Hopping into the tuk tuk after leaving the airport, you are thrust into the wild road culture of Cambodia. The experience makes the Thai’s look fair-minded and well behaved. The ride was 45 minutes of wonder and shock. Cambodia at first glance is chaotic, dirty, and alive. After the airport experience we had just had, our nerves were still high. I was giving Bradley’s hand a death grip because we had at least 4 near misses with other motorists. There are no rules on the roads of Cambodia and it is a constant game of chicken. While it is a harrowing experience for a Westerner like me, it is also quite impressive. Cambodians do everything on motorbikes. Carry long haul trailers full of farming equipment, whole shops, loads of brick, and a record amount of people. On two wheels and a small engine! Once again, they give Thais a challenge for the most creative and resourceful uses of motorbikes. Aside from motorbikes galore, another Southeast Asian culture trend continues here as well. Everyone wears slides and flip flops and everything is done in slides and flip flops. Even construction work!
Once we made it to our hotel we were greeted with big smiles and kindness. Cambodians call everyone brother/sister or “bong” in Khmer. I really enjoy that! It makes you feel at home and there’s no anxiety about feeling like an outsider. In Cambodia everyone is family. We unpacked and once we were coming down off the arrival high, we were starving! We had some delicious Indian food down the street and decided to walk around the city in the evening and explore the Mekong riverside. Getting out of the neighborhood was an adventure of its own because Cambodia is not pedestrian friendly by any means. You have to play Frogger with all the other drivers on the road playing chicken and it was very intense for me. A million times worse than any other pedestrian city experiences I had ever had. It is incredibly dangerous and there is no room for error. On top of the game there is trash, metal debris, and rubble strewn all over. Walking through the streets of Cambodia is comparable to an obstacle course built from construction site leftovers. I absolutely hated it.
Phnom Penh is a large city but has a strong sense of community. There were beautiful sidewalks and courtyards to walk around once we got out of our neighborhood and I was able to really enjoy and take in the city there. People are out and about enjoying the cool evening. The color of the sky is a dusty amber with lavender slowly pushing it away to take over as night. Different groups of people are playing a game and kicking around a woven ball. People are jogging and walking with friends or sitting down to enjoy a snack or cold drink on one of the park benches. Families are having little picnics. Children are playing and laughing. And my favorite…groups of people are doing aerobics. Every couple of miles there’s a group blasting some techno beats and getting their heart rates pumping with anyone free to join in. Twinkling lights of all colors adorn trees and buildings. Neon lights are everywhere and in children’s toys and blinking in their shoes. It was beautiful. I have never experienced such a strong sense of community and togetherness and joy. And this is Phnom Penh every night.
We decided to walk to and sit along the Mekong river to relax and just be. Bradley reads me the history and facts of the river. It is the 12th longest river in the world and the 6th longest in Asia (over 3,000 miles). Part of the river even changes its directional flow where it meets with the Tonle Sap lake and river during the rainy season. It is a lifesource for its people. I keep looking around and soaking it all in. People are fishing, selling street food, and hanging out just like us. Every now and then people walk by and smile real big, wave and say “hello!” genuinely excited to see us. I was really surprised by how outgoing the Khmer people are. It is quite different from the reserved Thai culture I’ve experienced. Cambodia is also a top ranking country for English speaking. Children are everywhere. Lots of smiles and laughter and curiosity. We had pizza and beer for dinner and called it an early night. The evening was a very special and enjoyable experience for me.
The next day we visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. There is a reason why Cambodia’s population is so young and I didn’t see elderly people around the city. The Khmer Rouge was a communist party that overtook the country by horrific force from 1975-1979 and killed 2 million Cambodians, or Khmer people, which was a quarter of their population. I was really shocked to learn of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, led by a man named Pol Pot, and that I never learned a single bit of this piece of history in school. The Khmer Rouge wanted to create an agrarian utopia where everyone was equal and prohibited education, religion, and anything they viewed as foreign influence. To this end, they forcibly evacuated all the large cities and towns in the country and forced people to work on communes while they slowly starved or were outright killed for being too educated, too weak, or supposed disloyalty to the regime. I was even more disappointed to learn about “Operation Menu,” a covert operation driven by President Nixon, which consisted of over 3,500 flights dropping 110,000 bombs over this beautiful country that lasted 14 months. Then there was “Operation Freedom Deal” that dropped more bombs from 1970-1973 with 250,000 tons of bombs being dropped in 1973 alone. This was more than all the bombs the US dropped on Japan in WWII. Roughly 500,000 tons of highly explosive bombs were dropped on Cambodia from 1969-1973. About a quarter of their population was killed from these bombings dropped by the United States. This weakened Cambodia and ultimately opened up the floodgates for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to rise to power and commit the atrocious torture and genocide of their own people. By 1979, nearly half of Cambodia’s population was wiped out in a matter of a decade.
