Spring 2015 - Day 36 and 37: Cambodia
Just a note: visiting Cambodia has changed me. I haven't figured out how yet, but I can feel it. It was a cultural, emotional, and eye opening trip. I came back from it feeling heavy. I am hoping that writing about it will help me understand how I am feeling and what I got out of the experience. I also want to warn you that I go into detail about torture techniques and various things that were done to the Cambodian people during the genocide of 1975-1979, read both at your own risk.
We met in the Union and our trip liaison, Katie, reiterated over and over again that we needed 30 US dollars and a passport photo in order to cross over into Cambodia. She went around and checked that everyone had it. We had to have exact change. It was a process.
We finally got off the ship and piled onto the bus. Jen, Annie, and Quinn were all on the trip with me.
Our first stop was the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were built during the Vietnam and the people that lived or went through them were called Tunnel Rats. That is all I knew about them going.
We took the bus only a few miles down the street to a boat dock. We would be taking a speed boat to the tunnels. There was about 15 of us per boat. On the boat we were fed coffee, fresh fruit, water, and sandwiches. The fruit was all uncommon to us in the states. There was lychee , little tiny bananas, and some fruit that looked like a tiny red pear but apparently tasted like an apple.
We were on the speed boat of over an hour. We passed by people fishing, huge barges filled with gravel and wood, and a barge that had a large excavator on it that was dipping its bucket in and out of the water.
There were a lot of people working and living along the river.
After a while the wind started to get cold and so the second half of the boat ride was not as enjoyable as the first half.
When we arrived at the tunnels we all piled off of the boats and made our way through a construction site. It looked like they were constructing a new building, maybe a welcome center or something.
We were given tickets and then led to a large hut where we all sat in seats facing one direction. On the wall we were facing was a huge map of the area, a small TV, and a diorama of what the tunnels are like.
Our guide explained to us what the Cu Chi area was used for. Cu Chi is a suburban area of Ho Chi Minh and there was a lot of fighting there during the war because it was the Viet Cong's base of operations in the South. The Viet Cong was the name of the northern army.
The local people built the tunnels themselves, they were about 200km long. The tunnels had three levels. The first was about 3 meters deep, the second 6 meters, and the third 10 meters. The tunnels were basically an underground village. There were kitchens and a hospital. They slept there and built weapons there. They used small tunnels to the surface as air ventilation and they usually would only cook at night and vent the smoke several miles away. They lived by mostly oil lamps and candlelight. At times, bombs would destroy the first level and it was rebuilt several times.
We then watched a documentary on the small TV. It was clearly a documentary made in Vietnam. It discussed life in the tunnels and talked about one solider who was a 'prolific American killer hero."
I couldn't even count the number of time 'american killer' was used in the film. It was the first time I felt hate towards americans when it came to the Vietnam war, which they called the American War. It was very uncomfortable watching the documentary. They talked about the booby traps they would set to kill Americans and the tactics they used to kill Americans and how the Americans were invading and bombing them.
It was the first time in my life that I did not feel proud to be an American.
It was hard to tell if it was a propaganda film or if it was true and I decided that the line between propaganda and truth. I am sure that it was all true. We did bomb them and since they were northern fighter we were considered the enemy. Or maybe we were even considered the enemy to those in the south. From their point of view, we were not welcome and we were bombing them and killing their people so of course they would celebrate those who did the most of us in.
I didn't even feel that way when I visited Hiroshima. There they seemed to promote peace and forgiveness and I didn't feel personally ashamed for what my country did to theirs. But I felt ashamed when I was sitting in that chair and watching a video that most likely encompassed the feelings of the Vietnamese.
This feeling continued through the remainder of our tour of the tunnels.
When we left the small hut we were taken on a walking tour of exhibits of what life would have been like in the tunnels.
The first thing we saw was a hidden entrance. It was between two trees in a area almost completely covered by leaves. Our guide had us find the entrance and then a local man demonstrated how they would go down the entrance. It was probably a foot and three inches by 8 inches. It was a tiny, tiny hole. At one time there were about 1000 of these tiny entrances and the American army did not know they existed and couldn't find them until 1972.
