Phnom Penh – from Killing Fields to Modern City

We have spent two short spells in Phnom Penh, and both were very different.  The first few days were settling into the Khmer (Cambodian) culture, while the second was more for exploring the history of the city and country.  After Vietnam it was good to see a different country with different people and way of life.

The City is really not what we were expecting at all.  In a way it is more modern than Hanoi and Saigon, as there are larger, glitzier shops and restaurants, combined with large and expensive cars on the roads, from the many Range Rovers and Bentleys to even a Lamborghini.  But look further and you realise that the pace of life is slower, with fewer vehicles on the road, and far less scooters, and the place has a greater extreme between rich and poor.

Phnom Penh doesn’t have many high rise buildings, but that is changing fast.  The influx of Chinese money is starting to change the lovely waterfront, with large developments and hotels being built everywhere.  However, all this modernisation has a price, as the roads and sewers cannot cope with the monsoon rains, and everywhere soon floods when it starts to rain.

Having said all this, Phnom Penh is great and we really enjoyed it.  It is considerably cheaper than elsewhere in Asia, mainly due to the economy not as advanced as other countries, but the quality of restaurants equals most cities.  The biggest feature is that the Cambodians are wonderfully happy and friendly, incredible given their recent history, as discussed below.  Nobody argues here and people are not out to rip off tourists and charge them more.  It’s just a pleasure to walk around and see everything.

In our second visit we learnt more about that past.  Khmer culture is very rich, and goes back centuries.  It restored its monarchy in 1995, and we visited the lovely Royal Palace.  The throne room was a  beautiful, traditional building with lots of chandeliers and gold everywhere.  The silver pagoda had a silver-tiled floor, although why anyone allowed then to put duct-tape on the joints is beyond us.   This building goes back to the 1860s, and is striking because much of Phnom Penh has had to be rebuilt since 1979.

So to the dark period, and there is a warning that the following paragraphs are very graphic in their explanation of what happened.  We visited the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genicidal Crimes, also known as S-21.  This otherwise unremarkable set of four buildings was a former school until the Khmer Rouge marched into the city on 17 April 1975.  Within three days, virtually the whole of the three million people of the city were forcibly marched to work in the countryside, and S-21 became a prison; but not just any prison.

The Khmer Rouge sought to eliminate anybody who could challenge the regime.  Intellectuals, monks, people with “soft hands”, engineers, teachers etc. were taken to the four blocks of the former school.  Only eleven people survived on liberation, as everybody else was tortured until they “confessed” to their crimes.  The torture was barbaric and whole families were taken to S-21 to ensure nobody was left behind to tell the truth.  The intention was that once someone entered S-21, they would never leave the process alive.

This place has been left as it was found on Phnom Penh’s liberation by the Vietnamese on 7 January, 1979, with the beds used to torture people still in place, including pictures of the last fourteen prisoners murdered on them as the Khmer Rouge retreated.   Other buildings contained the makeshift brick and wooden cells.  It is quite stark everywhere, and the records and photographs on the walls of the 20,000 people passing through this place are extraordinary as they look so “normal”, but incredibly scared.

The next day we went to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, just a few miles out of the city.  What was particularly remarkable was the small size of the place, and the simplicity involved.  All 20,000  people from S-21 were transported blindfolded on trucks and unloaded and put in a hut.  The only other buildings on the whole site were a Khmer Rouge office, a store for DDT to remove the smell and kill people not yet dead, and a store for murder weapons.

One by one, individuals were brought to pits and made to kneel.  They were smashed on the skull with hoes, bamboo sticks etc. and then had their throats cut before falling into the pits below.  Bullets were not used to kill people as they were too prescious.  In a space less than five acres there were 129 pits for the 20,000 or so victims.  These included, headless ex-soldiers, women and babies, who were literally smashed against the “killing tree” and thrown in the pit with their mothers.

In 1980, 86 pits were excavated and almost 10,000 bodies found.  These were studied, but a few years ago a stupa was built on the site as a memorial to those killed.  This was made as a glass-fronted tower with various levels to store the almost ten thousand skulls, bones, teeth and clothe fragments from the site.  As everything is so harrowing, it did not feel appropriate to take photographs except of this moving stupa.

This process of prisons, torture and killing happened all over Cambodia.  Of the eight million people in Cambodia in 1975, roughly three million people died from this genocide, but also from disease and famine, as people from the cities, including the sick and old, were forced to work fifteen hour days and did not know how to grow rice and work in the countryside.  Phnom Penh’s population is still a million less than in 1975; but the most remarkable thing is the way people are so happy.  Sixty percent of the population are under 25 and want change, partially causing the dissolution of the main opposition party last year, compared to the older population who have seen enoug change in their lifetime.  This is an interesting city, an interesting country, and needs to be understood when travelling through it.