The road to Siem Reap

In my earlier post, I mentioned that we had to look for transportation for the 350km journey between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Bus travel was touted as the cheapest and most popular means of overland transport. It cost around $12  - $15 on the better services. Another option would be to do Phnom Penh to Siem Reap by private car. I had earlier booked a Tonle Sap tour in Siem Reap with Smart Tour Travel so thought of checking the rates with them. They quoted $70, which was only $25 (RM75) more expensive than bus tickets for the three of us. It was a no-brainer.

Smart Tour Travel is highly rated on Tripadvisor with many excellent reviews. They were quick o respond to emails and I had no problem in arranging what I wanted with them. We arranged for the driver to pick us up from the hotel.

As the car sped away from the hotel at 10am, past the Independent Monument and the Royal Palace, we bade farewell to Phnom Penh. We were there for only 3 days but I have gleaned so much on what makes the capital what is is today. Sure, it is relatively gritty, rough with roads impossible to cross and street children in abundance. But it is also refreshingly free from mass tourism. If you ever want to visit a (still) authentic South East Asian capital, then this is the place to be.



Leaving Phnom Penh

If yesterday I thought that Phnom Penh was poor, I had not seen the rest of the country yet. Driving along National Highway 6, the highway connecting Phnom Penh with Siem Reap,  it was easy to see that the country was still plagued with abject poverty. It was already more than 30 years after the Khmer Rogue regime was taken down, but the country has not progressed much since, at least not in the rural areas. We past by dusty villages, ramshackled wooden houses and people trying to eke a living by doing anything they could get their hands on. Kids walked to school or rode pillion at least 4 to a motorcycle. The latter was also used to carry almost everything - stacks of mattresses, dead pigs, live chicken in a cage, pots and pans and even what appeared to be the whole inventories of a sundry shop.  Bullock carts trundled by as if it was still the 70's.



Traditional houses built on tall stilts to avoid flooding

A Cambodian lady out at work

The roads deserve a post of its own. Many parts were dusty and pothole-ridden. Some were not even tarred - and this was a main highway. I thought fondly of our tolled and congested highways.

Cambodia's National Highway 6

Our driver made 2 stops in the journey. The first was at Skuon the Spider Village. Cambodian fried spider is the regional delicacy here - these were sold next to mangoes, jackfruits and bananas as if it was the most natural snack in the world. The arachnophobic side of me thanked my lucky stars that the tarantulas were sitting nicely and quietly in a bowl instead of scampering about. I was also grateful that Snufkin asked for Pringles instead of tarantula for his snack.

Crunchy tarantulas

The second stop was at Prey Pros Rest Area at Kampong Thom. This was as close as you could get to an R&R in Malaysia. There were toilets, a souvenir shop and a restaurant, the latter was in a bamboo and wooden structure built on stilts over a lake of water lilies. Although our stomachs were grumbling, I did not trust the cleanliness of the restaurant and hence only ordered coffee. We feasted on Pringles instead, and of course biscuits for Snufkin that I always brought for our travels.

Untill now I'm still in the dark as to what purpose the coloured water in the plastic hanging from the beams served

Altogether our journey took 6 1/2 hours, an hour more than what was advised to us. I was trying to get Snufkin to sleep as I myself had dozed off twice. He did - 45 minutes before we reached Siem Reap. But credit to him, he did not complain of the long and bumpy journey and more importantly he did not get carsick.

By the time we got to Siem Reap, sundown was less than 2 hours away. The initial plan was to go to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset but all 3 of us were knackered and all we wanted to do was to get a nice meal and laze in the hotel. We had booked Apsara Centropole Hotel for USD67 (approx. RM200) per night, which was a nice smallish boutique hotel with 19 rooms. The location could not be more strategic - just steps away from Blue Pumpkin (Cambodia's version of Joma Bakery), a fruitshake stall selling one of the best passion fruit shake and the heart of the action. To top it all up, we were upgraded to a terrace suite which comes with a private rooftop terrace complete with sun loungers.


Apsara Centropole Hotel

The pool and our private rooftop terrace

 

Note:

Apsara Centropole Hotel - Address: #522 Svay Dangkum,Siem Reap, Cambodia. Phone: +855 63 968 096

  

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - Le Jardin Restaurant and Sisowath Quay

After a depressing first half of the day spent at the Killing Fields and S-21 Prison, it was time for lunch. Included in my itinerary was Le Jardin Restaurant - mainly because of the good reviews it received on being kids-friendly.

