The memorial stupa at the center of the grounds holds 17 stories of different bones.

From 1975-1978, Pol Pot killed 3 million people, out of a population of 8 million.