Saturday 28th January 2012 The School of Hard Knocks

I get up at 9.30am and wonder what I’m going to do for breakfast. I decide that, rather than waste too much city tour time in restaurants, I’ll get something at the little cafe on the ground floor of the apartment complex. I am surprised to find that they do cooked items such as scrambled eggs and so on, and choose a half-decent but not too huge portion of toasted crumpet with fried egg and ham. A pretty good cappuccino comes with it.

After eating I go and pack my backpack with camera, maps, insect spray and all the other things I may need on my tour. I nearly forget my hat, which would not be wise on such a sunny, warm day. I put it on before I leave the apartment, taking a look at myself in the mirror. I look every inch the American tourist, with checked shorts, polo shirt and baseball cap. The camera I’ll have slung round my neck later will complete
the ensemble. What the hell. No-one knows me in this town, so I care not.

Panith is prompt again, which is good to see. He is obviously keen to keep me as a customer. He insists on helping me aboard his tuk-tuk and then we are off. The first place he takes me is the Central Market area, which today is bustling and alive with noise and colour. The market building is a large domed structure with four long spokes sticking out at 90 degree intervals. From above it would look like a wheel without the rim, I suppose. It has a white roof and yellow walls. Lining the spokes are market stalls galore. I spy a row of stalls all selling the brightest-coloured flowers I’ve seen for a long time. In a few moments we are shooting off down a side-street away from the bustle of the market area.

Panith tells me we’re heading for the National Museum now. It is a huge, red structure, with steep, sloping roofs that seem to telescope from each other. There are ornate details all over the roof, jutting skywards in little twists and twirls. Panith tells me I should go and have a look around. It will only cost a few dollars, he tells me. So I enter at the corner gate, buy a ticket and start wandering around the gardens looking for a way in. The lush gardens are full of statues of Buddhist and Hindu figures, and oriental-style lions with their permanently surprised look guard the stairs up to the building.   I see what I think is the entrance, where other people seem to be going in at least, and so follow the flock up the large steps. A stern sign forbids visitors from taking photographs or touching the exhibits.

Most of the exhibits seem to focus on the religious history of the region. As in the gardens, Hinduism and Buddhism feature heavily. There are literally hundreds of statues of various gods such as the many-armed Vishnu, the elephant-headed Ganagesh and of course, the lotus-positioned Buddha. The Cambodian version, like the Thai one, is a slim fellow, with a pointy round head-dress. Other exhibits include weaponry and royal costumes, and there is what seems to be a huge ornate wagon in one area. That would have taken some horsepower to pull, alright.

My favourite area is the courtyard garden in the middle. There are lily ponds full of carp and goldfish, and in the middle of the area there is a covered podium with a stone statue inside. Two orange-robed Buddhist monks are stood next to it talking to some backpacker and assent to having their photo taken by him. I sneak a picture of them myself as they pose. Back inside I am offered a jasmine flower to offer to one of the statues. It seems I should offer some money as well, so leave a dollar note on the plate next to the flower receptacle. I wonder who actually gets the money...

On my way out of the museum I spot a large lizard basking on a tree branch. He sits there quite contentedly as I take his picture and doesn’t ask for any money. As I leave the grounds I buy myself a bottle of water. It is nearing noon and the temperature is on the way up.

Panith greets me back at the tuk-tuk and asks me where I want to go next. He has something in mind, but isn’t sure if it’s something I am interested in. It’s the Genocide Museum at Tuol Sleng, otherwise known as S-21. I consider his proposition for a moment, and decide it would be worth going to see it. I know for a fact that it is going to be upsetting and grim, but if I want to learn anything about this country and its people, I should learn the bad as well as the good bits of their history. I know very little about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, other than they were a bunch of uber-Communists who killed a lot of people in the 1970s. I agree to go, and we set off.

What strikes me first is how it is in such a normal setting. It’s down a side street, not far from the main road. In fact, before it was an interrogation centre and then museum, it was a school. When the Communists decided to empty the cities and force everyone out to work the land, they also wanted a place to use as a “correctional” facility. They picked this school, for God knows what reason, and the sounds of children playing would soon be replace by the sounds of people screaming as they were tortured for their beliefs, their convictions, or even just their education level. After being questioned and tortured, most were sent to the Killing Fields to meet their fate. Estimates vary, but they say nearly 20,000 people passed through this particular facility on their way to the Killing Fields. Only 17 people survived this place.

Panith drops me at the gate, and again I am accosted by some poor soul as I walk in. This time it is an amputee, who hobbles over on his crutch and waves his arm stump at me. I keep walking through the gate and towards the ticket hut, feeling dreadfully guilty as I do. I happily pay some money for a ticket, and hope that they use the money for the many, many causes that are apparent in this country. I am handed a very plain, black and white leaflet which explains the history of the place, then I proceed to walk around the suggested route.