They had pits in the ground set up like rooms so we could see the different things that would go on in them. It was hard to tell if they had set them up specifically for tourists or if they had excavated the tunnels to an extent. I really think it is the former because the rooms were not connected and there were trees on the same level as them.
So where were the real tunnels? Were they underneath us or were they in a completely separate place. How sad that so many people were interested in touring such a horrible place that they took the time and effort to set up a whole exhibit. It was strange and didn't feel right for us to be there taking pictures of it like we were touring an art museum.
We were able to go underground and crawl through some of the tunnels. They were tiny. Really, really tiny. You had to crouch down really low and almost needed to be on your hands and knees. Apparently the tunnels were widened slightly to accommodate tourists so I could not imagine what it would have been like to travel along them during the war. It must have been so claustrophobic.
Near the end of our tour we came to the gift shop where we were also given the opportunity to shoot M-16s, AK-47s, or M10s at a shooting range.
Some kids in our group participated but it felt so wrong to be shooting weapons in a place where we killed so many people. That was just not right.
Our visit to the tunnels was an eerie experience. It felt like we were touring a shiny façade they had set up to accommodate the tourists and that they really hated the fact that we were there. It was interesting and I learned a lot so I appreciated it but it also opened my eyes to the feelings of the Vietnamese towards the American War.
Once we left the tunnels we drove an hour to lunch. We got off the bus in the middle of a dirt road on a poverty stricken street, walked down a side street through the mud and into a fairly nice hotel. It was really strange to go from poverty to wealth so quickly.
We had the most delicious spring rolls I have ever eaten. They were so flavorful I could have eaten so many of them. But they again gave us many small plates to share. We also had a noodle soup and veggies.
We didn't spend very long at lunch and after we were back on the buses it was another hour ride to the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Katie, the liaison, reminded us again to make sure we hadn't lost our 30 US dollars and passport photo.
At the border we all got off the bus and walked into a building in order to leave Vietnam. They collected our passports and then we went single file through customs where they stamped an exit stamp. We then waited a very, very long time on the other side for everyone else to get through. We found out later that the customs officials had forced Katie to pay 2 dollars a student out of her own pocket in order to allow us to leave the country. At the end of the trip she came around and collected 2 dollars from us.
We then walked about a quarter mile across the border to the Cambodia side where we would get our visas. We all had to fill out two forms. And entry/departure form and a visa application form. Our tour guide for the Cambodia portion met us at the border and helped us fill out our forms.
While we were all furiously writing one of the life long learners came over and told Katie that is was really 31 dollars. What? The sign said 30 for a tourist visa. Katie asked our tour guide and he basically told her it was corruption and they were forcing us to pay them an extra dollar as a bribe/tip. So we scrambled to come up with dollars, borrowing from others, and breaking larger bills. You had to have exact change. There were a lot of IOUs exchanged.
We then gave our passport, visa application from, 31 dollars, and passport photo to a man in a little booth. It took a few minutes and then our passports were handed back out with Cambodia visas in them.
We took our new visas into the building, had them checked by customs, then went through another line where they gave us our entry stamps. Then we had a health check where they took our temperature and we filled out a health form about Ebola. After that we were finally done.
The whole process probably took about 2 hours. It was lengthy and involved a lot of steps. And we really got a taste of corrupted government and bribing.
Once we were all through we piled on two busses. There were only 40 of us on the trip, so two busses were unnecessary but two busses is what we had. So we all got our own rows and were able to spread out. That arrangement wasn't too bad but we ended up being completely separated from the other bus except for meals so that was a bummer.
When we left the border we were driving along dirt roads in a little town. Then we suddenly were in the midst of a heavy traffic. The traffic was all made up of trucks. They were about the size and shape of a small moving truck, except the bed was open and there were large rails boxing in three sides. The entire back of every truck was packed with people. They weren't sitting, they were standing, back to front. There were probably about 50 people per truck.
And there were hundreds of trucks. It was 5pm and the factory workers were headed home.
There were smaller vans that probably had 25 people packed in them. They were sitting on each others laps. They were basically on top of each other.