It is amazing what this great country has accomplished to come back from all of this in just 50 years. The Khmer people are truly resilient, kind, and gracious. The museum was originally a secondary school for children which was taken over by the Khmer Rouge and then turned into Security Prison 21 (S-21), a place of torture and murder. As we walked through the facility it was very quiet. We were the only visitors at the time. The rules of the prison are displayed on a giant sign and you are instantly washed with terror and dread as you read them before entering the former classrooms. The interrogation rooms still have the iron beds and chains the prisoners were shackled to inside. This is where some prisoners were tortured, forced into confessions, and brutally murdered. The tile is original and the blood stains are immediately recognizable. The prisoner’s latrines sit on the beds for display and are old US Military ammunition boxes. There’s censored pictures and historical information in each room. You can still see faint paintings of numbers and classroom learning material on the walls.
There are walls of barbed wire around two of the buildings. To prevent anyone from a quick escape by suicide. Walking into the building that held mass prisoners you see how small and miserable the cells were. There are markings and inscriptions on the doors from prisoners that the museum preserves. In other rooms walls of hundreds of pictures of victims that include women and children are on display. A picture of a woman holding her infant with a gaze no words could truly describe makes my heart physically ache. I’m sick to my stomach. The Khmer Rouge documented everything. Pictures of the victims as they lay dead in their beds are on the walls. By the time we reach the building that houses skulls of the victims and the instruments of torture used by the Khmer Rouge, I want to leave. We meet one of the few survivors of S-21 and buy his book, feeling guilt and not knowing how to act in the presence of a man who endured such incomprehensible brutality. And then the heart breaking tour is over. On January 7th, 1979 the Vietnamese seized the country and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. It is celebrated annually as Cambodia’s Victory Over Genocide Day.
Bradley and I talked about the experience on the way home and while it was difficult to go through, I learned a lot and I was thankful he was willing to go through this place again. It’s not something you can skip when you visit Cambodia. It’s a visitor’s duty to learn about this huge part of Cambodian history, no matter how hard it may be to swallow. Every local will ask you if you have been to the museum. And they’ll ask you if you have been to the Killing Fields where millions of victims are still buried. They want you to know. They need you to know. This country still bears the scars of war and genocide. It is still littered with landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO). Since 1979 and after Cambodia gained its independence from the Khmer Rouge, almost 20,000 people have been killed by landmines and UXO and over 45,000 people have been injured or amputated. The Khmer people are still recovering and fighting for survival with beautiful smiles on their faces after half a century. It is tragically honorable, inspiring, and completely humbling.
It was New Years Eve and I was really ready to say goodbye to 2021 like everyone else in the world. I ended a really tough year with a lot of amazing experiences and gained a ton of perspective. I was still battling with my anxiety and depression, especially with culture shock tossed on top, and spent time writing and reflecting on how I wanted to start anew in 2022. I also wanted to party. Hard. Which is really rare for me. I found a really cool event happening just around the corner from our place at HClub Nightclub that seemed like our kind of scene with local DJ’s and a light show. We got gussied up, I put on my power lipstick, and we went out! We had great cocktails at a few different places and I even found dogs and a puppy to play with. And just as I had intended, I got plastered and danced my heart out with my sweet Bradley. For one night, we forgot about the pandemic and lowered our inhibitions. I had not been that drunk since February 2019. The next morning I was so very sick. But after I let it all go (you know what I mean!) and recovered, I really did feel like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. Sometimes you just have to get really drunk, forget everything, and dance all night with your favorite person.
Our time in Phnom Penh was at a close and we spent our last day hungover but fulfilled. We visited Wat Phnom, enjoyed sitting along the Mekong river side, and walked around the city one last time before heading home to pack up for our next stop at Kampong Thom. It was a wild introduction to this country but it was also some of the most insightful 3 days I have ever had. Because of Phnom Penh, I will never be the same. And for that I am grateful.