The restaurant/cafe was located in a courtyard garden shaded by jackfruit trees. I can't emphasize enough how great this place was in terms of having a long and leisurely lunch with young children, especially when you had just spent a few hours looking at skulls and gruesome photos. There was a big sandpit (with toys to play in it) and a playhouse with a slide.

We spent quite some time there lazing on the comfy seats, gorging on grilled fish and pasta, sipping passionfruit smoothie while Snufkin ran wild in the sandpit and playhouse. And if that was not enough, there was ice-cream to please the little ones further.


 



Le Jardin - Good food, good ambience, free creche

In the evening, we went to Sisowath Quay, the riverside along the junction of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. The Quay area is as touristy as you could get in Phnom Penh - bars, restarants and hotels lined the riverside. The tuk-uk driver dropped us near the Foreign Correspondents' Club ("FCC').  I wanted to have coffee and snacks at FCC (apparently the most iconic Phnom Penh experience) but it looked too crowded and until now I still feel a twinge of regret of not doing so.

From there, we strolled along the riverside with no specific destination. The wide pavement and the old colonial buildings that lined Sisowath Boulevard somewhat reminded me of South of France. There was a a lot of things going on: families taking a stroll, aerobic sessions (though none was at the scale that we saw in Vientiane), kids cycling and even men grouping together leering at sexy ladies. Another differentiating factor from Vientiane's riverside was the number of poor Cambodian children that kept approaching us trying to sell us bracelets for one dollar or even just to beg. They looked unkempt and rough and their eyes were dead. Most were undoubtedly homeless and probably orphaned. I told Snufkin who was playing with the bubbles that we bought at the Royal Palace yesterday how unfortunate these children were for having no parents to look after them and no place to call home.

I was also more cautious as there seemed to be many dodgy people and I had also read on scammers and muggers doing their thing in the vicinity of Sisowath Quay.

Blowing bubbles by the Tonle Sap

In the waning light, we decided to look for dinner and I was adamant that it had to be Khmer food. Options were aplenty but many looked like restaurants doubling up as bars and in that window of happy hours I did not think that it would be appropriate for Snufkin. We settled for Karma Restaurant which looked decent and not too crowded.  I ordered fishcake for Snufkin and fish amok for myself. The amok looked like something that a cat spews on the floor but the taste was not bad at all. And after all, you gotta try the local dish.

Fish amok

Outside along the corridor, more children were plying their wares with the requisite "One dollar, one dollar". Some were also seen setting up their "home" in front of shops that were already closed. These scenes were a reminder of how poor Cambodia is.

Once dinner was done, we took one of the many waiting tuk-tuks parked on the kerb along Sisowath Boulevard, back to the hotel for an early night before our onward journey to Seam Reap tomorrow.

Note:-
Le Jardin Restaurant: 16 Street 360, Phnom Penh. Open 7.30am to 10pm, closed Mondays.

Karma Restaurant: 273c Sisowath Quay | (The Riverside), Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Open daily 7am to 11pm.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum @ S-21 Prison

After our visit to the Killing Fields, it was time to delve deeper into the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime. It was another 45 minutes of sensory overload as our tuk-tuk weaved through the traffic back towards the city centre.

Our tuk-tuk dropped us on a narrow sidestreet flanked by restaurants on one side and high white walls on the other. Behind the walls stood a collection of buildings that used to be a high school before it was converted to the notorious high security S-21 prison by the Khmer Rouge. Now it looked drab and dreary and soul-less.

 I remember feeling anxious and nervous as I walked through the gates - not because of the small group of beggars either without a limb or with disfigured faces that was surrounding us, but because I have read so much about this place and was not sure whether I had the right expectations. We bought our tickets and then came to a grassy courtyard surrounded by four buildings. The frangipani trees looked out of place, beauty in a place which hold a thousand dark memories, where once screams and moans and silent prayers of liberation intermingled within the dense air.

The first of the four buildings was Building A, where the individual classrooms were converted into interrogation cells. These were preserved as they were left when the prison was discovered by the Vietnamese Army in 1979, sans the bodies and (most of) the blood of course. I went into the first cell carrying Snufkin. I saw  a solitary rusting iron bedframe in the middle of the room, on which decades ago a man was tortured to death. On a wall above the bedframe hung a framed black-and-white photo depicting a gory picture of a bloated and bloodied man, shackled and chained to the very same bed that I was seeing, already tortured beyond recognition. This I did not want Snufkin to see. I asked him to put his head on my shoulder and close his eyes.