As we drove by or sat in traffic next to them they would wave to us. Our guide told us that they ride 1 hour each way packed in like that. They start work at 7am and finish at 5. They make hats, shirts, and shoes. At least at the factories in that area. The factory workers in Cambodia make the lowest salary in the world at between 80 to 120 dollars a month. They are working to raise it to 138 a month. They pay taxes that take about 15 of those dollars and they pay a 5 dollar fee for their sardined ride to and from work.
It was sad. There were clearly children among all of those people. Probably as young as 14. They are required to be 18 to work so many procure fake IDs so that they can help provide for their families. In the moment it was fun to see them all and wave to them but looking back it was sad that 20 of us were sitting spread out on a bus for 40 with air conditioning and entertainment and they were packed into trucks and exposed to the elements. And they did that every single day.
Our drive to Phnom Penh was supposed to take 3 hours but it really took more like 4 including a bathroom break. I was really thankful that I brought my Kindle at that point.
At one point we had to cross a river. But we didn't get off the bus in order to do it, the bus just drove right onto a ferry filled with container trucks and sailed right across the river and then drove off. It was pitch black out so we couldn't even see the river and we were packed between two container trucks so we didn't really know what was happening. That was a cool experience. Apparently they are building a new bridge that will be open in April of this year but up until that point taking the ferry was the only way to cross the river, even with a vehicle.
When we arrived at the hotel we went right into the dining room to have dinner. It was buffet style and I wasn't too enthralled by anything except the ice cream sundae bar they had for dessert. That was awesome.
At the end of the meal I went out into the lobby and somehow ended up with the handful of all of our room keys and became in charge of handing them out.
My roommate was Samantha, I hadn't met her before this point but we bonded over ear piercing care because she had just gotten a piercing the first day of Vietnam and so needed a little advice.
We went to bed right away because we had to meet at 8 the next morning. They gave us breakfast which included some really good croissants. I am not generally a croissant eater but these were really delicious.
Our first stop was at an old school that was turned into a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979 and is now a museum. It was called Security Prison 21 or nicknamed to S-21. It was one of 150 execution centers in Cambodia.
Going into this trip I knew even less about the genocide in Cambodia then I did about the Vietnam war. Going through the prison made me want to learn even more because I didn't understand the 'why' behind it.
The first place we went in the prison was into a small room with a single metal bed and a photo on the wall of a man who had just been tortured and may have been dead laying next to that bed. Our guide was difficult to understand because of his accent so it was hard for me to take notes fast enough to keep up with him.
What I gathered was that the Vietnam War had lead to the Cambodian conflict. (Oh yeah, once we crossed the border it went back to being the Vietnam War instead of the American War)
My notes are spotty after that. I wrote:
- The king chose to side with the communists and so their relations with the US were bad
- They used students for demonstrations
- The U.S dropped many bombs on Cambodia (2 million bombs actually, I found that out later)
- The King lost power in 1970
- They changed the name of the country
- The Khmer Rouge started a war up against the new government
- President Nixon decided to drop bombs on Cambodia
- President Nixon told congress he was dropping bombs on Vietnam, not Cambodia?
- President Kennedy and King worked well together
- Went poorly after President Kennedy's death.
- U.S did not pay attention to killing fields?
So clearly I was confused most of the time, most of those notes don't seem to go together to me. All of that was about the history of the conflict. Later I learned more about it and so will get to that.
But my notes after that point were about the prison and were a little more clear. I got a lot of information from the signs around the prison. Prisoners generally would be there for 6 or 7 months. They used old ammunition boxes as toilet and were fed porridge two times a day. They would be tortured for information, generally with electric shock or water. They also would use cruder forms of torture like pulling fingernails off with pliers, drilling through their hand or cutting off fingers and then applying alcohol to the wound. They wanted to know who the people were, where they were from, and any information they had. At this point I still didn't understand what specific information the Khmer Rouge wanted or why they captured or tortured people. But it fueled my desire to find out.
Our tour guide talked about his personal experience. He lost 4 family members. He was three when they arrested his mother and took her to the "hospital". He went with her to the "hospital", which was really a prison. They tortured her but she didn't answer any questions. They cut her fingers off and he saw blood on the floor. They injected her with water and then took her to the grave still alive. He witnessed the whole thing. He was 3 years old.
