Phnom Penh

The city of Phnom Penh fills me with sadness and contemplation. It is Saturday, December 27th and we are staying at the Okay Guesthouse along the riverside. However, we are across the street from the river. The buildings along the river side of the street have all been raised for new construction. So there are high construction walls blocking off all views of the water. The area is densly populated and polluted, dusty and gritty. After riding across town in a tuk tuk my eyes sting from the dust flying in them and my head hurts from the motorbike fumes.

I have probably been asked for money somewhere between 50 and 100 times today, from people in all walks of life, some trying to sell pitiful wares, drinks, or tuk tuk rides. Some just begging, some showing off injuries, lost limbs. More than half of the people accosting me on the streets were children. Many of them very thin and dirty. Some of them are very sluggish and have injuries on their hands and feet that are open and festering. Some ask for money and then ignore you when you walk by. Others chase you up the street begging and pleading with you. Some try to use personality and humor to engage you before they ask for money, and a few get angry or frustrated. I read yesterday that 50% of the population here is younger than 20 years old. I think, what future do these people have coming of age into a reality where the top profession is begging? Where taking charity and sympathy sometimes forcibly off foreign travelers is easier and more economical than working at a job, so everyone is doing it and looking for a good angle to gain sympathy? These children are learning some very scary values for the future of Cambodia. And all of the signs and posters I read warn not to help them, not to give money to street beggars because of the exploitation it causes. It's so sad...

This morning Sidney and I went to see the Golden Palace of the king of Cambodia and the Silver Pavilion (A Buddhist temple with the entire floor made out of thousands of pure silver tiles: housing a Buddha on a throne made of pure emerald) We saw thousands and thousands of buddahs, encrusted in diamonds and rubies, made of gold, silver and bronze. The buildings were heavily carved and ornamented. We then went to the National Museum and looked at archiac things found in Cambodia from Archiological digs. More and more buddahs, really. We also saw some tools and implements from ancient times.

This afternoon Sid and I went to the Killing fields about 16 km south of Phnom Penh. It is a small area of grassy fields where in 1975-1979 Pol Pot's regime killed thousands and thousands of Cambodian people and buried them in mass graves, sometimes as many as 300 people each day. There were very few buildings or tourist build-up there. You simply walked along these winding dirt paths between deep divots of earth where the graves had been dug up. On the path under my feet and in the graves were pieces of human bones sticking up out of the ground and fabric worn by the victims of the graves. In some places you could see human teeth laying on the ground, poking up through the earth. In contrast, there were tufts of new grass growing up and butterflies fluttering all around in the sunshine... the place felt deeply quiet and sorrowful. A kind of sadness that seeps up from the earth and diffuses through the air all around you. At the end of the path is a large stupa set up in memorial of those who had died here. It is filled with the skulls and bones of 8,500 of the Cambodians who were unearthed here. You can walk inside and look at them, and it seems to be just a sea of skulls on platforms rising up level by level into the roof of the stupa. There is a high fence around the memorial park and beyond that just fields. The scruffy farmers' children stand at the fence peering in with their little hands stretched through the mesh asking for money and singing songs and chants they invented with the english lyrics, "Give me money, I have to go to school."

Now, I think for the evening I will rest, and rest. There is a delicious restaurant I am about to go to serving vegetarian Indian food. The owner is nepalese and the cook vietnamese, and they make Indian food in Cambodia. So delicious! Tomorrow, we go to the genocide museum which might be the hardest place to visit. On the following day I will probably breathe a sigh of relief to leave Cambodia on a bus headed for Saigon. A place to regroup and collect my thoughts before I head to KL to meet up with Eric. This is definitely not a vacation destination, but very educational.

Cheers, All my love,
Becky