Kingdom of Cambodia

Very, very early on Thursday the 2nd, Mari and I were sitting patiently on the sidewalk in Bangkok.  We learned later that the time we had been given was the time at which point the driver started getting out of bed.  1.5 hours later he showed up to pick us up, and then drove around town for another hour, looking for people to pick up.  We had 4 people in our van (there were 11 seats), then we picked up the full 11, then we dropped 3 people off, then we picked up 4 more, and somehow, we finally left town with a full van.  It was no longer early.
The portion of the drive was very uneventful, except that our driver had Trett's symdrome.  This caused him to yell out, continuously from Bangkok until the Cambodia border.  It was kinda unnerving at first.  When we did finally get to the border we were informed to grab our bags, and walk across the bridge into Cambodia.  We assumed that our Van or a new van would meet us on the other side, man were we wrong. 
At the border we were shocked at how much paperwork awaited us.  What is important to remember is that both Mari and I already had Visas for Cambodia, but we still had to fill out a quarantine form, a customs form, and a second arrival form (there is a border scam here, where if travellers cannot prove they are vaccinated for cholera, you must pay 100 Baht ($4 Can))  After all of this paper, we were walked accross an old rickety bridge, while locals carted huge loads of sellable goods back and forth.  Here is where the fun started.
At 2 p.m. 10 of us backpackers, all our gear were piled into the back of an open Nissan smallbox truck.  4 more people and a driver got into the front, and we drove until 8:30 at night to get the 250 km to Siem Reap.  If you do the math, you will probably figure out how slow we were going.  What you can only imagine though, is the state of the road.  THE NATIONAL HIGHWAY, has 1 metre deep craters in it.  Small bridges were either some corrugated metal, a couple of logs, or completely missing.  WE drove around, through, or over absolutely everything you can imagine, and all the while I was sitting on the metal side of a pick up.  My ass cheeks were so smashed up and bruised, that I could not sleep on my back.  The other hazard was the quantity of dust and dirt that covered everything as we drove along. 
What kept everyones spirits up was the jokes.  One British man said we would not be bothered with the pot-holes because there was probably still other trucks in them from earlier in the day, and we could just drive over top.  I commented that this was the main highway, you should see the back roads.  Kids yelled as we drove by, and some bridges the children would move planks to the right width of your vehicle, so that you could cross safely.  It was fun.  And one other detail.  Every time the truck stopped for 2 minutes, children (yes children) would bring cans of beer up to the truck to sell.  BELIEVE ME those kids made a mint.

Angkor Wat

By the time we reached Siem Reap that night we swore that all we would do the next day was sleep. But as the curiousity (and the crazy moto-drivers) would have it, by 9:30am, we were off and exploring. The Temples of Angkor were the seat of Khmer power between the late 9th century and the early 13th. The great kings of that period built huge monuments that are a testement to their religious dedication and to the volume of workers that they had to create these works. The earlier temples are built in dedication to the Hindu gods Shiva and Vishnu primarily, as the religious shift occured (around the end of the 11th cnetury the new kings cerated temples dedicated to Budda, and the older temples were re-vamped to inclued Buddist shrines and momuments.

Over the three days that we spent exploring the Monuments at Angkor, we were truly impressed by the amount of archaeological restoration that has been undertaken at the sites. Teams from Japan, China, U.S and France were assisting the Cambodian government with the restoration of many of the severly destroyed sites. The main bulk of the rescent work was only begun in 1995, after the Group HALO (the Land-mine clearing international org.) came in to clear the site after the impact of the Khmer rouge regime. Most of the original work, such as clearing the jungle from the monuments and installing reinforcement beams to protect the workers was done by the French. But the civil wars have taken there toll on the monuments and although they were not destroyed per say, the people who worked on them (and all of their notes incidentily) were removed. The rebilding process has been a long time in the making. To the credit of the Cambodians they have done a great job.

It is very hard to describe the sites, however we managed to shoot off a couple rolls of film while we were there, so have no fear, you will see pictures of the temples eventually. 

The Killing Fields and S-21

There are certain things that must be seen while you visit the City of Phnom Penn. The tragedy and horror of the Pol Pot regime, and the mass destruction of a country are evident here in some of the remaining structures and places around the city. We decided to visit the Tol  Sleng Museum first to get an understanding of the whole story. What we ended up recieving was the shock of truth. The Tol Sleng Museum, or Security Office -21 (S-21) was originally a high school in the middle of neighbourhood in central Phnom Penn, until 1975 it was just a typical school where kids played, learned and generally lead fairly care-free lives. Pol Pot clique took control of the school on May 1975 and it was officially opened as a detention centre the following year. By 1976 there were over 2,500 prisoners being heald there for terms ranging from 2-8 months. Most of which were tortured for information, for supposed disobiedience, and other imagined crimes. These were innocent men women and children that were detained, tortured and then murdered.  Most of the people were not killed directly on site, but were moved to Cheng Ek, "The Killing Fields" just south of town. They were usually bludgeoned in the head (to save bullets) and thrown in mass graves. The rooms of the school were filled with pictures of the tortures, the people, and the instruments  that had seen left lying around following the evacuation of the Khmer Rouge after 1979. Disturbing, horrifying, and frightening are words that fail to even begin to capture the feelings.
When we visited the Fields of Cheng Ek, this morning, the moto divers were all fighting over which one would get to drive us out to the fields. the most common english words they know are "hello, go to killing field?"  all in the name of a quick buck.... But we decided that we must see, so we chose one and off we went. The place itself is amazingly surreal, and it is hard to picture what it would have looked like only 25 years ago. The people have settled inthe surrounding feilds and cows now graze in the fields, but you can see the scraps of cloth and shards of bone that protrude from the ground. The Cambodian people have erected a huge monument to theie fellow people who were slain in these fields. It stands 45meters tall and encloses a glass case full of the skulls of the exhumed bodies. They are all catagorized by age, sex and race. The surrounding fields hold the markers of the graves that have been exhumed, but of the 129 graves that exist at Cheng Ek only 86 have been unearthed. A lonly tree stands near the rear of the field with a marker that states "this tree was used to smash children against".

All I kept thinking was, I was alive during this, this happened when I was a baby. Why wasn't this stopped, why did the world let this happen? I suppose I was young and naive then to believe the world was safe...