Genocide, What?

Best tuk tuk driver ever.

In Cambodia, the equivalent to the Indian "auto" is the onomatopoetic "tuk tuk." And they're everywhere. Which is awesome. Our hostel has a dedicated tuk tuk driver, so SR and I booked him for the afternoon today to take us around. He was awesome. On the way to our first stop, he stopped off and picked up two face masks for SR and me to wear. SR was like "I make fun of people who wear these" and I was like "... I do to. But when in Rome..." and donned the mask, because... why not? SR followed suit. We probably both saved about a year of our lives from all the air pollution we didn't breathe in.

Our first stop was a place called S-21.S-21 is a school. Well, it used to be a school before it was turned into museum. Oh also, in between it was turned into a prison where enemies of the state were tortured and killed. Remember how I didn't do any research about Cambodia before coming here? Yea... turns out there was a lot that I missed.

In today's edition of Know Your Planet, we cover Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, the [R]'s Notes version (note: some facts may be "facts"):

My first and last names are both nouns!

The Khmer Rouge is synonymous for the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). "Kampuchea" is how folks in the East pronounce Cambodia because... you know, it's their country and they probably know how to say it the right way. The CPK was formed in 1968 and officially took power in Cambodia in 1975. They were led by a guy named Pol Pot, a gentle soul that loved everyone. Wait, no, how do you say the opposite of "gentle soul that loved everyone"? Oh right, dictator. He was a viscous, brutal dictator.

On a dreary Wednesday afternoon, 8-yr. old Pol Pot, having been forced for the third straight night to finish his bok choy before he could have dessert, vowed that one day he would rise to power and force everyone to eat their vegetables all the time so they could feel his childhood pain. Fast-forward 42 years and after taking power, he began to implement his vision for an agrarian society, which he also believed was the key to Cambodia's self-sufficiency. A funny thing happens when you force non-farmers to be responsible for producing your nation's food supply: your population starts to die from starvation. Oh also, Pol Pot hates labels, could be labeled as something, then you were executed: Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, Laotians, and he threw in intellectuals and disabled people for good measure. And their families. We wouldn't want some orphaned child growing up and exacting revenge now, would we? 

In the four years that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were in power, about 2 million people (estimates vary) died, shrinking Cambodia's population from 8 million down to 6 million. 25% of the people! That's insane!

Lots of global geopolitical stuff was going down in the world at the time, and the Khmer Rouge fell out of power in 1979, forcing its leaders into hiding in the jungles of southwestern Cambodia, near the Thai border. The crazy part about all of this (ok, there are a LOT of crazy parts about all of this) is that despite knowing about all abhorrent genocidal tendencies of the regime, the UN still recognized the Khmer Rouge as the only legitimate party representing Cambodia until 1990. 1990! While hiding out, Pol Pot developed a profound love of pizza and seeking to implant a subliminal love for the CPK in the western world founded California Pizza Kitchen in 1985, which today has locations in a dozen countries across the planet.

Pol Pot died, get this, in 1998 while under house arrest. House arrest! Let that be a lesson to you, other dictators of the world: you are going to be so grounded when your regime is finally toppled.

SR and I arrived at S-21 (also known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum), paid a small entrance fee, and stepped inside. S-21 was like when you first walk onto a beach and it's beautiful but then after a few minutes you notice the sand is full of trash, the water is full of algae, and the only people wearing bathing suits are the people you never, ever want to see wearing bathing suits. Except the trash/algae/"2-sizes-too-small" of S-21 took the form of barbed wire, concrete cells, and a giant sign listing out "the rules" of S-21.

Beautiful, right? Just ignore the gallows and
graves. Ooo, a palm tree!

Maybe it's just S-21, maybe it's all of the museums in Cambodia, but it's definitely not the same as a museum in the U.S. There are a lot of things that are shown but not really labeled. There are a lot of things that are labeled, but not explained. So you end up seeing a lot of stuff were you're like "...I bet this was used for something awful" without really knowing what exactly. The grounds are also really well taken care of in some respects, but in dire need of a cleaning in other respects. Like the grass is beautifully manicured, but we also found a stairwell that just had trash in it.

Prison cells. Believe it or not, these
are the nicer ones.

Inside one of the cells

SR and I walked around the whole complex. We saw the cells where they kept prisoners. They're so small, you could barely lie down in them. Everything was covered in barbed wire to prevent people from... escaping? Committing suicide? Feeling any small sense of hope? Probably all of the above.

You know it's bad when
you'd rather stay filthy

There were also a lot of pictures and paintings on the walls depicting life at S-21. This one shows how they kept the prisoners clean. And by clean I mean "clean." Once a week or so they would get them all in a room and spray them down with a hose.

After an incredibly eye-opening and disturbing hour and a half or so, SR and I decided to go on to the next activity for the day. If you thought this day couldn't get more depressing, you'd be totally wrong. We hopped back into our tuk tuk and drove for about 20 minutes to our next destination, the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, more commonly known as the Killing Fields.