There are white blossoming trees here in the courtyard, a splash of natural beauty amongst the grimy whiteness of the buildings on each side. The buildings are flat-roofed, rectangular structures, each three storeys high. At the front of them all there are an open corridor / balcony, with doors leading into the rooms behind. I dread to think what is in these rooms. At first I keep my camera away in its case. I don’t feel right snapping away at these exhibits.

I step into the first building. The walls are dirty and grey. The floors are tiled covered in a chequer pattern of white and mustard-yellow tiles. The doors are wooden screen doors painted in light blue. I take my first look inside a room. It is empty other than a black metal-framed bed with no mattress. Chained to the bed is what looks like a metal ammunition box. On the far wall there is a grainy picture of what they found here when the KR were overthrown. The emaciated body of a man - I’m not sure if he’s dead or alive - lies on this very floor, chained to the bed. I already feel queasy. As I walk along the corridor, every room has the same thing – the bed frame and the photo of the victim. These were the interrogation rooms, where the prisoner would be tortured to extract confessions – true or false, it mattered not. Between two doors I see an absurd sign – a cartoon drawing of a man smiling or laughing within a red circle and big red cross over it. No smiling is what the message is. You’d have to be quite sick to want to smile here, I think to myself.

On a white board outside this first block are the ten regulations, which include rules like, “Don’t contest me”, “Answer all questions” and “Do not cry when receiving lashes or electrocution”.  Round the next side of the courtyard they have a large wooden frame that looks like a set of gallows. When it was a school, the frame had climbing ropes attached. When it was S-21, it was another torture device, where they hung people from upside down until they passed out and then dunked them in filthy water to wake them up and continue the questioning.

The next building contained a variety of crudely-built cells. The first section had blockwork cells of no more than about six by four feet, and then there were wooden cells of similar dimensions. I take a few pictures now, just for the sake of recording these things and to show people at home.

In other rooms there were information boards telling the story of this awful place and detailed biographies of some of the leaders of the regime. Of course, many of them were highly-educated (including Pot himself), whilst they professed to despise the educated classes. Some of them are still being tried in court for crimes against humanity. It is quite astonishing to think that these atrocities only happened 30-odd years ago.

The worst building is the last one. This has barbed wire criss-crossing over the open balconies, apparently to prevent prisoners from throwing themselves off the higher balconies and committing suicide. Inside this building the rooms are full of hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of some of the people who were brought here. As I walk through, the pictures become more grisly, and some artwork is now introduced depicting the torture scenes that happened here. Information boards tell some of the stories of people who fell afoul of the KR for the most innocuous of reasons. Finally, the last room has paintings that depict the scenes of killing that occurred in the village just outside Phnom Penh, which will forever be known as the Killing Fields. Babies are being torn from their mothers grasp and smashed against trees or thrown in the air and bayoneted. Chained-together lines of near-naked people are lined up and slaughtered with large pieces of wood before falling directly into mass graves. In glass cabinets around the room there are bones and skulls, the skulls showing signs of blunt trauma. My camera has long been put away again. I don’t want to record this: it is burned into my mind as it is.

I leave the last building feeling utterly drained and sick to my stomach. The birdsong and sunshine outside just don’t feel appropriate. There is nothing like seeing the evidence of human depravity to crush the spirit. It is so, so depressing. On my way out I pass a couple of stalls. I recoil at the thought that they might have macabre fridge magnets or snow globes with dunking frames inside or something, but they are only selling books and DVDs about the Khmer Rouge and S-21. There is also a refreshment stall where I buy a large bottle of water. It is baking hot outside now.

I am glad to get out of there and into the tuk-tuk. Panith asks me what I thought and I just grimace and shake my head, saying it is unbelievably sad.  We drive around for a good while, and I am glad to feel the cool breeze in my face as we go. I sit quietly and think about what I’ve just seen. Panith then suggests it would be a good time to eat. I am not particularly hungry at that moment, but he tells me the other attraction he wants to take me to is closed until 2pm, so I agree to let him take me to a restaurant.

He takes me to the Riverside area, but this time to a restaurant he himself recommends, called Khmer Saravan. They make local dishes, and he promises that I will be impressed. The change of atmosphere is a welcome one and my appetite reappears when I see and smell the food on offer. I take a table outside on the pavement, ordering some coconut-fried prawns and a Khmer red curry with rice. I ask for a draft Angkor beer to wash it down with.

As I wait for the food to come, I am approached by a couple of young girls selling DVDs and books from little red baskets. One of the girls really has the sales patter off to a Tee. I look at a couple of items but I only have enough dollars in my wallet for the day’s touring and food, so politely decline. She continues to try and make the sale, knocking the price down  a few times, but she eventually gets bored of me ignoring her and goes off to try her luck elsewhere.

