Phnom Penh still has some beautiful French architecture mixed with a lot of industrial looking buildings. Some 1.4 million people live here and rush hour – like in any large city – proves that everyone wants to go to the same place.
Even though a peaceful, three-day tour of the Mekong Delta promised nothing more than the excitement of travelling on every traditional mode of transport known to Vietnam we ended up having a little more adventure than that thanks to our new-found friends.
Jacob, obviously encouraged by Mark and Dutch, ate a tarantula for an appetizer. Funnily enough, the women didn’t find it appetizing and we just laughed and took photos while the three ‘boys’ went at it. We ended up having a great many-course meal of mostly regular food at a restaurant that provides a funding source for training programs. If you are ever in the area, Romdeng Restaurant should be on your list of must-dos.
From High School to Torture Prison
What at first glance appears to be nothing more than a well-built, if somewhat dated, series of educational buildings turn out to be S.21 – the notorious torture prison used by communist despot Pol Pot, leader of the Kmer Rouge.
As with our visit to the Killing Fields, it was with a sense of duty and sadness that we made a pilgrimage to this site demonstrating the worse of human nature. It is estimated that of the 2,000,000 people killed by the regime, some 20,000 passed through S.21. They were killed through torture, long death marches and starvation. The worse thing to see wasn’t the tools of torture nor the blood-spattered walls but the hundreds of photos of victims – some as young as three-months old.
The Pol Pot regime killed anyone suspected of being against his policies, as well as women who wore their hair long in defiance of the rule that everyone cut it short, people who wore glasses, and artists, writers, etc. who were – as a group – considered parasites on society. All intellectuals including teachers, government workers, university professors and students, engineers, and people who could speak a foreign language were also killed as the Kmer Rouge leader wanted Kampuchea to return to an agrarian way of life. The children of intellectuals were also killed in order to cleanse the gene pool of thinkers.
One of the strangest things about S.21 is how meticulously the army kept records of all who were brought here including photos on the day they arrived and of their corpses the day they were taken out. Very much like the Nazis of Europe during the Second World War, the Kmer Rouge was intent on cleansing itself of a large segment of the population and it became very efficient at doing so. Also like the German SS, the K.R. was almost anal in the detailed documentation it kept.
The Killing Fields
Visiting concentration camps, torture prisons and other heart-crushing sites of despotic governments is never easy but, nevertheless, we feel a duty to come here knowing that if travelers don’t they will be closed down.
As less than thirty years have passed since the reign of Pol Pot was ended by an invasion by the Vietnamese, too many Cambodians (or Kmers as they are historically known) can face the reality of what happened to their parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and others. It is estimated that some two million (2,000,000!!!) were killed in the three years, eight months and 20 days of the Kmer Rouge regime.
The people of Cambodia want to put the past behind them. People here are less interested in spending money to investigate past crime and more interested in the government putting money towards education and health care. As they are unable to deal with the difficult truths of the past, we feel we need to continue to support any organization that supports keeping the truth alive. First, we visited the Killing Fields and later the S-21 torture prison.