Tuol Sleng and The Killing Fields

There is a restaurant in the tourist section of Phnom Penh along the river that screens nightly documentaries, one of which tells of the quick and brutal history of the Khmer Rouge. We had read that the show was a worthwhile primer for anyone planning on visiting Tuol Sleng and The Killing Fields. We detoured off into Cambodia from our Vietnam vacation specifically for this purpose, so we went. We sat outside in the hot night and waited for the start time by drinking beers (me) and a milkshake (Sami). White people of all shapes and sizes sat scrunched together in wicker chairs and played cards or read Lonely Planet guides as street solicitors peddled photocopied bestsellers and the latest travel trinkets made in China. One man with no limbs was wheeled an arms length away from we diners. He moaned an agonizing groan while his partner collected donations.

I had a decent buzz going and was delighted to find that beer was allowed inside the theater. I ordered another and we preceded around to the side of the building where we were led through a large, black painted wooden door and up a steep incline of stairs. Velvet curtains bordered the screen which flashed a multi-colored and bouncing Apex logo transmitted from the cheap DVD player on the floor. There were only a dozen or so soft and dirty chairs which soon were filled with people I never bothered to make eye contact with.

Inside the theater

View of the screen

The documentary dealt principally with the so called "King Father of Cambodia" Norodom Sihanouk. As Prime Minister, Sihanouk allowed the North Vietnamese to store military supplies in eastern Cambodia during the Vietnam War. In 1970 a pro-US government called the Khmer Republic overthrew Sihanouk. In the years that followed, Sihanouk supported the Khmer Rouge. Because many Cambodians still revered Sihanouk, they joined the Khmer Rouge. Most felt that they were supporting their leader and the country they loved rather than a change to Communism. When the Khmer Rouge overtook the Khmer Republic, they quickly stripped him of the notion that he would have any power in the new regime.

One aspect of the documentary that I will always remember is Sihanouk's hatred of the US and in particular President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He claims that the US's bombing of NVA supply bases in Cambodia led to anti-American sentiment which made it easy for Cambodians to align with the Khmer Rouge. What he fails to mention is that he permitted the NVA to use Cambodia as part of their war strategy.

Of course, it is never easy to remain neutral and Cambodia surely received funding from China and North Vietnam in exchange for use of land. If Sihanouk had sided with the US and South Vietnamese, there is no guarantee that the chain of events that followed would have been bloodless.

The events and ideas that brought the Khmer Rouge into power need to be remembered and studied. I am certainly no expert and still have a lot of research to do on the subject. The pain and suffering as a result of their brutality is much easier to comprehend. Our first taste of it came by visiting Tuol Sleng, a former high school turned torture prison.

Tuol Sleng looks like it hasn't been touched in 35 years. It sits inside a wall topped with barbed wire. There are three main three-story buildings, all a dirty cement yellow. We were not allowed to enter the building closest to the entrance, so we headed to the smaller far sided building. It contained larger rooms that were used as torture chambers. The Khmer Rouge executed all of the educated people in a quest to create the perfect agrarian socialist society. Anyone even rumored to be engaged in capitalistic practices was tortured and forced to give up names. Captors were eventually killed whether they gave names or not.

Tuol Sleng

Barbed wire over the entrace

The graves in the background honor the last prisoners to die at Tuol Sleng. Their bodies were found when the prison was finally uncovered.

Each torture room had one picture on the wall that showed the devices in practice.

The torture cells were left mostly bare save for a metal bed frame and ankle chain locked to one of the four posts. Pools of decades old rusted blood lay like terrible islands on the checkered floor. Each torture room also had a singular picture documenting the atrocities as the occurred.

Outside there was a piece of metal frame that the Khmer Rouge used as a gallows. The interrogators would bind the prisoners hands behind their backs and attach them to a rope that they would sling over the gallows and raise, tearing the shoulders and chest as they were stretched. They would do this until the prisoners lost consciousness after which they would dunk their heads in filthy water mixed with fertilizer to revive the prisoners for another round of torture.

Gallows

The ground floor of the main building held crudely designed prison cells made from slathered on grout and cinder blocks. Prisoners were chained by their ankles in these cells that were no bigger than a bathtub.

Maybe the most powerful feature of the prison turned museum is the mosaic of photographs that cover an entire floor of the main building. Prisoners had their pictures taken the first day they were brought in and the looks on their faces are haunting. Most had no idea that they were being taken to their deaths.

On the top floor there was information regarding the current status of former Khmer leaders. Most of them are awaiting a trial while others like Pol Pot are dead. There was also an interesting exhibit on former Khmer Rouge soldiers. It is important to remember that many of the soldiers who carried out these acts of genocide were just kids. Joining the Khmer Rouge was really their only option over forced labor and eventual death and all were separated from their parents as older people were seen as carrying the virus of capitalism.

