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 back to the US.
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 visited Siem Reap a few months ago, but this was a completely different experience.
Siem Reap was all about seeing the temples, including the famous Angkor Wat and other ancient sites. You go to Phnom Penh for a much more somber reason: to experience and learn about what happened when the Khmer Rouge, the radical Communist movement, took over the Cambodian government in 1975 and ordered everyone living in the cities and towns to relocate to the countryside, where they were forced to work in labour camps. Professionals, along with their extended families, were murdered.
Perhaps many of you have seen the movie The Killing Fields, starring Sam Waterston as an American journalist and Haing Ngor as his translator and friend during the uprising and the genocide that followed. I even managed to rewatch it in our hotel room one evening.
As we often do when touring a city in hot weather, we spend half a day sightseeing, preferably in the morning, and the late afternoon at the pool. Our first morning was spent driving around the city in a motorized tuk-tuk, stopping at various points of interest, including temples, pagodas, monuments, and a local market.
Cambodians are incredibly friendly and have some of the warmest smiles in Southeast Asia. Looking back, I realized there was no mention of the Khmer Rouge or the atrocities they inflicted on their own people during their regime. This seemed so strange, but perhaps it was a testament to the country's determination 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, peeking into shops, and watching locals go about their daily lives.
We stopped for a delicious lunch of 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 grabbed a coffee from 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 wasn't all that surprising. I should also mention the abundance of bakeries and French restaurants.
After another fantastic meal made with the freshest ingredients, followed by drinks at a rooftop bar where there always seemed to be a happy hour, no matter what time it was, we called it a night. Tomorrow would be heavy, and we felt we needed a good night's sleep.
We got up as the sun peeked through the cracks in the curtains, had a quick bite and a few cups of delicious Cambodian coffee, and then set off. Our first stop was the Genocide Museum, formerly known as Security Prison 21. What had once been a secondary school with a lovely central courtyard surrounded by fragrant, lush trees was taken over by the Khmer Rouge in 1975 and transformed into a place of unimaginable horror.
Our tickets included an audio tour, allowing us to move through the museum at our own pace and, as the narrator suggested, take a break whenever we needed one. Benches were strategically placed throughout for visitors to do just that.
The route through the museum took us through the interrogation rooms, which had once been classrooms, past the torture tree, and into the cells where more than 20,000 prisoners were held, either individually or en masse in iron shackles, over the course of four years.
We listened as the audio tour described in detail how the prisoners—men, women, and children of all ages—were treated. When they were dead, or close to it, they were loaded onto trucks, taken to nearby fields, and dumped into mass graves. The rooms we wandered through were filled with hundreds of photographs of those imprisoned there.
Many of the photos showed prisoners after beatings or weeks without food. The Khmer Rouge were fastidious in documenting everything, including photographing every inmate, recording interrogation notes, and collecting written confessions.
We left the prison drained and numb, but continued on to one of the many Killing Fields near Phnom Penh. We visited the Choeung Ek Genocide Center, the site of a mass grave containing more than 8,800 victims of the Khmer Rouge. The fields are about a 40-minute tuk-tuk ride outside the city. On the way, we couldn't help but think we were travelling the same route the prisoners had taken.
We arrived at the centre, which was still filled with neatly lined trees, as it had once been an orchard and a Chinese burial ground. Paths wound their way around the grounds. What was immediately evident were the large mounds and depressions in the earth—the mass burial pits.
We learned that loudspeakers blasted propaganda music to muffle the sounds of those who were dying, while chemicals were used to disguise the smell of the decaying bodies and ensure that those who had been dumped into the pits were, in fact, dead.
Further along the path, you come across what appears to be a beautiful old tree. You quickly learn that it was used by the captors to kill children by swinging them against the trunk rather than shooting them, as they did not want to waste bullets. The children were murdered so they would not grow up and seek vengeance for their parents' deaths.
Today, the tree is covered in friendship bracelets left as gestures of remembrance and solidarity with the helpless victims. I also noticed a baby bottle carefully placed against the trunk, which, if you looked closely enough, still bore bloodstains in the bark.
Spiked tree branches were also used to slit adult prisoners' throats, eliminating the need for gunfire and reducing the chance that nearby farmers would hear the killings. In several places, you could still see fragments of clothing and even bones emerging from the earth.
The tour ended at a large Buddhist stupa standing 200 feet tall. Behind its glass walls rest more than 5,000 human skulls belonging to victims of the regime. It was daunting to stand there looking at the rows upon rows of skulls, each one marked with a coloured dot indicating how that person had died.
It was even harder to comprehend how one group of people could be persuaded that their neighbours and friends were the enemy and then brutally massacre them—and that all of this happened within our lifetime.
Despite the horrors we learned about, the artifacts we saw, and the harrowing stories we heard, we were very glad we had visited Phnom Penh. It is so important to learn from the past and, hopefully, prevent such atrocities from happening again.
The experience leaves you feeling deeply grateful for your own circumstances and with an even greater appreciation for the resilience of the human spirit.
The Throne Hall - the 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 houses the remains of a well-to-do person. The more elaborate the design, the more influence and wealth the deceased family has.
Skulls of the deceased are 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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