The border between Vietnam and Cambodia may be invisible but the difference was pretty clear. As part of our Mekong tour, our guide met us at the dock and the sight seeing began. We went to the Presidential Palace which was beautiful and reminded us of Thailand.

We didn’t have too much time left so we went to the Killing Fields. We headed out of the tourist area and, BOOM, back in India. Garbage everywhere; streets in horrible disrepair. We didn’t see streets this bad in Delhi or Mumbai but there they were in Phnomh Penh. Poverty, dust, and filth. You could hardly see when we came back on this road at dusk because of the dust. I know it is hard to get any details from the video, but it gives you a feel of what the downtown area of the biggest city in Cambodia looks like just a few kilometers from the tourist/palace area.

The drive to the Killing Fields took about 40 minutes. Our guide educated us on Pol Pot. What a unbelievable madman. He was Cambodia’s Hitler. Yet even Hitler did not tear up the country’s whole infrastructure. Pol Pot did; he wanted the people to go back to the simple life, no conveniences, no machinery. He dismantled everything, churches, homes, sanitation, roads, bridges. He then reduced the population of Phnomh Penh by forcing everyone out…literally. They could basically take what was on their backs and had to just walk….walk….walk. Many died from exhaustion and starvation. And many more died at his hands in the various killing fields which have been found all over Cambodia and they are not done finding them yet. In total there are at least 3 million people killed. We need to do more research into what set Pol Pot off; he actually used to live in the Palace for part of his teenage years. He even went to France for a college education. Somewhere along the line, he befriended some high government Chinese and became radicalized. I know this is a very incomplete story here but it is the best I have right now until more research is done (or feel free to do it yourself and let me know.)

This memorial reminded me of Auschwitz. It is a horrible thing and very hard to see but maybe, just maybe, it will remind people of the horror and will never permit something like this to happen again. Now, we were all living our lives in the US totally ignorant of the gravity of this situation. We were in college and then starting our married life together, happy and relatively carefree. Meanwhile in Cambodia, children were told they had to kill their parents or they would be killed and the parents begged their children to do it. People were brought to The Killing Fields in Phonmh Penh as well as numerous other sites around the country to be executed. There was no pretense of them being prisoners. They were bludgeoned, poisoned, beheaded, buried alive….within 24 hours of arriving here. The spot used to be a Chinese graveyard and no one really knows what happened to the bodies that were interned there. The Memorial is strikingly sad yet very respectful. The skulls in the building have all been categorized by age and method of death. Walking through the fields, there were many places that clothing, bone fragments, and teeth are still working their way to the surface.

 

As horrible as this was to see, it gave us a better idea as to what the Cambodian people have been through and pulled themselves out of in the last 40 years. It is easy to criticize and say it is filthy with garbage piled up and the roads are bad. Yet 40 years ago, they had no roads and no way to control their garbage. In all respects, the country of Cambodia is only 40 years old, building them selves up from the evil and useless carnage that was Pol Pot. By the way, somehow he managed to live to a ripe old age of 78.

Our hotel in Phnomh Penh was nice enough until Buzz woke at 3am and told me we would have to change rooms because there were ants in the bed biting him. I thought, yea, right. But sure enough there were!

The next morning we hopped a bus to Sihanoukville on the coast and then a ferry to Coconut Beach on Ko Rong Island. We had a cute little bungalow with no a/c and no hot water which was ok most of the time. Between the rooster (3:30am) and the construction of the new bungalows (6:45am) we did not get much sleep. The rooster was dealt with but the construction guys would not actually hammer until 8am but played music, cooked their breakfast over a fire, etc., right outside our window at 6:30am. Oh well, the beach and ocean water was gorgeous enough to let this pass; we can sleep at the next stop. We lazed around with our friend Katja who ended up there the same time we were there.

One of the coolest things was the bio luminescent plankton. At night, we just walked in to the water about chest deep and moved your hands and legs around and the plankton glittered around your limbs. I tried to get a video of it but it just wouldn’t work.

Our Thanksgiving Day was spent on a boat, snorkeling, fishing, swimming. We made a stop at Koh Touch which is the main “town” on the island. We had heard it was the party beach but nothing quite prepared us for what we saw. Think of the seediest beach you have ever seen and multiply it by 10. OMG! We were so very happy we were not staying there. Later, while we swam at Long Beach, the softest sand beach we have ever seen (it was like powdered sugar and it squeaked when you walked on it!) the boat crew cooked our catch and some veggies and rice and we ate “takeout” while watching the sunset. A Thanksgiving feast we will remember for a long time.

The ferry ride back to Sihanoukville was highlighted by all the hung over people getting on from Ko Touch and the one young man puking into a bag. We stopped at a great little water side Greek restaurant before catching our flight and ended up across the walkway from the puking guy who continued to puke all through lunch! Ahh…what a lovely scene that was!