Moved While Standing Still

I feel that today I lack the words in my vocabulary to emote what I'm feeling. It's big, and weighty, and humbling - it has been a tearful day.

I arrived on a very uneventful flight into Phnom Penh, Cambodia this morning... and I have a second stamp in my passport. I hired a motorbike driver, Woody, to drive me lakeside to a guesthouse and he convinced me to hire him for the day to take me around. It was really quite a bargain at $10, considering he used $2+ on gas and was at my beck-and-call... waiting patiently for me to finish shopping, gawking at the museums, etc. The driving here is even worse than in Thailand and once you get out of the city the roads are abismal. I was just adjusted to driving on the left hand side of the road and now we're back to "normal" driving.

After dropping my stuff I went to the Royal Palace... I could have wandered there for hours, but they close between 11 and 2p - which was irritating. The perfectly manicured grounds gave way to unique temple, after temple... with large, open areas for traditional dancers, representations of buddah, and an Elephant Building, too. I got to watch a woman weaving traditionally patterened fabric. She said that one piece takes her three months!

I went to the National Museum to see ancient relics, a cool garden, and traditional masks. The pool inside read "If you want a good rebirth, you must liberate from the delusions". (I'd post more about this, but I know this post will be really long anyhow!)

Woody took me to the Central Market to do some shopping. I wanted to find some more postcards and look around. Anyone who loves food would have died to be there with me. I cannot possibly explain how crazy this place was. They had watches, jewlery, clothing, silk, household goods, electronics, shoes... anything you could imagine. Half of the market though was food - meat products I couldn't even distinguish... I know there some huge tounges there though! There were bubbling tubs with prawns as big as my hand, crabs (both alive and smoked with the shell on), fish bigger than my leg, barrel after barrel of different rice, peanuts, chillis, garlic, dried shrimp, oils... etc. The fruits and vegetables were everywhere, too - hanging, piled high on tables and in hammocks, in large, flat bins. I counted 15 varieties of bananas alone! (Lady fingers are the best!) I walked for the better part of an hour and a half and then met my trusty guide for the next stop. By the way, place your orders now - Birks for $30, silk scarves, suede Puma's for $15, t-shirts for $2.50 (and you'd actually WANT to wear them), ivory chopsticks, silver EVERYTHING... it goes on and on. The handmade purses are really super cool.

Now the hard part of the day -

I went to Toul Seng prison (which was called S-21). It was a high school originally and in the 1970s Pol Pot converted it to a prison where he detained "traitors" against the Khmer Rouge. There were four large buildings that created a U-shape with a common in the middle of it. Many of the rooms were bare except for a bed, shakles, torture devices, and one picture on the wall. It was the most powerful experience. I saw very graphic pictures of prisoners strapped to the beds (where they were put when tortured) with pools of blood beneath them, eyes rolled back... emaciated by starvation. Other rooms were broken into smaller cells that housed the prisoners. These cells were just large enough for a person to mostly lie down. The prisoners here were all photographed and their histories recorded meticulously, so, you walk around room after room after room looking at THOUSANDS of faces... men, women and children. Some of them were Communists who were the torturers... CHILDREN! There were pictures of mother's holding infants... and then paintings of survivor recounts of the babies being pulled from their arms to be killed. They were either tossed in the air and shot or violently speared to death. You stand there, in this place that once housed laughter and learning and you feel just a profound sadness starting into people's eyes who can no longer look at you. There were rooms filled with skulls that you could see where from helpless people who were bludgeoned in the head. There was a movie to watch about the story of two people whose family put together a documentary. In the documentary, you see the old school director (who later became director of Pol Pot's detention center, walk through the halls... talking about the torture, killing, and hauling people off to be shot in the Killing Fields nearby. He smiles repeatedly in the film. Pol Pot only died in 1998... less than ten years ago... and many of the people guilty of the beatings and killings are still alive. One floor of one of the buildings is dedicated to giving these torturers a voice through their biographies. Many tell of being forced to do what they did, but some have no remorse. I cried a silent cry of tears just falling down my cheeks. You feel very small in a place like that. (The picture is of some of the recovered shakles.)


When I left I felt chills and then really cold. It lasted for almost two hours through the extreme heat here. Woody drove me to the killing fields and the main building shows 18 shelves of skulls towering into the sky. These have been recovered from 87 of the 129 open graves that have been resurfaced. When you walk the grounds, you can see the Mekong River, hear kids playing across the street, and see the very dimpled ground where the bodies were once piled. It was hard to breathe. Almost 2 million people were killed in Cambodia... and a great deal went through Toul Seng.

I really felt like just leaving tomorrow and finding some place more cheerful, but I'm going to stay for a few days to see the happy side of the people who live here. There are destitutely poor people living here, but living here joyfully. They are proud of their heritage because it shows how far they've come, despite this awful history.

So, tomorrow I'll rent a bike and tour around, if I feel safe doing so. The roads are so much worse here - I couldn't imagine that! In the evening Woody is picking me up to watch the sunset over a temple here and then I'm having him bring me to a traditional Cambodian Dancing exhibition... I think it's just what the doctor ordered.

I felt something I've never felt today - and again, it was more powerful than words can express.

***8:45P, Thursday, Internet Cafe, Phnom Penh, Cambodia