Shell-Shocked: Cambodia

I've gotten a little behind on keeping this updated. The last 3 weeks have been jam-packed. After India, I flew to Phnom Penh where Ryan was supposed to meet me on the 11th, but ended up getting delayed by a day. So, I did some sightseeing on my own that I didn't think he would mind missing: Wat Pnomh, the Royal Palace, and a few other historical sights. He finally made it into town and we took off immediately and went to S-21. It's a former high school that was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge. Anywhere from 17,000-20,000 passed through the prison and were held and tortured before being sent to Choeung Ek (the Killing Fields) where they were killed and buried in mass graves. S-21 has a heartbreaking museum and writings of survivors about their experience. It's really eerie walking through the rooms where people were held. They have the chains and shackles and there are even still bloodstains on the walls. It rained and rained while we were there which seemed very fitting and added to the mood of this sad place. We also headed out to the Killing Fields. They've exhumed most of the bodies from the hundreds of mass graves, but there are still bone, teeth, and clothing fragments all over the ground that come up when it rains. Because it had been raining so much, we saw fragments everywhere. The pathway winds between hundreds of depressions, which were where the graves were. It's an eerie place. The rest of the day, Ryan and I were both pretty muted. An astonishing quarter of the entire population was killed. The former commander of the prison, Duch, has been on trial for years and was just sentenced last week. The trial was in the news a lot while we were there so it was interesting to hear Cambodians talk about it.. He was sentenced to 35 years, but the court shaved off 11 years for time served, and 5 years more for being illegally detailed. So he will only serve 19 years. Most of the people I talked to were very disappointed in the ruling.

Some of the people held and killed at S-21. The Khmer Rouge was meticulous in their record keeping and took photos of every single person that came through. Some of those killed were just babies and kids. There are thousands of photos in the museum and they are heartbreaking. Some have the most scared and confused expressions and others are openly defiant. Many have bruises and bleeding faces from torture before the photo.

It's the rainy season in South East Asia. This is the road outside our hotel in Phnom Penh. The water was up to my knees!

Kampot is the pepper capital of the world. All the best restaurants use their pepper.

The next day we headed over to the seaside town of Kep. We found a great little hotel with a beautiful view of the ocean. We headed out to some nearby caves that have some temples and buddhas inside, ate some great seafood, and generally just relaxed. We moved onto the riverside of Kampot and took a boat tour up the river, and again, just relaxed. There's a chain of massage stores all across Cambodia that train blind men and women in shiatsu. It costs $6 for an hour so we eagerly signed up. It was seriously the most painful hour of my life. I didn't realize that shiatsu is all about thumbs and these men and women are especially strong. They're all about popping your fingers and toes and if it doesn't pop at first, they just keep pulling and pulling. I thought she was going to dislocate my big toe. I almost called it quits at multiple times during the hour. Afterwards, I did feel good, but I never signed up for another shiatsu massage again.

After Kampot we headed up to Battambang. The town itself is pleasant enough, but everything in this region is about getting out into the countryside and seeing the rural villages and farms. We lucked out and got the best tuk-tuk driver. He had just gotten married a few weeks earlier to a girl who worked the front desk at our hotel. We went out with him two full days and he showed us so many things we would've never seen without a local. We stopped at a rice paddy and got to try harvesting rice plants (I suck at it), see how they make spring roll rice paper, fish sauce, rice whisky making, visit Cambodia's only vineyard, and a whole slew of other things. We went to the "killing caves", one of many around Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge used it to dispose of bodies. They would tell prisoners that they were taking them out to the country to work, blindfold them, and push them into the caves. The caves had been used as Buddhist temples before, which the Khmer Rouge promptly destroyed. Today there is a memorial with some of the bones and a new buddha and temple. Pretty much anywhere you go in Cambodia is a memorial, killing field, killing cave, or stupa with a reminder about this tragedy.

While we were out and about on our tuk-tuk tour we came upon an accident. There was blood on the road and a damaged tuk-tuk and a group of locals huddled around a a doorway of a building. Whatever happened, it looked bad. Ryan went over to see if we could help and it turned out to be a Finish couple that was in the tuk-tuk. The tuk-tuk swerved to avoid a car that had turned abruptly without using their signal, and the tuk-tuk turned on its side and landed on the girl's foot. It was bleeding and she was in a lot of pain. Nobody was doing anything but watching them. We ended up helping the get to a medical centre nearby where they did a quick cleaning, but it was obvious they didn't have the facilities to do much. The whole thing was really frustrating because it was so hard to get anyone to act. Everyone just stood around and watched this poor couple. Ryan finally got them to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital. The ambulance pulled up and the driver got out and didn't do anything. Just stood and looked at her foot. Finally Ryan asked him if we should move her into the ambulance and he just looked at us like "oh, yeah, we probably should." Then before he would leave, he told us it cost $15. The whole thing was crazy and definitely made me appreciate healthcare in American. The ambulance only had the driver and he wasn't trained in medicine. He was just a driver. I can't imagine what happens when there is a life threatening emergency. She ended being ok, no broken bones, and she just needed a bunch of stitches. The poor tuk-tuk driver had some horrible road rash all over his hip and back from sliding on asphault when the tuk-tuk turned over. This is the second hospitalization that I've been close to since I arrived. My roommate at Rising Star in India, had a diabetic emergency one night and her blood sugar got down to 12 when it should be 100! They had to rush her to the hospital and get her on an IV. All the guidebooks say if you need serious medical attention, to get yourself to Bangkok asap. It definitely has made me a little more cautious in my activities here because the outcome could be catastrophic.

Our last stop in Cambodia, of course, was Angkor Wat and all the surrounding temples. They were pretty phenomenal. We had a great guide and learned and saw so many things I never would've known if we were just on our own. We spent two days exploring the temples and then our last day in Siem Reap. We took a cooking class and it definitely was one of my favorite parts of the trip. They took us to the morning market and we learned the names of all the local produce and fruits. Then we went back and learned how to make fresh spring rolls, fried nem (like fried spring rolls, fried rice, a delicious Cambodia meat dish, and mango and coconut sticky rice. All this for $12 a person and we got to eat all of it for lunch. It was quite a feast!

Our hotel offered cheap massages and spa treatments so we definitely treated ourselves to a few of those after hours of walking around temple complexes.

Ryan flew back home and I had another day on my own in Phnom Penh before flying over to Vientiane, Laos. I splurged on my last day in Phnom Penh and got a room at a nice hotel, with a great pool and wi-fi.