Another day, another country. more importantly, another currency with way too many zeros to count. I just cashed a $100 US travellers cheque and got back just under 1.6 MILLION dong. i could barely close my wallet.
I now have a new favourite game - crossing the road in Ho Chi Minh City. it's like playing a sick game of cat and mouse, except I'm the mouse and the cats are the motorbikes, cars, trucks and buses. You pretty much have to take a deep breath, close you eyes and walk out into it. confidence is key. they can smell fear and will run you over if you hessitate for just half a second.
back to the end of my last blog > the "fireworks" that i bought for our beach party actually turned out to be some demented giant party popper, so although i didnt kill myself or anyone else, managed to have some fun out of them. The rest of the party was great, lots of drinking and dancing, before piling into the back of a ute to head to some bizzare local disco. i dont think that cambodia is quite ready for kane dancing yet though. after 10min and one drink we quickly left had jumped on the back of motorbikes in the race to get back to the beach. the rest of the night involved more drinking and dancing, and judging by the wet sandy clothes i found on my floor the next morning, a fair bit of swimming in the ocean.
the rest of the time at the beach was just spent relaxing - well trying to at least, if we could escape the hoardes of local kids trying to sell you anything. the first thing they would usually say once they heard you were from australia were "g'day" or, more disturbingly " a dingo ate my baby".
we headed back the way we came to phnom penh and back to a pretty sombre reality. our first visit was to the genocide museum. but first, a few facts about cambodia's past - some of this gets pretty graphic and full on. so if your not up to hear about the horrible truth that is mankind, skip ahead.
>in 1975 [the start of pol pot's khmer rouge reigime] cambodia had a population of around 8million.
>in 1978 when the khmer rouge was forced from power by the vietnamese, around 3 million people were dead or missing. almost half the entire population. that's worse than even hitler could manage.
>pol pot and the khmer rouge were supported during their reign by the western governments, including australia. pol pot was recognised as the leader of cambodia and held cambodia's seat at the UN until close to his death in 1998 - despite being forced into hiding on the cambodian/thai border.
>during the 3 years, nearly every person in cambodia was forced out of the citys and onto farms to grow rice. Phnom Penh, was a ghost city.
>despite everyone in the country growing rice, they had nothing to eat. they were not allowed to cook or they would be beaten/arrested or killed. nearly all the rice grown was sent to china in a trade for more arms
the genocide museum in phnom penh is located in 4 buildings that were once the largest school in phnom penh. once pol pot took over, it was turned into a mass prison. the 4 buildings are 3 stories tall. on the ground floor, each of the rooms were divided into 2 cells for intterogation and torture. the 1st floor and small cells that would hold around 12 women and children in each, and the 2nd floor became a mass cell, where prisoners were shackled by their feet to the ground in long rows, so close they could barly move. over 17,000 people were sent here to be tortured for information before being sent to the killing fields.
at the time the vietnamese troops took control of the city only 14 prisoners remained. they were shackled to beds and left to die after being tortured in the cells on the ground floor. the vietnamese took photos of these prisoners left behind, and now those photos hang in the rooms they were found, along with the original beds and shackles. the tiled floors are covered in stains. although you cant exactly tell what from, when you look at the photos, you know that it was from the massive ammounts of blood spilt over it.
other rooms had rows and rows of photos - mugshots taken of each prisoner when they arrived. they all had individual numbers pinned to them, there were kids who looked no older than 12, young girls and mothers holding babies, right up to old men and women. the look in the eyes of many of them - particulary the kids and women, but even the men, is something i'm sure i will never forget.
most of the guards who worked at the prison were only very young. children were taken from the ages of 16 to 'join the revolution' and many of these soldiers were responsible for the torture of thousands.
women weren't able to go to the bathroom until they had been raped.
bodies were left among the other prisoners
the small tins they used as toilets were only emptied once every 2 weeks
the balconies had to be covered with barbed wire due to the ammount of attempted suicides.
from there, things did not get better, as we went and visited the killing fields, just 15km from the city.
they are called the killing fields, because they were just that. trucks would turn up here from prisons all around the area [many other schools and temples were converted into prisons] and the prisoners would be pulled off, killed and dumped in mass graves. at times there were too many prisoners to kill in one day, so they had to build a prison on site, to hold them overnight to wait their execution first thing the next day.
it wasnt until after walking around for a few minutes, that we realised the little bits of material poking out of the dirt in the middle of the path and all around the area was actually clothing. clothes from the people who had been buried these. if we looked closer, we could see bits of actual bone poking through the dirt. we were walking right over the graves of hundreds or thousands of people. there was a tree that soldiers would beat children to death to, before throwing them into a mass grave.
none of the surviving khmer rouge officials have been arrested and put on trial. in fact, many of them make up today's cambodian government.
after that sobering note, we had another day in phnom penh. we didnt do much, but headed to the local boxing stadium that afternoon to check out the action. we arrived in torrential rain and got drenched from the 10m dash to the door. the boxing was pretty fun to watch and the locals really got into it. we might have even got on local TV! we got bogged in the mud in our tuk tuk on the way out of the stadium and had to get out and push which was fun and muddy.
I now have a few days in ho chi minh city before heading to beijing on friday. hopefully i will get a chance to upload some photos soon.
