Tin-Tin And The Khmer Rouge
If you’re lucky enough to travel, meeting people from entirely different cultures, with entirely different lives, is one of the many privileges. It broadens the mind, is stimulating, educational and humbling, and puts our own lives into a different perspective. Here we begin a short series of posts telling the stories of some of the people we met on our recent tour of South East Asia.
When we first meet Tin-Tin he is busily cleaning his tuk-tuk, clearing dust from its wheel arches and drying off the recently wiped passenger seats, sharing jokes with a guy who is cooling off in the shadow of the trees. He greets us with a smile, an apology that his English isn’t so good (it’s outstandingly good), and an explanation that his real name is Tin but he likes to be called Tin-Tin. He wears a T-shirt with a picture of the cartoon character of the same name.
Tin-Tin is clearly a well known figure in Battambang. Our first journey is punctuated by regular exchanges with people we pass as he waves to other drivers, shouts to shopkeepers and acknowledges every friend one way or another. When we pull up at our first destination he play-fights with a teenage boy, flirts with the ladies and motions to push an overweight guy out of his hammock. He makes everyone laugh, they do the same to him in return.
He is to the outside world a character you would describe as happy-go-lucky, yet, as we get to know Tin-Tin and the jigsaw pieces of his life story start to fit together, it’s a miracle that this man ever raises a smile, let alone spreads happiness amongst others. Tin-Tin was born in 1965, the same year as Michaela.
“Born in the same year but very different life”, he muses. Indeed so.
Being born in that year means that Tin-Tin was a 10-year old lad when the Khmer Rouge came to power and the four years of genocide began. As residents of the capital Phnom Penh, a city totally purged by Pol Pot’s men, Tin-Tin’s family was forcibly removed from their home and evacuated to a village near Battambang. They were “fortunate” to be poor and evacuated rather than wealthy and slaughtered as Pol Pot’s twisted view of equality started with the murder of anyone perceived to be privileged.
The iron grip of the Khmer Rouge reached every corner of Cambodia. Local people, usually poor farmers supportive of the Communist cause, were appointed “village chiefs”, reporting directly to party seniors with absolute authority to choose life or death for people who had been friends and neighbours before the coup. Those chiefs then appointed “scouts”, young men whose responsibility was to sniff out and report any perceived dissident behaviour. The word of a teenager would be enough to send someone to the killing fields.
Tin-Tin’s family was separated and placed in different village camps, either into the collective farms so loved by Pol Pot or into an unforgiving incarceration. He himself, at ten years old, was put out into the fields to work hard from dawn till dusk. Food supplies were minimal, medicine non-existent. With next to no nourishment, no washing facilities and forced to sleep in the open fields, disease was rife. Tin-Tin’s hair was full of lice, his body covered with sores where bugs had eaten into his skin.
Life in the collective farm was beyond tough. He, alongside many others, was shaken awake each morning by a Khmer Rouge cadre at first light, tied to fellow workers and dragged out to the fields where they worked non-stop until sundown. Half a bowl of thin rice porridge was the only permitted sustenance. At eleven years old Tin-Tin saw fellow workers collapse and die, exhausted and emaciated, and witnessed the brutal flogging of those showing signs of weakness. And, of course, those who disappeared, sent to the killing fields at the whim of a party scout.
He kept himself alive by stealing surreptitious bites of fruit when no one was looking and by drinking the rain when it formed muddy puddles in the fields. He avoided the village chief and kowtowed to the scouts. He kept his head down and survived. Some years later, Tin-Tin was to be reunited with his younger sister, though he was never to see his parents or his other two siblings again, nor did he ever learn their fate.
He talks freely as we stand by the temple wall, a short distance from the caves. He remembers climbing Phnom Sampeau to see the temple for himself – a temple he had seen from a distance every day for three years of torture yet had never climbed to see. Once at the top, the temple itself meant nothing to this ravaged and dispirited boy, but he had heard talk of mass killings and wondered if his father’s body may just be somewhere nearby. He ventured towards the entrance to a cave but was able to get no nearer than fifty yards or so before the putrid stench of rotting flesh made him retch and forced him back.
“It was not a smell I knew”, he says, “but I knew it was the smell of the dead.”
By the time Tin-TIn was fourteen, in 1979, four years of torture and neglect behind him, the Khmer Rouge was forced into retreat. He remembers seeing the black uniformed figures heading towards the jungle and the Thai border, remembers their defiant talk that they would be back once they had received instructions from their leader.
He remembers Viet soldiers throwing hand grenades at the retreating figures, remembers seeing retreating Khmer Rouge fighters blown apart by the land mines they themselves had laid. He remembers the joy of finding his sister and the despair of knowing in his soul that the rest of his family were gone for ever.
Conflict continued, disputes remained, warring factions found new reasons for attack. Ordinary people continued to step on land mines, children continued to become the victims of war. Only in 1998 when news of Pol Pot’s death began to filter through did Tin-Tin start to accept that life may just come to have some sense of normality. He was now 33. He’d been a war child for 23 of those 33 years.
Tin-Tin drives his tuk-tuk, acts as a guide, talks about his country’s history, speaks knowledgeably about Buddhism, different royal regimes, Thai influences, French colonisation and world affairs. He is desperate for tourism levels to return to pre-pandemic levels, COVID having plunged him back into poverty just when life was getting better.
