After a cracking night in a karaoke bar with $0.50 beers I visited Cambodia’s infamous ‘killing fields’ and the prisons used to detain prisoners of the Pol Pot regime, known locally as the Khmer Rouge (translating as Cambodian Red, i.e. Cambodian communists).
I expected there to be some introductory information boards between the car park and the mass graves, almost like a buffer zone, or at least some warning of what was about to come. Instead we immediately arrived at a sign saying “please do not walk on the mass graves”.
The things we saw were awful: as it was the end of the rainy season, teeth, bone fragments and victims clothing were rising out of the waterlogged ground, and our tour guide told us this happened daily. I saw the skeleton of a child and the suture lines of their skull weren’t fully fused together so they must have been less than 2 years old. Worse than the sights, though, were the things which were explained to us. The victims of the Khmer Rouge totalled almost half of the Cambodian population, and that doesn’t account for the ‘free’ people who died of the famine. Initially government workers were targeted, then political critics, then ‘intellectuals’ (which even included anyone who wore glasses). The idea behind this was to remove from society the people who would criticise Pol Pot, and might give less educated people negative ideas about the regime. These people were detained and tortured with the aim of them disclosing the name of other ‘criminals’. They were told the torture would continue until either they gave up names or died, or they could provide names be provided with a new house. The majority of these victims didn’t know of any ‘criminals’ so they named innocent people to get their abuse to stop. Only it didn’t. Their ‘reward’ for complying was to be sent to the killing fields to kill those prisoners who didn’t provide names. It wasn’t just adults who were sent to do this; children were too. We saw photos of many of the children who were ordered to kill - most were between 10-12 and looked horrified and broken by what they were being made to do, but others had a tiny smirk and defiant look which suggested they enjoyed it.
How were innocent people killed in the fields? I assumed they would have been shot, but our guide explained this would have been too quick and easy a death. Instead they were blindfolded, made to kneel at the edge of a mass grave, and struck at the base of their skull with a hammer. If they survived this, their throat was cut using the bark of a palm tree which has a sharp edge - but not sharp enough to do it quickly. We saw a tree named “the magic tree” where speakers were hung to blast out music to cover the screams, meaning nearby villagers weren’t aware of what was happening. If you were a woman with a child, your fate was worse. The women were lined up with their children, and one by one the children were taken by Khmer Rouge, held up by their ankles, and had their heads clubbed against a tree - in front of their mothers. After the children had been killed the women were raped, and then murdered.
I left the field feeling pretty somber, and then went to the infamous S-21 prison in Phnom Penh. Once Vietnam became aware of the genocide in Cambodia they (admittedly not entirely altruistically) invaded Cambodia to intervene. Khmer Rouge got wind of this and increased the rate of executions to attempt to destroy evidence of their crimes. They succeeded in ‘emptying’ thousands of prisoners from S-21 (bearing in mind this was one of hundreds of prisons in the country, and the same was being done at each) and only 7 remained by the time the prison was liberated by the Vietnamese. Two were babies, two were brothers aged 8 and 6, and three were adult men. The 8 year old and two of the adults have now returned to S-21 to tell visitors their stories which must have taken an unimaginable amount of mental strength. My mind struggles with getting on a bike or going to Kettering hospital, so I don’t know how they survive returning to the place where their mothers and fathers were killed.
It was a tough day so we needed a bit of down-time in the evening, which came in the form of a sunset all-you-can-drink boat party on the Mekong river. Clare and I (badly) re-enacted the ‘Jack and Rose’ photo, and I gave Ben a nosebleed: I owed her $5 which I put down her top, she said “I feel like I should give you a lap dance”, I said “go on then”, she straddled me and leant my head back, my sunglasses almost went overboard so I swung my head forwards, and make quite hard contact with her face. Whoops.
A couple of days later we set off to Siam Reap which has a brilliant night life. We drank at a rooftop bar complete with a pool, and then Clare and I hit the night market whilst Ben had a massage (which she described as “like being stamped on”). There’s a road called “Pub Street” which is a cacophony of neon lights, loud music, and smells of delicious street food. It was brilliant. We didn’t stay out too late though, because the next morning we had a 4am start to reach Angkor Wat (the worlds largest religious site) for sunrise. It was beautiful, and once the sun had risen we explored the temples which were a fascinating fusion of Buddhism and Hinduism. One of the temples had been abandoned for hundreds of years and had been buried under the jungle which has overgrown it. Restoration work is underway but it was still stunning to see trees growing on top of buildings, and wrapping their roots around walls. Most interestingly, though, was the explicit instruction on the back of my entrance ticked forbidding me from “exposing sexual organs”.
We left Angkor Wat just before midday, and the temperature was 34 degrees. Hot, sunburnt and drenched with sweat, I have never been more grateful to get on an air conditioned coach. We stopped at a local ‘training restaurant’; designed to help local village youths learn English and the necessary skills to become chefs or waiting staff. The food was absolutely delicious, but a learning need was identified re. allergens and cross-contamination. I felt very itchy and my lips tingly, but that was probably psychological after seeing peanuts so I didn’t pay it much attention. I developed a rash but no airway symptoms, so I just took some oral antihistamines. On the bus back to the hotel I had a sense that I was going to die. This feeling is easily dismissed as a panic attack, but it’s not. I’ve had a panic attack before but this sensation is entirely different: it’s a symptom (‘a sense of impending doom’), not a feeling. Within minutes my chest was tight, I had abdominal pain, I was jittery and was very tachycardic - adrenaline time! This meant I was down to a grand total of 0 EpiPens so as soon as I’d slept the reaction off Clare and I went on the hunt for replacements. We couldn’t find an auto-injector anywhere but we did manage to get hold of some 1mg vials of adrenaline, plus needles and syringes to draw it up. One vial is the equivalent of two EpiPens, and that plus some diazepam to take the edge of the bloody horrible adrenaline come-down cost me the meagre sum of $9!
Today I feel lethargic and still a little bit queasy, but ultimately fine and ready for this 9 hour bus ride to the Thai border!
Love Emily x
