Phnom Penh ……..a city tour and a visit to a veritable chamber of horrors

December 10 th

After a nice breakfast we get set to meet Sophroan again….he is the owner of Sophoarn Tuk-Tuk Tours (more on that later). The plan is to spend the day with him visiting various sites (30 USD for us both). He arrives right on time at 08:30 and we are off to the first stop:

Independence Monument ddesigned by famed architect Vann Molyvann, it was inaugurated in 1958 to mark Cambodia’s independence from French rule and now also serves as a defacto war memorial. The monument sits in the center Phnom Penh with major thoroughfares radiating out in four directions as well there is a long and wide pedestrian mall…

…. the King Father Statue and memorial park features a monument depicting Norodom Sihanouk, the “Father King” of Cambodia commemorating his  accomplishment of liberating the country in 1953 from being a French protectorate  and who was appreciated for his good work on behalf of the nation….

…we then crossed over the bridge to see  where there is the convergence of three rivers and the unique characteristic of the The Tonle Sap river. From November to May end, the water flow goes from the lake down to the river until Phnom Penh, where it joins the Mekong. This lowers the water level of the lake and marks the Cambodian dry season. At the beginning of June, it reaches a perfect equilibrium and the river literally stops flowing. From mid June to October, the water flow is reversed, coming from the Mekong up to the Tonle Sap river towards the lake, filling it again. This has had a huge historical economic and political impact as it allowed for the cultivation of 3 crops per year greatly enriching the public purse and laying the groundwork for the Khmer Empire in the 9 th century. Consequently it has also had a significant cultural and religious impact.

Sophroan took this opportunity to speak a bit about the history of his country. A brief summary is needed to understand why this country is where it is today:

In a nutshell the golden years of this country were from the 9th century to the 14th century when it was a large and influential kingdom. From then it was in decline the borders of the kingdom being periodically reduced by the advancing Siam kingdom, then in the 17th century the Vietnamese until in 1863 much reduced it became a protectorate of France. Then more hardship as the Japanese occupied the country through WW II, following which it became a short-lived republic when a civil war broke out. Following the massive bombing by the USA (150,000 deaths and massive dislocation) and departure of the U.S. from Vietnam, in 1975 the cruelest chapter for this country began. For the next 4 years the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot  attempted to build an agrarian utopia in Cambodia ….it went horribly wrong and some 25%, or between 1.7 and  2.5 million of the population was butchered or died through starvation and malnutrition …this horror ended in 1979 when Vietnamese  forces captured Phnom Penh. In 1993 a new constitution was ratified, under which the Cambodian monarchy was restored. 

Today the country is slowly recovering but it remains very poor with a government beset by corruption….the Chinese influence here is substantial and when we spoke with a European living in Cambodia for many years he explained that effectively billions of dollars are laundered here with investments in real estate, high-end condos, casinos and the like….it is not for thing that the island in the pic above is called Diamond Island.

Next up was a drive by of the The Royal Palace, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is a complex of buildings which serves as the royal residence of the king of Cambodia. Its full name in the Khmer language is Preah Barum Reachea Veang Chaktomuk Serei Mongkol….entrance to the compound in pic below.

To close off the morning we visited two temples:

Wat Ounalom is a wat near the Royal Palace of Cambodia. As the seat of Cambodia’s Mohanikay order, it is the most important wat of Phnom Penh, and the center of Cambodian Buddhism. It was established in 1443 and consists of 44 structures, the most prominent and oldest of five pagodas in the country. It is also serves as the abode of the Patriarch of the Mahanikai School of Buddhism….Sophroan took the time to give us some insights as to the impact that the patriarchs have had not only on religious but also secular matters in Cambodia …click to enlarge pics:

Wat Phnom is a Buddhist temple in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was built in 1372, and stands 27 metres above the ground > the “hill” was built up by hand. It is the tallest religious structure in the city. As a side note even today we witnessed 5 storey buildings having concrete mixed by hand and delivered by bucket as each storey was poured !! click to enlarge pics:

As the sun pounded down we kept rolling along and Sophoarn kept our electrolyte levels up with a coconut:

In the afternoon we focused on the raison d’etre of our visit to Cambodia namely Security Prison 21  and the Killing Fields…

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is the site of a former high school which was used as Security Prison 21 by the Khmer Rouge regime. As Pol Pot and the top commanders’ paranoia spiralled, so did the number of Cambodians detained at S-21. Once inside, prisoners were either tortured to death or sent to nearby Choeung Ek for “re-education” – execution. An estimated 12,273 were detained at S-21, with only seven known survivors. Not only did the Khmer Rouge carefully transcribe the prisoners’ interrogations, they also photographed the vast majority of the inmates and created an astonishing photographic archive. Each of the almost 6,000 S-21 portraits that have been recovered tells a story of shock, resignation, confusion, defiance and horror. We spent almost two hours there and left much sobered as we saw the stark evidence of what horrors can be inflicted on a nation by its own leadership….

After this we tuk tuked about 40 minutes to Choeung Ek more commonly known as the Killing Fields. Killing fields dot the country, with more than 20,000 mass grave sites containing more than 1.38 million bodies according to the Documentation Centre  of Cambodia…Those sent to Choeung Ek made the 17-kilometre journey crammed into the back of trucks. Once there, many were blindfolded and, not wanting to waste bullets, soldiers smashed spades into their heads before pushing them in pits containing the dead bodies of thousands. It is thought about 17,000 men, women and children were executed at the site.

clothes which seeped to the surface after rain storms

walls of the monument filled with skulls & bones of exhumed bodies

This had been a quite eventful day and we were done when we got back to the hotel bidding Sophoarn good luck in his endeavours. He is a self-taught young man who is trying to build a tour guide business from the ground up and in fact we spent lunch discussing a business proposal he is presently considering.

Tomorrow another transfer day as we head to Siem Reap.