Cambodia

Although a quick stay, our time in Cambodia was packed with deep significance and bucket list experiences. We crossed the border from Vietnam into Cambodia by boat and made our way up the river to the port at Phnom Penh. Although the capital city was not packed with novelty, we enjoyed exploring the bustling markets where we could listen to live singers, peruse the assorted cheap goods and souvenirs and sample the variety of food booths offering local street fare (the homemade coconut ice cream served in coconut shells was to die for!). After we tired of fighting the crowds at the market, we made our way back towards our hotel. Apparently, we had unknowingly decided to stay just a block away from the hot and happening Red Light District of Phnom Penh. As we wound through the streets, the outside of every single bar was swarming with teenage girls glammed up for potential customers and at the outside of every massage parlor were women offering four hand massages with "happy endings". I'm not sure whose bright idea it was to get a couples massage and to save money by going to one of these shady establishments (it was mine), but WHAT AN EXPERIENCE! We join a pair of middle aged, fat, white guys in the waiting area and specify to the ladies that we would like a couples massage...together in the same room...no happy ending (ok, I specified all that). As we wait for the room to be prepared, the two male clients are brought  to the upstairs "private" rooms. We are brought to two old mattresses on the floor behind a curtain next to the lobby...obviously the spill over room for the "non-private" clients. It is then that the ladies tell us both to strip down and provide us a sheet to cover up with...per usual massage. As the massage progressed, though, the sheets became more and more worthless. We were both bent and stretched every which way until the sheets were all but crumpled in a heap next to us and we were exposed in all the wrong ways. Most of the massage was spent trying to re-cover and hide ourselves the best we could...with little success. Feeling violated, vulnerable and glad the massage was over, we awkwardly started to get dressed when a massive cockroach scurried across the floor and under the curtain right next to my mattress. I couldn't get out the door and back to the room to shower fast enough...but in hindsight, I guess we got our happy ending after all!!?!

It was after that horrendous massage experience that we decided we needed to spend a day doing something to lift our spirits...so, the next day we visited the genocide museum and killing fields.

Seriously though, all joking aside...

We spent the morning touring the Cambodian prison titled S-21 as a code name to hide the atrocities being committed there during the Khmer Rouge regime. The prison is now the Tuol Sleng (Hill of the Poisonous Trees) Genocide Museum that educates on the history of the Cambodian people turning against their neighbors, friends and family based on the twisted idealogy of the brutal regime. We wandered through room after room telling tales of the Khmer Rouge imprisoning, torturing and murdering their people on the basis of being TOO educated. Each floor of prison cells maintained the grungy, run down aesthetic and a scattering of the roomshosted dilapidated bed frames which prisoners had been cuffed to and tortured. Nearly 20,000 were murdered at this prison alone and at least another 150 prisons were scattered across the country committing similar atrocities. As we departed, the horrific stories of the place haunted us, but it wasn't until the afternoon during our visit to Choeung Ek (The Killing Fields) that reality set in.

    

At first glimpse, the site resembled a tranquil park with lush green grass, winding dirt paths, ancient oak trees and an ornately decorated monument. A closer look reveals its appalling past. The rolling hills of green grass blanket the countless pits that had been dug to exhume the remains of the mass graves buried on the property. As visitors pay their respects, traversing the winding paths, their tread unceremoniously unearths remaining bits of bone, teeth and tattered cloth that was missed during the excavation. The trunk of one particularly large, beautiful oak tree is decorated with a collage of colorful bracelets left as an homage to the infants whose lives were barbarously terminated against it. The beautiful Buddhist stupa that dominates the site with its 200ft stature houses floor to ceiling shelves cluttered with the bones that have been uncovered from the field around it. More than 5,000 skulls are categorized, labelled and displayed based on if death came to the victim by gunshot, hammer, narrow pointed stake, or a sharp chunk of palm tree bark. Undoubtedly, a large number, but merely a sampling of the one million plus people who were executed at this site alone.

As I process all of this terrifying information, one disturbing fact keeps resurfacing over and over again. This all happened in the late 70s. Such a gross injustice was happening just five years before I was born. Something about its recency made the whole thing worse in my mind. This was not an ancient tale from my history books, it was a news headline on CNN flashed across the TV screen at home. How could a civilized society in our modern times allow something like that to happen? And then my thoughts revert to the Syria and ISES and Darfur headlines of my time. Every day we stand by as silent observers shaking our heads at headlines about the persecutions happening around the world...then we flip the channel to the latest episode of Modern Family and feel a wave of relief as that foreign achy feeling in our chest starts to subside. I have to wonder if I'll be visiting a similar memorial site in Darfur at some point in my lifetime. I also wonder if I will feel even worse knowing I was old enough when it happened to try and make a difference. 

From Phnom Phen we caught a bus to Siem Reap--a much more appealing city and the home base for a visit to the complex of wats (temples) in the area including one of the Seven Wonders of the World--Angkor Wat. Although ridiculously hot, we had a beautifully clear day for exploring the ancient ruins. Our favorite was Ta Prohm, a wat that looked like it was straight out of the jungle book!

I'll let the images speak for themselves...

While in Siem Reap, we also met up with Roberto, a Chicagoan teaching in Cambodia that my co-worker connected us with. We enjoyed two fantastic evenings out on the town and off the tourist path before departing for Thailand!