He said that he was very proud of his mother for being brave and not answering their questions. After his mother was killed he had no idea where his family was. His father passed away in 1978 but he didn't know until 1991 when he found his cousin and was told. There were 87 other people in his fathers grave. Along with both of his parents he also lost both of his brothers.
This particular prison, S-21, was used as a prison for 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days. From 1976-1979. It imprisoned about 20,000 people only 7 of whom survived. All those survived were spared because they had skills that he Khmer Rouge found valuable. These skills includes typing and painting. They were removed from the cells, were given more food, and forced to perform their skill in order to remain alive. If you were not good enough, you were killed.
Most Cambodians left their homes. They wanted to return to their homelands but they knew that they would die if they did that because people in their homelands knew their background. They would give prisoners a piece of paper and would have them write down their background. They would then ask them questions based off what they wrote down and torture them if their were any discrepancies.
We were taken through three different buildings. In two of them they had pictures of every single prisoner that came into the prison. When they would arrive they would have their hair shaved or cut and then were photograph. They photographed every single person and they had all of the pictures displayed on large boards covered by glass. It was eerie to see all of these people staring at me. They all had the same expression, which was basically straight faced and expressionless. Most of their eyes were void of emotion. Some had a pleading look, I saw one single person smiling. Another was grimacing in anger. All of the females hair was cut exactly the same length, the men were all shaved bald.
I walked through all of these pictures, through a room that told some survivor stories, and into a room with a glass cabinet filling the majority of one wall. The cabinet was full of human skulls. There was a box full of lower jaw and arm bones. All from the people who were killed at the prison.
It was shocking, to go from the photos of the people when they were alive and headed into the last 6 to 7 months of their lives, to a wall of their skulls.
During our tour of the zoo a girl on the trip, Emily, told me about a book she had read called First They Killed My Father. It was written by a woman who was 5 years old at the beginning of the regime and survived. She wrote a book about her home and what she went through. Emily said that it really helped her understand what went on during that time and what it was like for the people. I decided that I needed to get and read that book.
It turned out that they sold the book in the tiny gift shop they had set up. I jumped at the chance to buy it and read it on our bus ride that afternoon.
They also had elephant pants for sale in the gift shop. Elephant pants are loose, flow-y pants that are imprinted with a pattern that commonly includes elephants. The pants in the gift shop were Target brand. They had the Target tags and everything. They were selling them for only 8 dollars because they were made there. The Target brand pants were made in Cambodia. They were made there. That blew my mind. It still blows my mind. I didn't buy them but I wish I did. One of the girls convinced me not to because she said it was lame to buy target brand because it would be better to buy a pair that was actually made it Cambodia and sold locally. But the Target brand was made there. I can't get over it, it's so surreal.
Separate from the little gift shop there was a man who is a survivor of the prison selling his book. At 87, he is one of the only three survivors that are still alive. I didn't have any cash so I couldn't buy his book but I tried to talk to him and took a picture with him. It was sad, he spent his life revisiting a horror that he lived in order to sell his book so that he could make money. He returned to the place that tortured and nearly killed him every single day.
After that we left the prison we went to the Killing Fields. The killing fields are the location of many mass graves where the Khmer Rouge executed and buried hundreds of people. Many of them were brought over from S-21. There are 129 mass graves there. 86 of them have been excavated. In those 89 graves they found 8,985 corpses. The largest grave had 450 bodies.
Most people were brought there alive, forced to kneel on the edge of the grave and were executed with by gun shot or with a bayonet. The body was pushed into the grave.
In the middle of the killing fields they erected a large stupa filled with human skulls and bones. We were able to walk around the stupa and observe the remains inside it. It holds more than 5,000 skulls, all arranged by the age of the victims. Each skull is also labeled with a small colored dot. There was a key that told us what the dots meant. Some were evidence of bullet holes, others were evidence of blunt force trauma.
It was sickening.
Unlike the Cu Chi Tunnels, it did not feel like an inappropriate tourist attraction. The stupa was built as a memorial and everyone there was incredibly respectful. We had to remove our shoes before entering the stupa and were asked to be quiet as we traveled around the grounds around the stupa.
We walked around the area where some of the mass graves were crudely marked. There were signed that asked you to not step on any bones. I read the sign and was taken a back. Then I observed the ground and saw multiple areas where strips of while were peaking through the dirt or piece of fabric were exposed.
