We arrived in Phnom Penh after our first ride on a “hotel bus” – a bus with beds instead of seats so you can lie down flat and if you’re under 5’ 3” even stretch out. Compared to the vans and busses we had been taking, this was luxury! We were both able to get some sleep on the 9 hour overnight ride and when we got off the bus, we had a tuk tuk waiting to take us to the hotel and on a tour for the day. (The driver we had in Siem Reap called a friend in Phnom Penh to meet us.)
After dropping off our bags and having a light breakfast at the hotel, our driver handed us hospital masks for the long, dusty, bumpy road out to the killing fields. The place offered an audio tour that did well to capture the gravity of the history here. As you walked around, everyone else around you was wearing headphones and solemn faces. They had facts and numbers mixed in with personal stories from people on both sides of the Khmer Rouge. There are several mass graves that have been found and excavated, but as we walked on the paths, we could look down and see new bones and scraps of cloth coming up through the sand. We heard that this is a constant thing, and that every so often, someone comes through to collect new bones and personal effects that are uncovered to either bury them or to add them to those on display for people coming to learn about the violent history of the area. One building held a glass case several stories high filled with the bones excavated from the mass graves.
After quite some time at the killing fields, we had a moment to regain our composure as we traveled to another difficult place to visit – S21. This is one of the prisons that was used by the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh. It had been a school until the Khmer Rouge came to power and eliminated all education in the country.
Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, had studied in France where he became a communist extremist. Upon his return to Cambodia, he was determined to establish, “the most advanced and purist form of communism in the world” – a peasant farming society. He believed that people living in cities were corrupt and those that weren’t killed were put to work as farmers. In order to scare people into fleeing to the countryside where they were forced to work, often to death, he announced that the U.S. was about to bomb the cities. The threat was believable since the US was already carpet bombing Eastern Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War. They completely emptied every city in Cambodia in only 3 days.
We learned a lot from the guide we’d hired to take us through S-21. We saw the prison cells (some still stained with blood), the torture devices, pictures of the thousands who passed through here, and heard many personal stories. When we were leaving, we had the honor of meeting two of the seven known survivors of the prison. One of them was spared because he was the only person who could fix the typewriter that was needed to type the false confessions of the prisoners.
Once we’d visited these two places, it was difficult not to notice how off-balance the population is. There are very few elderly people and nearly everyone was our age our younger. Of the 7 million people in the country, estimates say anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 were killed or died from famine. (Pol Pot ordered the country to triple rice production, not so they could eat it, but so he could sell it to China in exchange for more weapons.)
After such an emotionally heavy day we needed something to lighten our spirits, so the following day we signed up for a tour of the Phnom Tamao wildlife preserve which takes wild animals that have been rescued from being kept illegally as pets, workers or performance animals and rehabilitates them for re-release when possible. We found an outfit called Betelnut Tours that gave all day guided tours and couldn’t have been more fortunate in our choice.
Aram, the Betelnut guide was spectacular. He had been working with the preserve for so long he knew the stories of all of the animals. He introduced us to each of the otters by name and made sure we fed each equally. He pointed out which gibbons liked to be scratched and which you shouldn’t turn your back on at risk of having the hat stolen off your head. We got to meet a gibbon, who, while carrying her baby, came to the side of the cage for a scratch. When Rachel scratched her on the back, she reached out and moved Rachel’s hand to her head. She apparently prefers head scratches to back scratches.
We also got to feed and massage Lucky the elephant who loves it when you hold his trunk and blow in the end. Colin even got his hand licked – a very odd experience. We also got to toss a coconut to Chook – the elephant that was given a prosthetic foot after his was caught in a snare. At lunchtime, Betelnut provided a delicious meal with an assortment of Cambodian currys cooked by Aram’s wife, Vathana.
The wildlife preserve was clearly one of the highlights of our trip to this point. Aram must have liked us as much as we liked him because after a brief chat on the phone with his wife they invited us, and the other couple on the tour, back to their house for dinner. Dinner was a traditional Cambodian hotpot, where plates of meat, fish and veggies are laid out on the table (actually we ate on the floor) and a pot of broth bubbles in the middle. Each of us could then cook whatever we liked and drink the broth as we went.
After dinner, we learned a bit more about Cambodian culture from as they showed us their wedding pictures. For example, a traditional Cambodian wedding takes 3-5 days and involves at least 10 costume changes for the wedding party. (Our favorite picture was the one where they’d been photoshopped onto a bed and the stock bedroom photo the photographer used had a large stuffed pink panther on the shelf in the background. Aram and Vathana hadn’t noticed until we pointed it out.) Also, their wedding planning was a bit rushed because just a few months after he proposed, Aram was going to turn 29 and before his next birthday Vathana would turn 29. Apparently 9 is such an unlucky number that if they had married at 29 many people wouldn’t have come to the wedding.
As it was such short notice, Aram’s mom couldn’t get time off from work to attend and each couple needs to have a married couple to represent as their parents, so his father, who could come, wasn’t allowed to be in the wedding party. Instead, they had one of his wife’s aunts and uncles sit in as the married “parents” for Aram. During the ceremony, they had to feed and put make-up on the parent figures to represent the commitment to care for them in old age. It was all really interesting and we felt like we were hanging out with old friends. At the end of the night they helped us flag down a taxi and we said our goodbyes.
We were flying out in the afternoon of our last day which gave us just enough time to get to a restaurant we’d missed for the last couple days, Sugar n’ Spice. This is a restaurant that helps to get women out of the sex trade by training them in various trades including restaurant work, but also a variety of traditional handicrafts that were then sold in the store downstairs. Apparently 98% of the women they train are able to stay out of the sex trade and move on to better lives. Not only was this a good cause but it was an amazing meal. Possibly the new best meal we’ve had on our trip!