Tara Romoff is an avid rambler and world explorer. She was born in England, lived in Portugal as a young child, and then moved to Toronto, Canada where she lived during her school years. After marrying her high-school sweetheart, she relocated to Chicago, USA and raised her two kids. She and her husband recently moved from Singapore to Atlanta.
We visited Phnom Penh, Cambodia, this past long weekend. It is an easy two or three day trip from our home in Singapore. We had gone to Siem Reap a few months ago, but this was a completely different experience.
Siem Reap was all about seeing the temples like the famous Angkor Wat and other ancient sites. You go to Phnom Penh for a much more somber reason; you come here to experience and learn about what happened when the Khmer Rouge, the radical Communist movement, took over the Cambodian government in 1975 and ordered all those living in the cities and towns to relocate to the country where they were forced to work in labor camps. All professionals, along with their extended families, were murdered.
Perhaps many of you have seen the movie The Killing Fields, starring Sam Waterston, who plays an American journalist, and Haing Ngor, his translator and friend, during the uprising and the genocide that followed. I even managed to rewatch it in our hotel room one night.
As we often do when touring a city in hot weather, we do a half day of touring, preferably in the morning, and spend the late afternoon at the pool. Our first morning was spent driving around the city on a motorized Tuk Tuk, stopping at various points of interest, including many temples, pagodas, monuments, and a local market.
Cambodians are very friendly and have some of the warmest smiles in South East Asia. Looking back, I realized there was no mention of that day of the Khmer Rouge or the atrocities they inflicted on their own people during their regime. This seemed so strange, but it was a testament to keep moving forward.
After our Tuk Tuk tour, we spent the rest of the day on foot, which I was happy to do as I love wandering the small streets, looking indoors, and seeing how locals go about their lives.
We stopped for a yummy lunch of a super fresh mango salad, cold spring rolls, a minced pork dish, and, of course, a couple of icy cold beers, all for under $10. We then stopped for a coffee at a street stand before heading back to the hotel for a swim. We were amazed at the number of coffee shops in the city, but considering the historical French influence on Phnom Penh, it was not that surprising. I should mention there is also an abundance of bakeries and French restaurants.
After another fantastic meal made with the freshest ingredients followed by drinks at a rooftop bar where there is always a happy hour no matter what time it is, we called it a night. Tomorrow would be heavy, and we felt we needed a good night's sleep.
We got up when the sun appeared through the cracks in the curtains, had a quick bite and a few cups of delicious Cambodian coffee, and then we set off. Our first stop was the Genocide Museum or Security Prison 21. What was once an old secondary school with a lovely central courtyard surrounded by fragrant, lush trees was taken over by the Khmer Rouge in 1975 and turned into a place of horror.
Our tickets came with an audio tour so you could visit at your own pace and, as suggested by the voice in my headphones, take a break whenever you needed. Benches were strategically placed for visitors to do just that.
The route through the museum took you through the interrogation rooms, which were converted old classrooms, the torture tree, and cells where 20,000 prisoners were held either individually or en mass in iron shackles over the course of four years.
We listened in detail to how the prisoners (men, women, and children of all ages) were treated. And when dead or near dead they were taken to nearby fields by trucks and dumped. The various rooms we could wander through were full of hundreds of old pictures of all who were imprisoned there.
Many photos showed prisoners after being beaten or weeks without food. The Khmer Rouge were fastidious in documenting everything, including taking pictures of all the inmates, interrogation notes, and confessions.
We left the prison drained and a bit numb but continued on to one of the many Killing Fields located near Phnom Penh. We visited the Choeung Ek Genocide Center, the location of a mass grave of over 8,800 bodies killed by the Khmer Rouge. The fields are a 40-minute Tuk Tuk ride out of the city. On the way, you couldn't help but think that we were on the same route the prisoners were taken.
We arrived at the centre which was still full of neatly lined trees as the place was once an orchard and Chinese burial ground. Paths led you around the grounds. What was immediately evident were the large mounds and depressions in the ground or the mass burial pits.
We read that loudspeakers played propaganda music to muffle the sounds of the dying that were dumped in them, and chemicals were used to disguise the smells of the decaying bodies as well as ensuring they were indeed dead.
Further on the path you come across a lovely old tree but you quickly learn it was actually used by the captors to swing children against to kill them them instead of shooting them as they didn't want to waste bullets. Children were killed so they didn't grow up and seek vengeance for their parent's death.
Today, the tree is covered in friendship bracelets as a gesture of solidarity in recognizing what the helpless victims went through. I noticed a baby bottle was also carefully placed up against the trunk, which if you looked hard enough, blood stains still covered the bark.
Spiked tree limbs were also used to slit adult prisoner's throats as that too eliminated them from crying out and making noise for nearby farmers to hear. At various points, you could still see remnants of clothing and bones poking through the earth if you looked closely enough.
The tour ended at a large Buddhist stupa (burial site) standing 200 feet tall with glass sides that contain over 5,000 human skulls of those who perished during the regime. It was daunting to stand there looking at the rows and rows of skulls, each one marked with a dot indicating how that person died.
It was even harder to fully comprehend how one set of people could have been persuaded that their neighbors and friends were the enemy and to so brutally massacre them and that it all occurred during our lifetime.
Despite the horrors we learned about, the leftover artifacts, and the harrowing stories we heard, we were very glad we had visited Phnom Penh. It's so important to learn from the past and hopefully prevent such atrocities from happening again.
The experience makes you feel very grateful for one's own situation and a greater appreciation and admiration for how the human spirit continues.
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The Throne Hall - main building of the Royal Palace built in 1863. Once used by the King to carry out his duties along with his generals, confidants and other officials. Today it’s just used for coronations and religious ceremonies.
Stupas - structures holding the bones and ashes of the deceased wealthy.
A Stupa that housing the remains of a well do person. The more elaborate the design the more influence and wealth the deceased family has.
Skulls of the deceased housed in the memorial stupa at Choeung Ek Killing Fields. Colored stickers on the skulls represented how each person was killed.
Prison S-21
S-21 Prison blocks ( no pictures were allowed inside).
Friendship bracelets in memory of all the children executed at Choeung Ek.
Inside the Chinese Buddhist Way Phnom Penh Temple.
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