I then caught sight of smudges of blood stains and bloodied handprints on the retro yellow wall. Standing in that room, the horror of what had happened was palpable.

Interrogation room

I was told all four floors of Building A was mostly filled with similar cells. I went into a few others on the ground floor but stopped myself from going to the upper floors. There was no way I was going up carrying Snufkin, or worse still, alone.

The barbed wire was apparently put up to prevent prisoners from committing suicide by jumping from the top floors

We went to Building B where the galleries of photos were. This was, to me, equally haunting. Rows upon rows of harrowing black-and-white photos of prisoners; men, women and children. In some of them, you could see the terror, confusion and fear in their eyes. Some stared at you blankly, some imploringly.

All prisoners of S-21 would have their photos taken

Some of the photos that continued to haunt me

Most of these people were no doubt tortured and killed not long after the photos were taken. These were the people on the verge of death. We let Snufkin look at the photos but after only a few minutes he was begging to go out. Even he could sense how depressing it was.  The courtyard outside was a lifesaver. Both of us took turns sitting with him on one of the benches under a tree. Next to us I saw a French family with 2 young girls, aged probably 6 and 8. They were the only children I saw throughout our visit there.

Without the barbed wire, it would have looked like Snufkin was playing outside a school

.


That arrangement meant that I got to see the rest of the place without worrying if any of the exhibits would be unsuitable for Snufkin. And I think the pictures illustrating the methods of torture were a tad too graphic. I suppose it would not be easy to explain the concept of torture to little kids. The actual instruments of torture were also displayed and I marveled at the ingenuity of it all. 

Some of the torture equipmen

In another building, I saw rooms that were shoddily sub-divided into small cells for prisoners. They looked unfit even for animals. More smudges of blood stains on the wall.




Prisoners' cells

Rules and regulation of a concentration camp

There was a lot of things to see and documents to go through, especially in the last building. I would have loved to stay longer and to read more on the place and the history but I realised that I had an increasingly restless child parked in the courtyard. And in any case, the place felt so eerie that I did not dare to linger in rooms when there were no other vistitors.

I came to Cambodia with the primary purpose of seeing Angkor Wat. However, by the time that our short Cambodian trip was over, what left the most impact on me and what I remembered most were not the temples of Angkor, but the Tuol Sleng stories and the Cambodian genocide.

What I saw, read and heard in Cheoung Ek and Tuol Sleng stayed with me for months after I returned home to Malaysia. I felt disturbed. It did not help that I kept on wanting to know more. On top of the book First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung that I bought in Phnom Penh, I went on to buy the sequel After They Killed Our Father and The Elimination by Rithi Panh at Seam Reap Airport. We watched the movie The Killing Fields and also documentaries made by Rithi Panh and I trawled the net for stories by survivors of the regime. It was like Cambodian Month at our house.

I suppose the reason for my heightened interest could be due to the fact that it happened not too long ago. At that time, we were supposed to be already civilized. And those people who killed, maimed and tortured under the name of the Khmer Rougue - most of them are probably still alive...and free.

I learnt a lot from the visits. I learnt the meaning of an agrarian society, of the idealogy behind the whole madness. I also learnt that the depths of the darkness of the human hearts has no limit.

I realise that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I still feel that the tourists to Cambodia who gravitated to Angkor Wat without putting Cheoung Ek and Tuol Sleng in their itineraries have not grasped the essence of the country. So go - don't let travelling with kids stop you.

Note:- 

Address: Street 113, Boeng Keng Kang 3, Chamkar Morn, ☎ +855 23 300-698, Admission fee: USD3, Opening hours: 8am - 5pm 

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - The Killing Fields

Many years ago, I watched a documentary on the Khmer Rouge and the madman Pol Pot, focusing on the Killing Fields and the S21 Prison. The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek is the site of brutal executions and mass graves for more than 17,000 men, women and children. These victims had previously been detained and tortured in S21 Prison, then brought by the truckloads to Choeung Ek to face a certain death (or rather, their deaths were certain the minute they were arrested).

I was intrigued, and told myself that these would definitely be a must-see if I ever found myself in Phnom Penh. Fast forward years later and there I was planning for the trip to Phnom Penh...but now with a 4 year-old towing along. Taking a child of that age to scenes of genocide and torture sound like an invitation to the social services. I scoured the net looking for other parents' experience. There were not many. But the question came up often enough: Should you take your children to visit the Killing Fields? The S21 Prison? Will they be traumatized by the experience?