The prisoners of Tuol Sleng were killed and buried in mass graves known colloquially as The Killing Fields. I was surprised at how close The Killing Fields are to the city of Phnom Penh. It was a beautiful mid-morning when we toured The Killing Fields.  Geese roamed the grassy areas and hundreds of yellow butterflies fluttered drunkily among the shallow hills that were once the scene of so much horror. The pleasant weather did little to detract from the remnants of sadness that lay about. There is a glass tower of bones in the center of the field. The bottom contains the piles of clothes confiscated after the site was found. The next few layers contains skulls, many with obvious mortal wounds. Then next contains leg bones then forearms and so forth up and up an up.

We learned terrible things about the methods used, how chemicals were dumped over the bodies in the pits to mask the odor of death and finish off any of the half-living. There was also a tree used for the sole purpose of killing babies. When the hard monsoon rains come and dump over the pits, bits of bone become resurfaced. As we were walking back we easily spotted a tooth lying all too naturally in the grass.

Teeth and parts of bones can still be found in The Killing Fields

 While I was at The Killing Fields I couldn't bring myself to imagine the piles of bodies heaped and mangled, sprawled and buried in a human landfill. How can it be that something so terrible can happen in my parents' lifetimes and then again in mine in Rwanda and during the Bosnian War? How does a human life mean so little?

Just a few of the former mass graves at The Killing Fields

Phnom Penh- Part One

We took an early morning bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh on the third day of our vacation. Sami had taught a genocide lesson in her World Studies class, and I have always been intrigued by the horrific brutality of the Khmer Rouge since seeing the movie The Killing Fields. Our plan was to visit the mass graves known colloquially as The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng, a former high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison.

We had visited Siem Reap a year ago, but didn't have time to make it to the capital city of Cambodia. Siem Reap was and remains a very special place for Sami and me. We will never forget the thrill and amazement of our first tuk-tuk ride from the airport. The warm night air was silent and black. Such a welcome contrast to the cold, neon frenzy of Seoul. I remember being passed by barely humming motorscooters ridden by barefoot teenagers. Skinny dogs sniffed the dirt roads lined with open air gas stations or, to be more specific, short racks of Johnny Walker bottles filled with petrol.

It was only a short walk from our hotel to the bus terminal, but early morning is the busiest time in Ho Chi Minh City, as locals scramble over the best fish and produce sold at narrow sidewalk markets and food stalls. We banged through the crowd clumsily hauling our luggage.

Shortly after finding our seats, the bus began to fill with a decidedly international crowd. I would say that half of the people on the bus were either Vietnamese or Cambodian, but there were a few Frenchman and a clique of young Indian men who smelled strongly of curry. I really don't mean to stereotype and this could have been an isolated incident, but it is my opinion that people tend like what they eat. My first week of teaching in Korea I began to notice that the kids' farts smell like kimchi. My skin smells like garlic if I eat too much of it and my natural armpit odor is enchilada.

On the road again

We were seated toward the back of the bus and I slept most of the way so I did not get a great view of the scenery. I will say that in the US we drive on the right side of the road and in the UK they drive on the left, but it Vietnam they just drive. I am certain that there were dozens of near accidents and close calls. What must be the country's main highway to Cambodia was only two lanes and scooters, buses and cars veered in and out of both at full speed.

At one point, one of the chaperones collected all of the passports and, for a five dollar fee, arranged everything for us at customs on the border. If you didn't want to pay the five dollars you could try and do it all yourself, but it would take longer and you would have to find a way to rejoin the group where they lunched. The group of Indian men chose not to pay, and came running and panting onto the bus just as we prepared to leave after lunch.

Lunch was not overly memorable, but I do remember ordering a beer and asking for a mug filled with ice. This is how I see all of the locals doing it, but for some reason they never offer it to the foreigners. I think maybe they figure we are scared of the ice. Sami certainly is and found my request downright irresponsible.

As the students in Korea say: "Runch-ey"

About halfway into the trip our bus was ferried across a body of water. I am not sure of the name or even if it is a river or lake, so I will have to do some research and revise later. I didn't get a great view of the scenery as we were being ferried across because there were vehicles to our immediate left and another aisle of occupied seats blocking our view to the right.

Upon arriving in Phmom Penh, we were struck by much bigger and busier it is than Siem Reap. The tuk-tuk ride to the hotel didn't have any of the magic of our initial late night carriage due to the traffic and the noise, but the driver was nice, even if he did try to take us to a different hotel- one operated by a family member.