The food comes and I am not disappointed. All very fresh and tasty. The beer is cold and refreshing and goes down a treat. What is even better is the price when I get my bill. It comes to 10 bucks for two courses and two beers. I could get used to this.

After lunch I cross the street to the river side of the Riverside and take a few pictures of the various boats coming and going, and then I turn round to find Panith waiting for me once again. This guy is good. It’s tuk-tuk time again and we head towards the Royal Palace. We get there about twenty minutes too early, but there are already people lining up to get in when the gates open. There are a few coaches parked along the road bringing parties of tourists from here, there and probably Shanghai. So, we drive around the block, along the wider boulevards of central Phnom Penh, and I notice the wide open public spaces here; parks and plazas with golden statues and pagodas dotted around at various junctions.

With sufficient time wasted we pull up outside the Palace, just along from the gate. I notice little guard huts with sharp-uniformed, gun-wielding soldiers stood inside. One of them looks to be sleeping whilst standing up, which is an impressive feat. Towards the gate I notice more street sellers offering bottles of water to the waiting people. There are also a couple of beggars, one in a wheelchair. They obviously know when and where to go. The queue for the gate isn’t terribly long, and starts to move within a couple of minutes.

Once inside the high walls we double back along the other side towards ticket booths. More money to be outlaid, it seems. It was only about six dollars this time. Similar attractions in the West would probably cost three times as much to get into. I’m asked if I want a tour guide to escort me around, but I decline. I prefer to read information boards, or even just make up my own stories for places like this. Rolf Harris invented the elephant saddle, don’t you know?

The buildings are impressive, of course, all towering edifices with aesthetically-pleasing detail in the eaves and up the columns. There are multiple-headed serpents writhing down banisters and lions on every other pedestal once again. There is gold everywhere. We are allowed inside some of the buildings, including what I think is a main reception hall with a big throne at the end. We have to take shoes and hats off to enter and photography is banned. I think about sneakily taking some shots with my mobile, but I just know the electronic shutter noise would be really loud and attract the attention of an official.

The Silver Pagoda is impressive, and full of Buddhas and other iconic statues. Some people bow before the centrally-placed main statue. There are collection plates and contribution boxes, but these people aren’t getting my money. Presumably the King of Cambodia is quite well off and doesn’t need my charity. Certainly not as much as many of the people on the other side of those high walls, I’m guessing. I feel no guilt about keeping my hands in my pockets on this particular occasion.

After I leave the Silver Pagoda I walk down towards a large courtyard between two stone towers. As I descend the stairs a small grey shape about the size of a dog scampers across in front of me. It is a monkey, and it isn’t the other side of bars or a car windscreen.  I am momentarily alarmed and watch where it is going. It sits on the marble stairs, completely oblivious to my presence, so I walk slowly past it, giving it as wide a berth as I possibly can. When I reach the ground I take a quick snap with my camera. Thank goodness for the good zoom on my camera. I don’t have to get too close.

I wander around the courtyard between dozens of statues and large potted plants. I keep my eyes peeled for more simian company, and spy a small group (including a baby) near the edge of the courtyard. I hurry along, looking for the exit from this area. I have to say, this is my least favourite place of the day. There is barely any information, just displays of the obscene wealth owned by one fortuitously-born person.

As I get to the last few exhibits (silver elephants in glass cabinets), I realise I’m alone. The other tourists have lagged behind me, presumably still gawping at the trinkets on display. Either that or they monkeys have taken them. Come with us. We have bananas. I find the exit and notice that there’s a convenient little kiosk selling ice creams and the like, so take the opportunity to cool down and buy a Cambodian Cornetto to eat as I leave the Palace. Half of it ends up on my t-shirt. I’m no better than the bloody monkeys.

I walk back along the road outside the palace, past the crowds of even more Chinese tourists gathering outside the entrance. I look around and can’t see Panith. Where is Mr. Reliable? He appears a moment later from the opposite way I was looking and explains that he couldn’t park outside the Palace, so had to drive round and round until he spotted me.

By now, I’ve had enough of sight-seeing, and am actually quite tired (poor me). I ask to be returned to my apartment so I can have a shower and relax for a bit. When we get back I give Panith his agreed fee of 20 dollars – a snip, if you ask me – and he leaves me to it. After cleaning up and chilling out for an hour or two I realise that I am probably going to be heading out once more. I have no food in my cupboards, and need to eat. I also want to be back to talk to my wife and kids on skype.

So I end up calling Panith again and he takes me back to the Riverside. I eat some food, drink some beer, come home and collapse into bed. It's been a day and a half. Goodnight.