At the end of the day, I think that it's a personal choice. We chose to take our 4-year old son along because he follows us on all our travels and I could not imagine leaving him with an unknown babysitter in a foreign country. And because we want him to travel to learn. The world after all is one big classroom and on that day in December 2013, Phnom Penh offered a history lesson and also one in gratitude and empathy. Before we went, I told him of how once there was a very bad man named Pol Pot who went on to kill many people and we were going to go to see the place where the skeletons were and to learn of what really happened. I also told him that the men are now being punished (technically not completely true, I know) and the world will not let it happen again (ok, he did not have to know about Rwanda etc yet). That was of course a very simplified version of what happened but I guessed that was enough as an introduction. 

More importantly than that, I kept on reminding him that he must be on his best behaviour and he could only talk in whispers. We brought him to Anne Frank's Museum in Amsterdam when he was 2, the age when there's no such thing as reasoning, and the memory of that is one that I choose not to relive.

And so at 8 am on that day, we got to the hotel reception and requested for a tuk-tuk. I had initially planned to take a taxi as I did not want to expose Snufkin to the dusty roads. But unfortunately we left the taxi booking till late and there were only tuk-tuks available. How bad could it be, I thought. Our tuk-tuk rides the day before was not too bad at all, pollution-wise. But still just to be on the safe side, we requested Kosal our tuk-tuk driver to stop at a pharmacy and get some face masks. That turned out to be the best decision we would ever make on the whole Cambodia trip.

To say that the roads were dusty would be an understatement. At times, it felt like we were driving through a sandstorm and it got worse the further we were from Phnom Penh. For a big part of the the journey the roads were not tarred - just dirt and gravel - so all the tyres from the various types of vehicles sent the dirt and dust whirling and swirling around. To make matters worse, the roads were riddled with potholes: some so big it looked like a bomb dropped and formed a crater. Half-way through the journey, Snufkin laid his head on my lap and fell asleep. I was not sure if it was from queasiness or he was just lulled by the movements.

After 40 minutes of a roller-coaster bumpy ride, we reached Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre.

Entrance to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek

We joined a very short queue outside the small office to the right of the entrance to buy our tickets. With the admission price, we were given a leaflet/map of the place as well as an audio equipment with earphones. With the audio guide providing clear description of each marked area, I don't think a guide is essential.

We listened to the stories of the victims who were mostly immediately executed once they reached the site. They were led blindfolded to the edge of a massive pit, pushed to their knees and eliminated by a swift blow of machetes, hatchets, axes or whatever that was handy. Bullets were precious resources so no one was shot. Today, the mass graves dotted the fields, some fenced in and roofed and some left to the elements. This is one of "166 victims without heads":


Mass grave of headless victims

We saw depressions on the grassy ground, and it was hard to think that these too were where the dead were buried. Apparently in rainy seasons the rain brought up fragments of bones and rags to the surface, making them visible to the public.  It was not the rainy season at that time but as I scanned the grounds, I could see glimpses of bones, somewhat at one with the greens of the grasses.  

There were also glass cases where they kept some of the rags of clothings unearthed from the grounds.This is one of probably only a couple of pictures we took of Snufkin at the site. I did not think it was very  appropriate to treat the site as a tourist attraction and have our pictures taken at every other corner:

Rags of victims' clothings unearthed from the pits

I stood before this glass case for a quite a long time, looking at a pair of faded purple shorts here and a tattered t-shirt there, trying to imagine what went through the wearer's minds before the fatal blows that ended their lives.

Colourful bracelets were tied to the bamboo fences or simply thrown on the grounds by visitors in memory of the tragedy that had happened here:

In memory of the victims of the genocide

One of the most horrifying things that we saw was the "Killing Tree". This was where babies and children were killed by getting their heads bashed against the trunk of this very same tree. Later in the museum on site, I saw an illustration of how this was done and I could not imagine how a human being would be capable of doing such heinous act:

Probably the most haunted tree in the world

The other thing that left the most impact in me is the "Magic Tree". Quite why it was named as such escaped me. What I know is that the tree was used to hang a loudspeaker, which blared revolutionary Khmer songs. The music, combined with the whirring of the generators, meant to drown the scream and moan of the victims on the verge of death. I listened to the recreated version of it on the audio guide and I can tell you that it was the most haunting thing I have ever heard in my life. It rang in my ears for days on end and I could almost taste the terror on my lips.

The magic tree that was not so magical

At the end of the audio guide's narration, we were briefed on the memorial stupa that housed the skulls of those who had been killed at Cheoung Ek in layers upon layers of glass cases.