We were actually walking over graves. It sunk in for me in that moment.
Our guide showed us a few specific graves where they found 166 bodies without heads. There was another that held 100 woman and children who were mostly naked.
There was a tree labeled with a sign that said "Magic tree - The tree was used as a tool to hang a loudspeaker which make sound louder to avoid the moan of victims while they were being executed."
No typos, that was the translation.
There was tree that was labeled "Killing tree against which executioners beat children."
This place was real and we were walking through it. I could almost imagine the people and smell the terror as they were brought in by the truck load to be killed.
I was ready to dive into the book I bought. I wanted to learn, I wanted to understand what I was seeing and why all of this happened.
I had the opportunity to do this after lunch. We had a 6 hour bus ride ahead of us to get to Siem Reap where Angkor Wat is.
I read the book easily during the bus ride. It was about Loung Ung whose father was a government officer and was forced to leave her comfortable lifestyle in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975. Her family lived in camps where they were starved. First her sister was sent to a labor camp, became ill with dengue and died. Then her father was taken away and presumable killed and eventually her mother and youngest sister disappeared. Her two eldest brothers were sent to a labor camp but survived and she was left with another brother and sister. Eventually the three of them were separated. She was trained as a child soldier and forced to do many different forms of labor all while being starved. When the regime fell she was able to rejoin with her family and escape to her Uncle's home in Siem Reap. Her eldest brother and her eventually escaped to Vietnam and eventually to America where she now lives. She didn't reunite with her family until much later in her life.
The book helped me understand a little about the regime. Basically, the communist part gained significant power after the Cambodian Civil war. They sought to gain even more power. One of the markers of the beginning of the Khmer Rouge rule was the evacuation on the cities.
The Khmer Rouge arrested, tortured, and executed anyone suspected of belonging to several groups of supposed "enemies." These included
- Anyone with connection to the former government or with foreign governments
- Professionals and intellectuals. This included almost everyone with an education or people who were bilingual. Sometimes even those who wore glasses.
- Ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, or Thai. Also muslims and buddhist monks.
They routed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with. They also wanted information on the former government.
To me it sounds like the Khmer Rouge had the chance to be in charge so they just took over in the way they wanted to and did what they wanted to just because they could. For that reason it is commonly referred to as the Cambodian Holocaust.
As I went through both the prison and the killing fields I had an academic brain, I took a ton of notes and wanted to learn about everything. It is in retrospect, when I reflect on my time there and think about what I saw, that I think about it with a human brain. I was looking at human remains. Recent human remains. This only happened 40 years ago. It was horrible, it was sad, and it affected almost every person we encountered. One of our tour guides was missing a finger and had a deformed foot from being tortured. Another had lost his father. It was real and it was in front of us and I feel so blessed to be born in a place that is a democracy and have not had to deal with a government that did whatever they wanted just because they decided to.
When I was reading the book it was such heavy content that I had to alternate between reading it and reading the first Harry Potter book.
We also stopped twice for the bathroom and to stretch our legs. One of the places we stopped was called the spider market by our guide. The little girls where would run up to you and ask, "Lady, you like spider? You afraid of spider? You want to see spider?" They would then pull a tarantula out from under their collar.
They all had tarantulas chilling on them somewhere. They had removed their teeth so they weren't able to bite you and they would let you hold them for a dollar.
There were also huge plates filled with cooked bugs that you could purchase to eat.
At first I was not brave enough to hold the spiders but once I was back on the bus I realized I would regret not being brave. Stephan said he would do it if I would so we got back off the bus and joined the crowd and I held a spider. And it was awesome.
Our 6 hour bus ride turned into a 7 hour bus ride so we didn't get to the hotel until almost 10pm. I was dehydrated and exhausted from sitting on the bus for so long so I had less than zero appetite. We were lead into the dining room for what seemed like a lengthy sit down dinner. They had already handed out the keys so I got ours from Samantha and skipped dinner.
I chugged water and laid on the bed and felt so much better. Sleep helped too. The day was long and crazy and emotional and I just wanted to reflect and sleep. We had to met at 7:45 the next morning to go see some incredible temples.
