ARRIVAL
As a Western woman in Cambodia, you're likely to be festooned with calls of "laydeee, you want tuk-tuk?" wherever you walk. In Siem Reap, I found this quaint and friendyt enough, but in the gritty desperation of the capital, it's just downright frustrating.
My temper begins to fray as soon as our night-bus arrives in the city centre at 6 a.m on a Saturday. As if we are suddenly in India, we are confronted by a mob of tuk-tuk drivers wanting to whisk us away to a guesthouse of their choice and my usual patience evaporates as I struggle to even push through their swarm. At this hour, it feels worse than my beloved India and I am amazed at the difference between the two Khnmer cities.
My day gets worse as I realise my Vietnamese visa, needed for the following night-bus journey (shudder), is in fact invalid and I have to pay $US60 for a 24 hour rushed job, especially because it's a Saturday. Bastards! I tell myself it's only money and try to somehow get my grump OFF, but so far it doesn't seem promising...
LOSING IT
After a few hours sleep, I attempt to walk into town - a seemingly easy task - and notice a sea of pink blossoms falling swiftly over the dirty street. After whipping out my camera to catch it on film, I am obviously too distracted to aim correctly for my bag again and SMASH!!! My camera falls to the grubby pavement, breaking open before my disbelieving eyes. I am sorry Sam-girl - I know you said it was worth nothing when you gave it to me recently, but I still feel bad for my clumsiness. I have to laugh at the fact that my continual search to capture aesthetic beauty has only culminated in a lack of spatial awareness! Blimmen romantic...
It's only an old camera, I tell myself, and proceed to walk on, thinking I know the way. Well, after an hour of wrong turns and literally 50 tuk-tuk offers I accept that yes, I am in fact bloody LOST and accept a ride, before getting lost AGAIN and getting a second ride right to the door of my chosen restaurant, 'Friends' which employs ex street kids and teaches them hospo skills etc. I take one look at the menu in my hunger and thirst and one word stands out to me - MARGARITA!!! It is a pineapple and chilli number, and freakin' delicious if truth be told. Along with my Asian mango and rice noodle salad tapas, I'm pretty much in food heaven. I miss my band terribly right now though, wishing they were here and knowing that they would LOVE this. I realise I may in fact be tiring of travelling on my lonesome... hhhmmm...
NGO GOODNESS
In the city-guide that I picked up for free in a travel agency in one of my lost moments, I read about another NGO-esque business called 'Daughters of Cambodia', which this time focusses on offering girls involved in sex-trafficking new vocational choices. One of them, a lovely shy girl, gives me a great foot massage and I venture up to the third floor of their plush gift shop to watch a documentary about the Sisters programme, ending up crying at the plight of young girls whose families sell them off to have sex with strangers so they can support them! I heard somewhere that about 50% of sex-workers here are also HIV positive and leave 'Daughters' vowing to educate myself more on the plight of women and support such projects. Knowing that lots of wealthy male tourists come to Phnom Penh to buy sex from these girls makes me boil inside... This city certainly has a lot of good things going on, as did Siem Reap - it's just that Siem Reap was so much gentler on the soul than this capital city is...
A FAILED NIGHT OUT
Sure, I've been into a pretty pure lifestyle recently, but I've heard about the night life in this town and wish to sample some for myself - WISH being the operative word. I eat alone in a pretty average restaurant, stumble upon a Cambodian batucada band playing for free in the street and walk for ages trying to find the Led Zeppelin bar which is described as a must for music lovers, as the bar-man supposedly spins some rare B-sides from a classic era. I walk, and walk, consulting my map in the dim streetlight and avoiding dusky corners, but it's no good. I can't find my way around in this rabbit warren of a town, so I admit defeat yet again, and get a motorbike ride back to the hostel. Bit of a mixed day really - time to sleep it off I think...
DESOLATION ROW - THE GENOCIDE MUSEUM
After a breakfast of Salak Ko Kau Sop soup - a classic vege dish of eggplant, snake beans, bitter melon, pumpkin, jackfruit, papaya, green banana and veges (sound weird? It was amazing! and may change my view of Khmer food - Siem Reap's selections were pretty average really, but one thing I can say for the capital is that its eateries are impressive) I brace myself for a visit to Tuol Sleng, the school-turned-prison-turned-genocide museum set up to acknowledge the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in 1975-9. I'm not looking forward to it at all, but go because I feel I should and that it'll help me understand just how dicked over this country has been.
It IS horrific. What shocks me the most is that this is a former high-school, which the Khmer Rouge outlawed (all people with glasses were executed because intellectual looking people were a bad thing, for crying out loud). The marks on the blackboards do not fit into this nightmarish place, and I notice some handwritten maths sums in pen on the wall above the bloodstains on the floor. This is as awful as Auschwitz, and maybe even more given that the crimes were so much more recent! And that the trials of the murderers are only now beginning to be brought into justice. One of the school/prison blocks has a floor of information about the perpetrators (besides "Brother Number One", Pol Pot, who died a few years back) and I am shocked to realise that each of the bastards has two or three lawyers defending them, at least one of these lawyers from the West! And I wonder who would ever stoop so low to defend such monsters.... I can't understand it...
In the grounds between the buildings is a tall metal pole that children used to exercise around before evil descended over the country. I read a plague and see photos of prisoners being tortured on this same pole and even have to avert my eyes from some of the photos as they are too terrible to behold. As well as the seas of faces of the victims and young soldier-puppets, and glass cases of bullet-holed skulls, it's pretty emotionally draining to say the least. They say that museums like this one are set up so we will never forget, but I wonder why similar things are going on in the world right now? Libya, Guantanamo, Iraq, Palestine-Israel... Was the annoyingly cynical London guy from my last guest house right in that he said conflict was an integral part of human nature and we'll always be fighting one another until the end of time? Will I ever believe this and turn cynical or hardened myself? Geez, I hope not... but this place shocks me as I see the pens the size of a small mattress that prisoners lay in before being tortured to death and watch videos of family members crying into the camera. I know that if I pass the pineapple-chilli margarita place on my way home that I'll be going in as this experience has been waaaaay too sobering.
RELIEF
Instead of this however, a foot massage will suffice and as I get pampered I read Lucretia Stewart's "Tiger Balm" about her experience of Indo-China in the 1990's. It's clear that tourism is good for this country - the numerous NGO's and yearly capital it brings in - and I'm glad I'm here to be a miniscule part of it. It's not been entirely pretty however...
As I write this I have a few hours left to wait until my bus journey to Vietnam. Cambodia has been both a delight and a torment. I do recommend it - Siem reap is one of the loveliest cities I've ever visited - and Phnom Penh could be fun I guess once you learnt to ignore the hustle and bustle and found a pack to kick around with. Right now though, I'm glad I'm going to meet up with some lovely friends - Luke and Emma - in Saigon and look forward to a whole week in their company...
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