He cracks jokes, makes people laugh, brings smiles to faces. Everybody knows Tin-Tin. He ruffles the hair of children, teenage girls hug him from behind, everybody everywhere seems to have their day brightened when Tin-Tin rocks up. He’s a small man but a larger than life character. The questions of just how he can be a character to bring smiles to others after all those years of torture are questions which hang in the air but remain unasked.
He calls himself “lucky” because he survived.
“Born in the same year, very different life”, he had said when we first met. Yes. So very different.
28 Comments
Toonsarah
I’m glad you’re able to share Tin-Tin’s story, it feels important that it is heard outside the borders of Cambodia. He sounds like an amazing man, to have such a zest for life after such an awful start to it. Apart from the survivor we met at Tuol Sleng we didn’t get the chance to talk with anyone who’d experienced these horrors personally although our guide in Phnom Penh talked a bit about her parents’ experiences. But she said she only knew a little of what they’d gone through because they didn’t want to burden her with that knowledge.
Phil & Michaela
As you can probably tell, he wasn’t circumspect, he was quite willing to talk. Whether keeping it in the forefront of his mind is a kind of therapy, I really don’t know. Maybe it helps that everyone of his age shared the terrible experiences. We can only ponder, and thank our lucky stars that it wasn’t us.
Helen Devries
It’s a different matter knowing about it from the newspapers and T.V. and hearing it directly from someone who had gone through it.
Thank you for giving his story.
Phil & Michaela
Yes it is, Helen. And let’s remember, that huge number of people who lived through such atrocities, have had no “counselling”, or healing process. They’ve had to recover their lives as best they can. In Tin-Tin’s case it appears that keeping it “live” by being a guide is his version of therapy. I can only wonder.
Helen Devries
I did wonder whether his jollity was a way of coping.
Lookoom
I wondered how many of these ‘survivors’ I’d come across on my trip through Cambodia. When an old woman or a driver told me that they spoke French, no more than two words actually, it was from school at the time of the protectorate, but had they lived in Cambodia at the time of the genocide. Difficult questions to ask if they don’t speak for themselves.
Phil & Michaela
Yes. Most of them stay quiet, so you don’t ask. When you then meet someone who is willing to talk, the gates are opened and you get drawn in. Having conversations such as these really does adjust your thoughts on life. Every time.
Lookoom
It’s also in the back of my mind that they may be making up a story to lure tourists in. Maybe it takes a few beers to sort things out.
Phil & Michaela
I’m pretty certain that wasn’t the case with this guy…
Monkey's Tale
What a beautiful and strong person, but what an atrocious childhood. Your story is both heartbreaking and uplifting, thanks for sharing it. Maggie
Phil & Michaela
These encounters change us, just a little. Each such person shifts the way we think about life just one little bit. Surely one of the major reasons we all love to travel.
wetanddustyroads
A 10-year-old boy who had to go through those horrors … what a life it must have been! And as I read your story about Tin-Tin, I just realise that it takes a very brave person to go on with what’s left of your life. Thanks for sharing his story.
MrsWayfarer
Thank you for sharing Tin-Tin’s story. I cannot imagine the horror he had been through. His strength is truly remarkable.
Phil & Michaela
Thank you so much Joe. Michaela started watching the movie from that book – but has not yet finished (following the sub titles while travelling on a bus was making her feel car sick!). Yes, most of the village chiefs were illiterate, galvanised by a false promise of wealth, but what remains incredible is the level of violence that they were brainwashed into. Make XXXX Great Again. We are staring into the abyss right now.
grandmisadventures
What an incredible strength of character to survive so much and yet give love and light to those around him
Phil & Michaela
Absolutely
Alison
Beautifully told Phil, and must have brought tears to your eyes while writing this. Thanks for sharing this very poignant post.
Phil & Michaela
Thank you Ali x
WanderingCanadians
I completely agree about how meeting people is a wonderful side effect of travelling. What a great idea to share the stories of some of the people you’ve met on your recent trip. I can’t even begin to imagine how a 10-year old could go through many of those things, especially being separated from your family and living in such harsh conditions.
Phil & Michaela
I know, and his story is by no means unique, such a terrible period of history
Mike and Kellye Hefner
A heartbreaking story. It’s hard to imagine the horrors that Tin-Tin saw and experienced as a young child. On the other hand, the fact that he has made the best life he can is heartwarming. I love that you shared his story with us.
Phil & Michaela
So many people have horrific histories in Cambodia.
Latitude Adjustment: A Tale of Two Wanderers
Well stated and true!! “If you’re lucky enough to travel, meeting people from entirely different cultures, with entirely different lives, is one of the many privileges. It broadens the mind, is stimulating, educational and humbling, and puts our own lives into a different perspective.”
And it makes you appreciate how fortunate we are to experience these adventures!
Phil & Michaela
Absolutely!
Annie Berger
Phil,
Reading this uplifting story of Tin Tin being able to rise up beyond the horrors inflicted on him and so many others as a child is heartwarming and a testament to your superb storytelling and his fortitude. Thanks for bringing us his tale of resilience. You should submit it as a short story, it’s that good.
Phil & Michaela
Well, thank you Annie, not sure exactly where we would submit to to! His was a big story though, and kind of poignant that he and Michaela were born just weeks apart yet had led such polar opposite lives.
Annie Berger
I’m sure you could find a publisher when you’re home for more than a week or two!
Phil & Michaela
😊