Cambodia’s landscape echoes
a chilling past. The rural flat country with its rustic paved roads played a
roll in one of the worse genocides in the history of the world. Think about it,
if you were a victim where would you run? Where would you hide? There are no mountains or dense patches
of forest that could have aided victims in their escape.
The story goes like this: Once
upon a time a guy named Pol Pot visited Communist China and became so inspired
by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution that he came up with his own non compos mentis,
that is, a set of mentally incompetent ideas for an agrarian utopia.
Then in 1969 Pol Pot became
ousted from Cambodia but with the military assistance from the Democratic kingpin
of the world, The United States of America, the Cambodian Hitler returned and
thus began the Khmer Rouge and their mass genocide from 1975 to 1979: Millions
of Cambodians were forced into labor camps known as the “Killing Fields” and many
were killed at gunpoint. According to my wonderful Geography teacher from
community college, Pol Pot was so fixated on creating an agrarian society that
he executed lawyers, teachers, Buddhist monks, former government officials,
police, doctors, wealthy people and anyone who was suspected of being smart. So
if you wore glasses, you were a dead man.
A quarter of the Cambodian
population died as a result of the Khmer Rouge regime, that’s two million
deaths!
Today the “Killing Fields”
where the Khmer Rouge practiced genocide is a horrifying tourist attraction.
Piles of skulls and bones frame the place. Signs like “Killing Tree Against
Which Executioners Beat Children” make it a dead silent observation pit stop. I
watched the 1984 film, “The Killing Fields” before visiting and for that
reason, the only thing I heard that afternoon as I walked through the site were
the helpless cries of innocent kids.
Another tragedy was the mass
execution that occurred in the Tuol Sleng School where people were tortured
into giving false confessions. Today that school still stands; it’s another
tour stop in Phom Penh one that I hesitated to visit. Inside, the walls are
covered with the black and white portraits of the twenty thousand terrified and
hopeless victims.
My Canadian friend who I’ve
been traveling with for the past two weeks asked me, “How could they kill that
many people in four years?”
I said, “I don’t know,
guns?”
Not so fast Jane. Cambodia
is a round and flat country; the poor victims probably had nowhere to hide. If
you look at the country today, it’s still flat for miles. Actually, from a
traveler’s point of view Cambodia’s landscape makes it an ideal place for wanderlust
souls to carve out their own adventure. As long as you don’t step outside the
paved roads, you probably won’t stumble on anything more than a turtle or a
rock. Step outside of the roads and a land mine may blow you up into
smithereens.
I explained this to my
Canadian friend and later that evening at dinner, he announced that he would be
renting a motorcycle. He said that instead of taking the usual bus or boat to
voyage the mother of all temples, Angkor Watt; he would drive there instead!
That’s a 184-mile trip. Now that is what you call going off the beaten road! Or
taking the road less traveled, Robert Frost, etcetera, etcetera.
I asked him, “Is the seat
big enough for two people?”
Hint, hint.
He said, “Uh the motorcycle
I was looking at is sort of small and it’s probably not safe for girls anyway.”
I felt like he just pulled
the rug from under my feet. Does he not know whom he was talking to? Does he
not know that he just insulted the great Jungle Jane? Does he not know that few
females are given this name due to its association with craziness? e.g. Mary
Jane, Calamity Jane, Jane Goodall.
Then you have your actresses: Jane Krakowski,
actress from 30 Rock; Jane Kaczmarek
from Malcom in the Middle and Jane Lynch from Glee.
Ouch, ouch. This shouldn’t
hurt. I’ll show him! I don’t know how to drive a motorcycle but that doesn’t
mean that I can’t learn. The only thing that I can drive on two wheels is a
bicycle. That’s right a bicycle. That is actually not a bad idea.
Disclaimer: The settings on my camera were off and stamped the photo with the wrong date