Front entrance to the Killing Fields

SR and I hopped out of the tuk tuk and went inside. After paying a small fee, we were given some headsets loaded with an audio tour.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have

smiled for this photo.

This is called the Killing Tree. So named
because guards would take babies and slam
them into the tree to kill them. Those bracelets
are mementos left by visitors to honor those
who died here. In another tree close by, they
embedded speakers to play nationalistic music
with the intention of drowning out the sound
of the screams of those being killed.

I'll include some details about the Killing Fields in the captions of the photos so if you'd prefer not to know what happened here, you can just skip past them. But what you should know is that this was an awful, terrible, miserable place where people were taken to be killed and buried in mass graves.

The skulls they've found here have been categorized and put
on display in a central tower. It's so far from what you expect
of reality that it's hard to remember each one of these skulls
belonged to a real, living, breathing human being.

Ever seen a tower of skulls? You have now.

These fields look beautiful but every
sink-hole-looking depression in the ground
is actually the site of a mass grave. As the
weather changes the ground, new bones are
constantly being naturally unearthed.

After the Killing Fields, SR and I went to our next stop, the Russian Market. It was a pretty quiet ride over. I think SR and I were both processing a lot of "genocide sucks" thoughts. We got to the Russian Market about 20 minutes later. I'm not sure why it's called that. It doesn't look particularly... Russian. I'm sure the internet knows but... do you really care? I don't.

The Russian Market is this HUGE indoor market. There is a lot of food and a lot of trinkets and a lot of clothes and... power tools? And a lot of other random things. I mean... it's a HUGE market. Inevitably, SR and I got separated. It was bound to happen. The market closes at 5pm, so a little before then I started trying to find her. I must have searched every possible corner of that place, but no luck. People were starting to close up shop and lights were starting to turn off and things were starting to look a little sketchy. So I figured, if I were her, I'd probably head back to the tuk tuk and wait there. So that's what I did. The problem is I didn't remember exactly where the tuk tuk dropped us off. Or where I entered the market from. So I went outside and tried to get my bearings. After about 5 minutes I found the tuk tuk with SR safely inside. I imagine she had probably been waiting there a while, because she was definitely a little annoyed that it had taken me so long to get there. She hid it just fine though. And you can't really blame her, I probably would be too. I was pretty tired after the day so I was really glad to be heading back to the hostel.

Later that night, SR and I went to go check out this huge Night Market we'd been hearing about. It was raining hard. Luckily there were a lot of tarps setup to protect people from the rain, but unfortunately they were really, really low, so you had to duck down to walk through the aisles. It felt pretty cramped. There were also a lot of food stalls as well, though most of them looked like they sold the same food.

This guy cooked my food. It was good.

There was a cool eating area in the middle of all the food stalls so after we grabbed food, SR and I sat down for a nice meal. I also had cane juice for the first time in a long time. Actually, I take that back, I had some in Bangladesh, but before that I hadn't had cane juice in a long, long time. It was so good, I went back for Round 2.

Yummmmm

No shoes allowed!

This would be funny if it weren't so sad

After dinner, SR and I walked back to the hostel. On the way back we found a small child playing with fire in the street. Yup, that happened.

Remember the German guys from the hostel last night? They're off living it up at a fancy place tonight, but we did decide to all hang out again tonight. The original plan was to head to their place but apparently everything there was really expensive, so they decided to come back to our hostel. So around 10pm or so, they came back to meet up with the Finns and me. The five of us hung out in the lounge for a bit, then went on an adventure. One of the group had heard about this cool club in a touristy part of town. So we grabbed a tuk tuk and headed over there. But once we got there, we decided to go head somewhere else. That somewhere else that the tuk tuk driver took us to was not what we had told him. We went in anyway. It was totally dead.

Katy Peri's Pizzas

So we walked out and went to find another place. On the way, we found the pizza joint that Katy Perry owns. Apparently she's forgotten how to spell her own name.

Finally, we found a decent place, the Rooftop Reggae Bar! On a rooftop! With real people there!

...fight the power?

Unfortunately, my phone camera was not as awesome as
the view itself

It was an interesting scene inside. Mostly expats. There was the standard couple making out in the corner. There was one woman there who forgot how old she was (and I'd generally say "good for her" if not for the fact that she reeked of desperation with each one of her overly aggressive dance moves). Her friend had the opposite "woe is me, I'm just going to sit in the corner by myself looking sad" problem. Like most things in life, the best outcome would have just been to average them out. Like stock market analyst predictions.

There was also a really awesome view of Phnom Penh. And the bathroom had hilarious signage as well. It started sprinkling a little while we were there, which was actually kind of refreshing. We stayed out until around 3am or so before heading back to the hostel.

Get it, grrrl

This was my last night in Phnom Penh and I'm really glad I got to spend it with this crew. They were a ton of fun and I'm going to miss these guys.

CONTINUE ON to Phnom Penh Part 4: Goodbye, Phnom Penh!

In case you've forgotten how to pee, this sign's got you
covered. Unlike what you should do to the seat and/or floor.