I won't mention the name of our hotel, but it was located in the main tourist area on the river. It seems like a popular ex-pat hangout and is probably known more as a bar than a hotel. Our room upstairs was clean and had a huge bed and flat screen television. Probably the only such tv we have ever seen throughout our cost conscious travels. There were at least a dozen young, attractive Cambodian women (girls?) that worked at the bar/restaurant. It kind of creeped us out how many of the fat old white guys would flirt with the employees, and I wondered just how the owner could afford to pay them all.

Anyway, we ordered some food and then quickly walked to the National Museum before it closed. We soon found out that if we were going to walk places, we would have to pass through the gauntlet of tuk-tuk drivers starving for business. However, we were determined to save money and get some exercise.

The national museum featured many of the same stone relics featured in the Angkor Museum in Siem Reap. The best part about it is the building itself and the courtyard within its walls is a great place to sit and take in the quiet.

Courtyard of the National Museum in Phnom Penh

An Authentic Experience

I wanted to walk the streets of Saigon like Anthony Bourdain or the fat, bald guy who salivates over fermented deer penis and grubs. I daydreamed of confidently strolling into the dirtiest back alley noodle stall and ordering the city's best pho in perfect Vietnamese. The locals would gape in awe at my expert chopstick usage and clamber over each other for the privilege of purchasing my first beer.

Of course, our Travel Channel heroes are undoubtedly chaperoned by bi-lingual experts in their city's culture and cuisine, and I soon found out that it is not so easy to eat like the locals. At least not without making a fool out of myself.

The first handicap in my quest for authenticity was my dear wife, who would just as rather lick the floor of a rest stop men's room than order anything from a food stall. I am convinced that she has created an equation for the perfect dining experience wherein points are awarded for a restaurant's cleanliness, brightness, size (the bigger the better) menu posted outside in English (prices included), and above all, the presence of other tourists.

We settled into a routine of eating at an establishment of her choosing, but I strategically ordered light fare, and left plenty of room to dash off to a back alley food stall afterward. In all honesty, all of the food we ate in Saigon was incredible, and some of the most memorable were from Sami's restaurant choices. Including these two:

Chicken wings with fish sauce. Wings just like I like 'em- crispy. I was worried that they would be too salty, but no way. Just perfect.

Crepe filled with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts served with a sweet dipping sauce. I believe this is called a Bahn xeo, but I call it a B-O-M-B xeo.

Still, despite all of the stellar restaurant food, I was dead set on getting my authentic fix. Right from the start, I had noticed many Vietnamese eating what appeared to be a sort of salad out of a plastic bag. I saw many women sitting on the sidewalk selling some variation on the same thing. I approached one random salad selling squatter and grunted out my order. She seemed dead set on not giving me the salad I craved, but quail eggs instead. This incensed me. I thought for sure that she was just trying to pawn off the more expensive order on the white tourists. I made my intentions clear with another grunt. No one else was eating the quail eggs, why should I? When it finally dawned on the vendor that I could not be deterred, she gave a giddy giggle. And her competitors nearby gave the same giggle and the look of a shared inside joke. The salad was of a crunchy vegetable similar daikon shavings. It was delicious, but mainly because of the squirt of vinegar chili sauce, which she was also reluctant to give.

The approach

Victory! (Although I must say I was displeased by the apparent necessity of the plastic bag that I just know will one day end up stuck in an endangered whale's blowhole.)

I had a similar experience to this on our first night in Saigon. Every local I saw walking around seemed to be carrying and munching from a plastic bag lightly filled with multiple, thumb-sized, salmon-colored squares. I placed an order by pointing and received the customary chuckles. She filled a fruit roll-up like rice paper with chopped quail eggs, bacon, onion sprig and a squirt of honey-mustard type sauce before rolling it and cutting it into pieces. It was so good that it haunted me for a full day after and I knew I must re-visit. However, the second time I went a young Vietnamese man nearby seemed completely overjoyed and intrigued by my purchase and would not leave us alone. He kept asking me if I liked it and tried to get Sami to take a piece. Being as the dirty street and plastic bag met none of the criteria in her restaurant equation, she politely declined. The man followed us all the way to the crosswalk, and passersby looked on equally intrigued- by me or our new friend's passionate admiration, I could not tell. It wasn't until we began crossing the road that I understood. It was then that an ex-pat holding hands with a giggling Vietnamese woman turned to me and said, "By eating that you are going to grow large breasts."


Oh. Yes, it's true. Eating like the locals isn't as easy as it is on Bizarre Foods. But, if I can't eat like Andrew Zimmern in Saigon, at least I can grow matching man boobs.

