From Province To Capital: Phnom Penh

Preamble: We thought long and hard about this post. It contains some horrific detail but also contains some light hearted humour. Can we really put those two things in the same post? We reached a decision. Please read on, we will warn you before you reach the more brutal words…

It was on our first night in Battambang, just as we were drifting off to sleep, when we first heard it, and we both laughed out loud. Something outside, some strange, semi-mechanical disembodied voice seemed to shout “f*ck it” five times, in a kind of rhythmic chant. Surely we don’t have a neighbour who has taught his parrot to swear in English?

Roughly every half hour it came again. F*ck it, f*ck it, f*ck it, f*ck it, f*ck it. Stop.  Every night, all night. What the hell is it? We go through several suggestions: is it a pre-recorded security device which warns intruders, in Khmer, not to enter the construction site? Is it a working generator which makes a noise which just happens to sound like English swear words? Or is that naughty parrot after all?

It’s our last night in Battambang and we’re taking one last look from our balcony across the Sangker River before we head for pastures new. “F*ck it”, it shouts from around the corner. Five times, as always.

“F*ck it”. This time closer, in the shrubbery beneath our balcony. The security guard is within earshot. I cup my hands to my ear and point to the source of the noise.

“What is that noise?”

“Toad” is his one word answer.

Are you serious? There’s a species of toad which rhythmically chants ‘f*ck it” five times once every half hour??! Well I’ve heard everything now.

And so we leave behind Battambang, with its sedate streets, crashing thunder storms and angry toad and head to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, six hours on a cramped minibus with a weak AC system. We’re glad to get off, and then absolutely delighted when we look out from our new base at the pristine, glorious riverfront stretched out before us. Phnom Penh looks every inch the capital city.

In fact, Phnom Penh is nothing like what we expected – for some reason we had a preconceived image of a dirty, scruffy city which was difficult to love, yet nothing could be further from the truth. The riverside area is a bold, confident, extrovert, westernised boulevard, bursting with activity and oozing joy, absolutely rammed with local families. Boats ply the water, traffic buzzes and people chatter and laugh, the lively cafes and bars fill street corners as if plucked from a French city and dropped into Asia, impromptu badminton courts fill spaces between trees. Smiles rule.

Disposable income appears to be in evidence: sharply dressed couples drift through the doors of swanky restaurants, taxis take diners right to the door, expensive cars park among the tuk-tuks. We can’t help but note that these scenes are the absolute antipathy of the visions of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, precisely and exactly the society that he/they sought to eliminate with their twisted take on egalitarianism and the murder of everyone perceived to have wealth or privilege. There is something terrifically satisfying that the backlash to such genocidal horror and ruthless ideology has created this city and this spirit: if he’s not rotting in hell like he should be then surely he must be turning over and over in his grave.

The Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers feed, as we said in a previous post, the gigantic Tonle Sap Lake, though the two mighty waterways do not marry there, instead making separate exits from the southern end of the lake. Moving southwards in rough parallels, the two rivers finally merge here in Phnom Penh, right in the heart of the city, creating a vast expanse of water so wide that it’s hard to convince yourself that you’re not looking at an estuary.

Indeed, so wide is the Mekong here that it has never been bridged, the two halves of Phnom Penh are connected only by the fleet of ferries which chug back and forth across the water throughout the day, rammed with people, cars, mopeds and sackloads of something or other.

Clean, cared-for green spaces provide regular shelter and respite from city life. Wat Phnom sits handsomely on a small hillock, its gardens surprisingly quiet even though surrounded by roadways, but the gardens of the Royal Palace are even more tranquil, and losing ourselves amid its temples is a little reminiscent of the temples of Bangkok but without the crowds. The fee for entering the Palace is a steep 10USD each, expensive for this part of the world, and, once inside, most of the buildings sit behind locked doors and “entrée interdite” signs. The Silver Pagoda, named after its silver tiled floors, has a protective floor covering which hides every inch of the silver after which it is named. The Palace is a beautiful place but we’re not sure it’s the best value we’ve ever got for 20 dollars, to be frank.

It’s when we ride the tuk-tuk out towards the killing fields that we really get a feel for the sheer number of different neighbourhoods in Phnom Penh, not so much any hint of suburbia, but more the different enclaves around shining shopping malls, or street markets, or commercial districts. Each crossroads seems to lead to another interesting pocket of modern life. But it is, inevitably, the killing fields that we are headed for, because, no matter what horrors they hold, all visitors to Phnom Penh are compelled to go.

In fact it’s best to do both the killing fields of Choeung Ek and the Genocide Museum of Tuol Sleng on the same day in order to absorb the full nightmare of the Khmer Rouge period. Or maybe to get it all done in one session, so to speak. This is a horror story which takes some taking in.

The Khmer Rouge revolution marched into Phnom Penh on 17th April 1975, claiming to be a revolution for the people after this nation had suffered the atrocities of the “American War” in neighbouring Vietnam. With Cambodia and its people already brought to its knees by years of bombing raids by the USA, the Khmer Rouge had overthrown a corrupt and intensely unpopular Government on the pretence of bringing freedom to the persecuted and devastated nation. Many welcomed their march into the capital, not realising that their real nightmare was only just beginning.

