Today was always going to be a big day on
the tour; a day to learn about and visit some of the sites of the Cambodian
war. I’m still not sure if this was a
war, a rebellion, a revolution or simply a stain on humanity’s soul – probably
a bit of each and a lot of the latter.
Whatever the case, it seems to me the story hasn’t yet been fully told
and in the words of our guide, maybe in a hundred years we’ll know the truth.
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| Just like the Ginger Pig! |
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| Fish Dish? |
It started with a familiar site/sight (?) in SE Asia,
a market. Surrounded by smells, sounds,
smells and strange sights we pushed through the throngs of early morning
shoppers on our way to meet our bus. Did
I mention the smells yet? Imagine a tin
of open cat food in a tuna sandwich and you get the idea of what it was like to
stand between these two stalls J
The bus journey to one of the Killing Fields
was an opportunity for our guide to let us know about the horrors of life back
in the day. She had lived to tell the
tale and told it well. I shan’t go into
the details; this isn’t a political activist’s blog, nor a wall of
denunciation.
(Another horror we learned is that Cambodians, to clean the water, grow morning glory on top of their open
sewers aka rivers. Morning Glory or Water Spinach is one of
Julia’s favourite foods and this knowledge deeply upset Julia’s heart and
stomach! It was to be a while before she
could trust that the morning glory she was eating wasn’t the “organic” variety our
guide had described.)
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| The Depressions, aptly named, marking the sites of mass graves |
The signage was clear as to what we were
witnessing.
The one-legged beggar stood on the other side of the wire fence
surrounding the Field, hand held out as I walked the perimeter, seemed to
compound my feelings of humanity’s inadequacy.
Was he preying on our shame and sadness, hitting us like a good
marketing man, in our hour of weakness?
Or simply doing his best to survive having had his leg blown off by one
of the landmines “we” had sold the Cambodians?
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| Stupa housing recovered bones |
The Stupa erected to hold the bones of
those discovered at the site did manage to give an air of dignity to what
otherwise was a horrifically desecrated old Chinese burial ground. Visiting a mass grave somehow didn’t seem to
be such a great idea after all. I wonder
how the poor spirits of the Chinese buried there felt?
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| Barbed Wire to Stop Prisoners Committing Suicide |
By the time we arrived at S21, one of the
notorious prison camps in Phnom Penh, Julia and I were jaded by heat and
horror. Visiting one of the buildings
was enough. Learning that some of the
leaders of Pol Pot’s band had joined the Royal Government that came afterwards,
leant history the stench of something sinister, something unfinished. There was a feeling that nothing had ended,
nothing really changed. Who knows?
We
left a little early, in search of refreshment and inadvertently came upon a
little lady, no more than 12, selling bracelets her mother made and showing
that perhaps there was hope. She took a
shine to Julia and certainly enjoyed joining in the neck massage Julia gave me
in exchange for a bracelet – thumping away on my back with a little trill of laughter.
We left the group as they broke for lunch
and went for a massage – though to be fair it was more of a back-rub with
thumbs involved. Then we had a short
rest by the pool before a couple of drinks on the roof of the hotel in time for
the old King’s cremation.
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| The King is Dead, Long Live the King |
There was a long gun salute and a massive
fireworks display, with billows of smoke rising from the Imperial Palace as his
body burned. We were privileged to have
witnessed what was a momentous day in Cambodian history; whatever our thoughts
on the rights and wrongs of their leadership, there was no denying what the
occasion meant to them.
We all ate dinner together in the hotel
then went off to bed, glad that we slept in more peaceful times.
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