This is delicious street food and may or may not enlarge your bust.

Cu Chi Tunnels

In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain relates a story of a young traveler's enthusiastic exercise in journal keeping. The kid involved is certain that a well-kept travel log is worth a million dollars. For the first few days, he carefully reports longitudinal climate updates along with intricate re-countings of goings on both aboard the ship and on shore. Of course, by the time the boy reaches Paris he finds the notebook a complete nuisance and can think of no worse punishment than forced travel reporting.

I am currently laboring through the great American author's 500 page account of his voyage through Europe and the Holy Lands. If Mr. Twain included the above anectode as a barely veiled commentary on the tedious process of completing The Innocents Abroad, it certainly shows in the writing. It is boring as hell. And it is funny because out of all of Twain's classics, Innocents was the best seller during his lifetime. I guess back then folks didn't have much in the way of travel blogs and the 'pickens was slim.

Like Twain, I set out to document every aspect of our voyage, noteworthy or not. Unlike Twain, I lacked the discipline and am now forced to go back weeks in my mind, recount past happenings to the best of my ability, and try not to teeter too far into the realm of fiction (or facial hair).

Luckily, in this great digital age of ours, I have the ability to scroll through the hundreds of pictures recently saved on our laptop. Surely a few will jog my memory. Like this one for example...

Yes, it is just yet another picture of me, but look closely and you will see the beginnings of an Ethan Hawke inspired mustache and chin whisker growth. I wished to look like some made up "Communisto" during my time in communist Vietnam. I even bought a green NVA army hat and a tin of cigarillos to complete my look. The idea failed miserably, or maybe it didn't and I just wasn't prepared for the results. First off, a mustache will never work for me because I have 1) A weak chin and 2) Very little space between the bottom of my nose and the top of my upper lip. Just think about the great mustaches of the world. Tom Selleck comes to mind right?

See there? His face is made for a mustache. Strong chin, easy thumb distance between nose and lip...it's only natural. Now let's try without...

Good lord, he looks like a camel. Hey, come to think of it, old Sam Clemens sported one of the most famous 'staches in American history. Observe:

Look at that old white bushy bastard. Just goes great with the Bea Arthur permanent. You know, growing a mustache like that takes discipline. It gets dirty. It tickles. It makes you look like a perv at first. You just have to persevere. I couldn't do it. Barely lasted a week. But in writing, we press on...

We took a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels on our third day in Ho Chi Minh City via jet boat north up the Saigon River. Click on the link in the last sentence if you are interested in learning about the history of the tunnels. It is quite interesting, but I won't bore with the details other than to say they were a network of tunnels used by the locals in guerrilla fighting- just one more reason why Vietnam was such an impossible place to fight.

You could tell that our tour guide had been around for awhile. Although he was only in charge of an Australian family of five along with Sami and myself, he took the reigns in the video room and explained the layout of the land to anyone who would listen. He was a funny guy, always looking for an extra second to take a puff of his cigarette. He said that he fought for the South Vietnamese Army during the war and mentioned on numerous occasions that he had family in the US. It was difficult to understand him at times, and at one point he said something secretive to us along the lines of "I am not supposed to tell you this because we are communist and I could get in trouble, but..." I wish I would have been paying better attention.

A few things stuck out on the tour. First, there were giant craters left in the cleared forests, the results of US bombing.

Bomb Crater

Second, there were all kinds of hiding areas and they were always very small and narrow. To get down into one you had to hold the cover straight over your head as you lowered yourself.

Third, there were a number of vicious looking traps designed to batter, impale and trap intruders.

Fall into the rolling trap and you are gonna get cut.

The actual tunnels themselves were an extremely narrow and intricate network. I had to either crawl down on my hands and knees or duck walk the entire time.

The tunnels spider off into a number of exits but I wanted to make it all the way through so I stuck to the main passage. I eventually ran into a group of Korean tourists. Go figure.

Here is the Korean tourist I got stuck behind

Later on we ate tapioca which grows in the woods. There is also a popular firing range there where for about ten bucks, you can fire off 10 rounds of an AK-47 or an M-60. We passed on the guns but said yes to the tapioca. It's not that I am against shooting automatic weapons, it's just that my wife is against spending ten dollars.

Tapioca

We got back to Saigon early enough to check out the market, and after taking a couple of laps, I settled into a stall and ordered a delicious bowl of crab soup. If only I had a thick mustache to help me savor the flavor, I might have been more eager to describe it in this blog entry. As it turns out, I only have the picture to look back on. And I probably would have put it off for a month anyway.

This was some awesome crab soup