The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

I guess I had better start with posting a “graphic content may upset you” warning to this latest posting. I suppose I could only tell you half of what we saw, or just the good bits. The purpose of this adventure is to dig deeper into what the world has to offer. Like picking accomodation, it is not always going to be smelling of roses. I can be accused of being slightly lacking in empathy, and I promise I am working on that and a heck of a lot better than I used to be. However, I would challenge the strongest willed man (or woman) in the world to visit Phnom Pehn’s prison and the Killing Fields museums and not be swept away in utter disbelief. I wept a few silient tears today and I simply couldn’t help it. Kristi’s expression below was felt by us all.

The Good

Let’s start with the good bits of Phnom Penh as I can feel the emotions coming back just writing the first paragraph so unlike Clint Eastwood in that famous Western movie, we will start with the good.

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Cambodia’s capital city was a real surprise, and in a good way. The recovery over the last 40 years was evident and the Chinese investment into high rise condos, malls, hotels etc was everywhere. Yes it is still a developing country, yes there is poverty, yes there are the “love you long time” girls hanging around a certain set of bars, but poverty and sexuality was not in our faces at all and we were staying smack bang in the middle of it all.

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What greeted us was familiarity, the kind you get when you want a warm fuzzy feeling and not want to feel away from friends and loved ones at Christmas. Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, Dairy Queen and a wonderful 4D cinema complex. Not to mention a currency that is wrapped around the good old green back which gave me a $2 note in change for a keepsake.

We downloaded, the “pass” app, Cambodia’s answer to Uber and I have to say it was first class. Within two minutes, sometimes seconds a tuk tuk would be wizzing up to take us wherever we wanted to go for a small fee, usally $1-$2. With ultra cheap data ($10 for 12GB) and free wifi absolutely everywhere it made me feel ripped off in New Zealand or America for things we take for granted nowadays. We enjoyed exploring the surroundings, our apartment was right on the river walk, right in the middle of “life”. If we wanted to venture further a field a two buck tuk tuk ride took you anywhere you wanted to go.

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Mommy needed a bit of well earned downtime during the boys nap so Lara and I vetured out to see Mortal Engines in 4D, for $12. We had a great time and I have to say the movie, as far fetched as it was, was really quite good. Or it had to be that the 4D bit meant your seats moved and you felt the wind and rain in your hair and the floating sensations when the film was in the air.

The river walk was great, always something happening and we soon found good, cheap places to eat, 50 cent beers, $2 cocktails and $5 currys. We enjoyed visiting Daughters Of Cambodia, an organisation helping women out of sex trafficking in the city. They had a great cafe, a small shop full of goods made by the women and upstairs, a women only spa. The money spent went right back into the cause and therefore was right up our street.

Night markets galore and promenade gyms made the inner city experience actually quite pleasant and as I said, well ahead of any expectation. The roads are lined with statues and gardens all brightly lit up at night and we felt very safe.

We even managed to visit Elim Phnom Penh, a sister of our church in Pukekohe. They performed a Christmas service in both Cambodian and English with the kids performing a small nativity play. It was lovely and thanks to them for making us so welcome.

The Bad & The Ugly

Now the bit where it has to be said, for our own recording if nothing else, so if you don’t want to keep reading, stop here.

Phnom Penh is all about 40 or so years ago. We warmed into this dreadful time by first watching “First They Killed my Father” Directed by Angelina Jolie, who as Lara Croft, filmed in Cambodia learnt so much of the tragdy she felt it was necessary to tell it to the world in the making of this movie.

First of all, it was 40 years ago, not 140, or 440, just 40. In my lifetime and many of you reading this would also fall into this catagory. It is almost in Kristi’s and for a population so wounded by the unforgivable action of one Pol Pot it has healed remarkably well.

Now I cannot remember everything our English speaking, guide and survivor of the massacre told me, because as she told us one horrific fact after another I was trying to process it in my mind so I missed the next one and so on and so on.

One Pol Pot was a political leader whose communist Khmer Rouge government led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. We were told that the day he was voted into power the population of Cambodia celebrated in the streets. Litrally three hours after he took power he was ordering the execution of his own people, which over the course of the next almost four years saw an estimated 1.5 to 2 million civilians being slaughtered and starved to death in such inhumane ways. There was no protection for the young, the gender or the profession. If you wore glasses you were considered to be intelligent and therefore a threat to the government. Watches were banned, radio, TV and contact with the outside world stopped.

My question here is how the heck did the rest of the world not see this until the uncovering of a mass grave in 1980?

The government even had a seat in the United Nations while this was happening. You have got to be kidding me?

Pot had an idealistic view that he wanted Cambodia to be self sustaining and pure from outside influences. Men, women and children were taken prisoners, accused of working for the US and interrogated beyond belief, to the point their bodies broke or their throats were cut with sugar palm leaves (the ones with serated edges), macheties, knives or any sharp object that wouldnt make a noise.

The prison in the city was one of about 190 around Cambodia that saw a constant flow of live people enter and dead people leave. How any one, with or without orders from a superior could conduct such pain on such innocent people, including babies makes me wonder just how low man can go.

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This was their cell toilet, the only item in the room except for the bare bed that was still stained in blood today.

There was not even any safety for the westerners caught up in the act, the two guys above, one from the USA and the other a Kiwi sadly both lost their lives to Pots regime.

12, 273 men, women and children lost their lives in this one prison, over three years, only a handful survived. The survivors are there today, everyday sitting in the very place their families and friends were murdered to tell their tale and with a smile on their faces. The boy in the middle of the picture below, now an artist, draws what it was like and sells his paintings to earn a living. I don’t honestly think I could set foot anywhere near a place that gave me such grave memories, it was an a honour to meet them.

The killing Fields was worse. It was a smaller than expected area of the outer city that played its part in the estimated Cambodia total of almost 1.4 million people being executed in these fields alone during Pots rule.

You can imagine that if you took off your audio guide head phones you could almost hear a pin drop in this place. I looked around and I don’t think anyone really understood how and why this took place where they were now standing and everyone was reflecting their own emotions.

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I wept when I heard how in one particular area known as the “killing tree” babies were thrown by their legs against a tree and then tossed into a mass grave with their mothers. An area so incredibly emotional that now lays rest to hundreds of bracelets in remeberence of those poor kids.

Kristi and I have three wonderful kids, two have no clue as to this massacre. We both stand here in the luxury and freedom that GOD and country provides and try to imagine for a second what it must have been like. I for one holding Charlie gave him a squeeze and whispered “I Love you little guy” in his ear praying he will never experience this in his life.

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The monument in the middle is a memorial to those that where found in the excavations, many many many bodies lay where they were executed, a decision made to let them rest in peace.

We left feeling empty, sick and trying to understand how such atrocities can happen from one single person’s instructions and how a country can be fooled by the promises of that person only for him to turn on them with no mercy. And how the west could support this regime for the decades that followed?? It was only in 1993 that the Khmer Rouge was no longer represented in the UN and 1999 before they fully surrendered.

In our own little worlds in the western way, we feel annoyed and upset that maybe our taxes have gone up, the price of gas has risen to its highest this year, our iphone is playing up, our local cafe has ran out of paninis at 11am or Donald has spouted off something dumb again and our shares have lost 10%.

Take a moment will you, think back to what you were doing 40 years ago, if you can, maybe your parents were complaining about President Ford’s mouth. Take another moment in remberence of almost 2 million innocent people being slaughtered. May they rest in peace……

More photos here

Next stop………Kampot & Kep, Cambodia