Skulls in a stupa

From the start to the end of the visitors' path, Snufkin followed us and I tried to explain what we were seeing in the most general terms, skipping the grisly details of course. But when we came to the stupa, I did not feel comfortable to take him to such close contact to the remains of human beings. Both of us took turns going around the stupa, to watch over him play with his sticker book on the bench in front of the stupa.

The verdict on taking a child to the Killing Fields? From that perspective, I would say that it was not too bad - the meadow-like set-up with leafy trees, fluttering butterflies and tranquil surrounding probably made he think that he was having a walk in the park. Despite the skulls and the graves that he saw and the condensed version of the story that he heard from us, at 4 years of age, he was too young to fully comprehend the magnitude of the horror. But S21 Prison, that is another story... 

Note:

Choeung Ek is located approximately 17km outside Phnom Penh and all tuk-tuk//taxi drivers should be able to take you there. Ours cost USD15 for half a day, enough time to take us to both Choeung Ek and S-21 Prison inclusive of waiting times. Admission: USD6 including audio guide. Opening hours; 9.00 - 5.3-pm.

  

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - An evening in Phnom Penh

I had planned for a visit to the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda on our first day in Phnom Penh but the opening hours were rather limited (7.30 to 11am and 2 to 5pm).  After our visit to the National Museum, we ended up recharging our batteries in the hotel room longer than expected and by the time the tuk-tuk dropped us in the vicinity of the palace, it was close to 5pm. And even then, we were not sure where the main entrance was. The royal residence of the King of Cambodia was in a huge compound completely surrounded by high mustard-coloured walls. The gates that we saw was closed and the royal guards manning the guard posts did not look like they wouldn't mind being treated like a tourist information centre.

Chan Chhya Pavillion

So I conceded to the fact that we would not be able to see the Royal Palace. It was a good thing that the Moonlight Pavillion or Chan Chhaya Pavillion was very visible from outside.  This was an open-air pavillion serving as stage for Khmer classical dance in the past and present. Its gilded tiered roofs glinted beneath the evening sun, the opulence of it offered us glimpses of what we have missed within the royal compound.

Outside the Royal Palace

The traffic-free boulevard along the palace walls facing the river was very lively. Snufkin kept himself busy blowing bubbles that we bought for USD1 from one of the hawkers, chasing pigeons and posing as a guard in one of the guard posts. We strolled along the palace walls, guided by the map to our next destination: Street 240. This was apparently the place to go to shop for souvenirs, trinkets and quirky products. I expected a wide boulevard, flanked by large stores with throngs of tourists. But this was Phnom Penh, and what I actually saw of Street 240 was much better than what I envisaged. 

Street 240 is narrow and leafy, the shops lining it were mostly small and cosy. We saw other tourists of course, but none of the dreaded tour groups. Unfortunately, it was getting dark and based on what I had read about Phnom Penh at night , we did not want to be out and about with a 4-year old child on dimly-lit streets.

In fact, what I had read about Phnom Penh (only after booking the flight tickets) in the days before the trip made me feel increasingly paranoid and anxious. Stories of being kidnapped by the man that was your tuk-tuk driver, being a victim of snatch and grab thefts while you're walking or even while you're sitting in a tuk-tuk, violent crimes towards tourists and even murders - did I make the right decision? In the end, I decided that we only had to abide to a few rules while in Phnom Penh: No daypack (I only carried minimal amount of cash and our passports in a money belt and my LP in my hand). Stick to the tourist trail. No going out at night.

So that was why we rushed through Street 240. We did stop at The Shop (I could not resist), a quaint bakery-cum-cafe-cum chocolate shop - for our coffee and smoothie fix and also to take-away some food for dinner (vegetarian quiche, buns and pastries).

The Shop @ Street 240

Last mission of the day was to buy some books at Monument Books & Toys. On the map, it looked easy enough to get to from The Shop but in reality it involved some serious skills in road crossing and motorcycle avoidance. We got to the intersection between Street 240 and Norodom Boulevard to discover in dismay that the bookstore was located across the multi-lane road and the said road was practically heaving with traffic. No traffic light. No zebra crossing. There was no way we could cross this, I thought. But we did. I carried Snufkin and we crossed lane by lane, using our hands to stop the traffic whenever required. It turned out that this was the only way you could cross the roads in Phnom Penh.

Inside the bookstore, it was an oasis of calm and serenity compared to the madness outside. Bought several books including Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father and a children's book on the Cambodian genocide. Then we hopped into a waiting tuk-tuk in front of the book store which took us straight to the hotel.