Within three hours of the triumphal march into the capital, the evacuation of Phnom Penh began under the false pretence of a revolution for the people, followed swiftly by similar evacuations of all major towns and cities throughout Cambodia. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s twisted ideological vision was of a nation wholly controlled by the “Angkar” (The Organisation), where dehumanisation was the norm. Every person was to work in the fields wearing their regulation issue black clothing and would own absolutely nothing other than that uniform.

Ownership of anything was an enemy of the revolution. The currency was nullified and cash became worthless, homes were confiscated or destroyed, land taken over by the Angkar. But worse, every “enemy” was to be eliminated. Anybody with wealth, privilege, an education or a profession was considered to be the enemy. Doctors, lawyers, teachers and lecturers were sent to their death, as were their families. 

The Khmer Rouge set up almost 200 hundred prisons for perceived enemies, the most notorious being Tuol Skeng, known at the time as S-21, and, even more shockingly, more than 300 locations which became known as the killing fields. Starting with the privileged, and those with wealth or education, or a profession, the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge began the process of “cleansing” Cambodia by murdering every single person who was seen not to be a peasant.

Every form of art was the enemy, every form of religion outlawed, Buddhist monks, seen to be “lazy” by Pol Pot, were not spared. Painters, actors, poets and clergy joined the professionals on the road to death.

Two of Pol Pot’s mantras drilled into his army by brainwashing:

“To remove the grass it is necessary to remove all of the roots”

“Better to kill an innocent by mistake than to allow an enemy to survive by mistake”

At S-21, prisoners were dehumanised, tortured and starved, and forced to sign false confessions of crimes against the revolution, the signing of which consigned them to being despatched to the killing fields. And in those killing fields, something like 3 million Cambodians were murdered by their fellow countrymen who had been brainwashed into seeing genocide as a worthy objective of their new world.

WARNING…the next two paragraphs contain some graphic detail of brutality.

At Choeung Ek and similar killing field locations, pits would be dug in readiness for mass slaughter, prisoners forced to queue for their turn whilst watching those ahead of them put to their death. And death was not by shooting or poison, these people were bludgeoned to death one by one by soldiers wielding farming tools, hammers, metal rods, bamboo canes and any other crude item which was to hand. The victims had to stand in line, tied together by rope, watching each person ahead of them slaughtered and then pushed into the pit, until it was their turn.

Mothers were forced to watch their children murdered, killed sometimes by being held by the ankles and swung around so that their head was smashed against the so-called killing tree. And then thrown into the pit. Some time later mother was killed too. (Note: when I heard this my heart broke. I can’t shake it from my mind. Ordinary people brainwashed into smashing children’s heads. Of all the terrible things we’ve ever heard….).

The rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge began to fall apart three years after the revolution, and by January 1979 he, and they, were forced into hiding and out of power by a combination of rebels from his own ranks and the Vietnamese Army. By this time the revolution was imploding, Pol Pot had become increasingly paranoid, and in-fighting within the Khmer Rouge was seeing many of its leading figures putting one another into their respective graves.

The Khmer Rouge were ousted but Cambodia was not at peace for many years to come. And get this fact. After killing 3 million Cambodians, after committing acts of genocide, torture and extreme brutality, the Khmer Rouge held the legitimate Cambodia seat at the United Nations for a further FOURTEEN years until 1993, backed by most of the western world including the UK and the USA; and, of course, by China.

As we leave the killing fields, a young girl skips happily across the car park and giggles as she drops something, darting back to collect it and laughing with her friends. Ladies sell coconuts and Coca-Cola. Khmer soups bubble in cooking pots. Tuk-tuk drivers tout for business.

Our time at the two locations spreads across more than five hours before we return to the riverside, exhausted and emotionally drained. We sit on our balcony looking out across the modern Phnom Penh where laughter carries on, the new city thrusts itself forward and this new version of Cambodia fantastically, boldly shakes off its all too recent nightmare. We decide to shower and head to a sky bar for a beer.

One of the narrators at Choeung Ek is a survivor from both a Khmer Rouge prison and the killing fields: Youk Chhang, who later fled to Texas and is now Director of “DC-Cam”, the agency documenting the history of the genocide. We will have to paraphrase, but maybe in his words he explains more succinctly than anyone, how Phnom Penh, and Cambodia, has built such an amazing recovery of spirit:

“After the Khmer Rouge, everything was broken. Every city, every town, every village, every community, every family, every person…was broken. Cambodia was a broken sheet of glass. We knew that the way to recover was not to discuss how the glass came to be broken, but to try to put all the pieces back together”.

Closure: Phnom Penh exists with a new life despite its history. We wanted to reflect this so left this post intact, humour and all. The words of Youk Chhang speak more forcefully than visitors like us and have helped us to understand.