An Eventful Day with Many Mixed Emotions

Yesterday I had the blessing of seeing my aunt and cousin from Los Angeles. They were on a cruise that docked in Phnom Penh and I spent the day with them. I had lunch and dinner with them aboard their beautiful cruise ship and I haven’t eaten like that in 2 months! I also met a lot of their cruise companions and had a wonderful time getting to know them.

Aunt Takayo and Cousin Juliet

The stern of the cruise ship

The ship's entertainment room - a group of
Khmer children performed 5 dances for us

We visited the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda, National Museum, one of the infamous Killing Fields, and S.21 Detention Center (now the Genocide Museum called Tuol Slang). It was a lot for one day and especially the last two places we visited (the Killing Field and S.21) left us speechless and changed our hearts in such a deep way that the world will never look quite the same to us.
The Silver Pagoda - you may be wondering why “The Silver Pagoda” is so named since it is not silver, but mostly gold on the outside. The reason is because the inside floor is solid silver. Cambodia sent France 12 tons of silver to construct the floor and what they received back from France was a 6 ton silver floor (5,000 tiles).

Part of the Royal Palace grounds

The Silver Pagoda

  

This statue is just outside of The Silver Pagoda. Originally,
it was of Napoleon on the horse. After Cambodia regained
independence from France King Norodom had the head
chopped off and replaced it with a bust of his own head.

The Killing Fields – Saloth Sar would become known as Pol Pot (for Political Potential, politique potentielle). He led the Khmer Rouge and was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and Prime Minister of the Democratic Kampuchea. This vicious dictatorship known as DK pushed their socialistic agrarian agenda, tortured and killed at least 2,000,000 Cambodians (about 25% of the total population of Cambodia) in the mid-late 1970’s. It is hard for me to comprehend how genocide to this level could have taken place within my lifetime. The United States is tied into this sad history in Cambodia. In 1969 American B-52’s bombed Cambodia because of Cambodia’s alliance with Communist North Vietnam (Vietcong). It is widely believed that the CIA supported Lon Nol who led a revolt against King Norodom who then took refuge in France. Lon Nol was made Prime Minister of Cambodia without election, but when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge came into power in Cambodia in the mid-1970's Lon Nol fled to Hawaii. Our guide yesterday told us that the DK would torture prisoners until they agreed to be aligned with the "CIA" - most of these prisoners not even knowing what "CIA" stood for. Then they would force the prisoner to disclose who their family and friends were so that they too could be taken as prisoners.

Three hundred and forty three killing fields have been identified in Cambodia. The Killing Field that we visited yesterday was located about 12 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh (where the S.21 Detention Center is located). It is located in a field that used to be a Chinese Cemetery. There were 20,000 Cambodians who were executed at this particular Killing Field. In the field there are palm trees and we learned that about 15% of the people who were executed were shot, but that the vast majority were bludgeoned with a heavy stick and then decapitated (many with the sharp edges of palm fronds). I am struggling to write this; it literally makes me weep with sadness/sickness to visit this history, but we owe it to Cambodia and to these millions of innocent victims of Cambodia to share and to know their place in history. (Unfortunately, this recent history is not taught in Cambodian schools.)

This is one of the graves at the Killing Field. These bracelets
have been left as blessings for the victims.

Open grave sites all throughout the grounds

Vietnamese soldiers dug up 8,585 skulls of execution victims. Many of these skulls ended up in this Memory Monument. Most of the graves that the soldiers dug up had between 50 – 100 bodies per grave. In all they found 129 graves at this Killing Field alone. This is a picture of one of the graves that contained 166 headless bodies. The reason why these people were decapitated is that DK (the Khmer Rouge) believed these people to be Vietnamese sympathizers and thought that without their heads they could not sympathize any longer. It is widely believed that the women who were victims of DK were raped before they were executed. I cannot write any more about this. It is too painful and I am literally feeling sick posting these pictures and writing about this.  

The Memory Monument

Oh, how this makes me sick to post this, but to ignore it would be
to dishonor these innocent victims and silence their cries

S.21 Detention Center where prisoners were tortured 3 times/day,
shackled in leg irons, and their defecation placed in a box  

S.21 - prisoners would be hung upside down their heads placed in
these pots, which were filled with defecation

One of the buildings at S.21. It was a former school. It was a haunting experience
to walk through the floors of these prison cells: floor one men, floor two women, and
floor three children; and to see the pictures of the prisoners.

My aunt commented that she found it remarkable how the Khmer people smiled all the time and were so welcoming, happy, and friendly - especially given this recent ugly history. I too have found Khmer people to be as my aunt describes - they have emerged from tragedy to have hearts filled with warmth, kindness, and love. God creates beauty from ashes.

 

Election Protests Continue

Here is a link to photos from today's election protest march. This march started next to where I live and went down to the Riverfront. I am planning to join the protest tomorrow.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/811389/Cambodias-opposition-party-supporters-rally-against-election-results.aspx

You Are a Very Rich Man

The staff at the café in the building that I live in have a good sense of humor. Here is the latte that they served me. When it arrived about three staff walked over to my table and hovered over me with big smiles.

 

After nearly 2 ½ months the things that I shipped from the US were delivered to my home today. There was not a single box that did not break open in transit. (Perhaps the Cambodian Football Club kicked them all the way from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh and that is also why they took so long to get here.) Only the wooden boxes that I made to ship my art in made it undamaged. I was very surprised to see that everything was delivered and that nothing was confiscated by Customs. That being said, I now have way more things than I need and so I will be giving away a lot of things. (The lead mover helped me unpack some of the boxes and said numerous times, "You are a very rich man." I really feel badly for the over-abundance of things I have bought.) What took up the most room to ship was my mattress, my beloved Sleep Number mattress that I have had for 11 years. Come to find out that the bed frame in my room is larger than queen size! On top of that there were two casualties right off the bat. When I plugged in my DVD player it started smoking and the Sleep Number pump also suffered a Cambodian currency blow out. This is the difference between 200 volts versus the American 110 volts. So, now I am nervous about using my blender or coffee maker until I buy a Voltage Regulator. Interestingly, I have had no issues with my iPhone or computer chargers; I think because the charging cords of each of these may have a regulator built into it.

Homemade shipping crates

 

My Khmer lessons have been exceptional. Dany, my teacher (Locrew in Khmer) is patient and really works me hard. Today our lesson went over by nearly an hour and at the end she asked me if I was tired. Yeah I was tired. My mind was fried! Part of our lesson today was to go to the market (next door) and I had to buy three small items and could only speak in Khmer. Plus, I had to bargain on each of the item’s prices (Anee moiman? – how much is this?... Klymay! – too much!; Neohm teng bye – I will buy two). I unsuccessfully tried to reduce the price of a roll of Mentos from 1000 riel (25 cents) to 750 riel and was similarly unsuccessful in reducing the price on everything else – finally buying everything at full price and walking away from the market (Psahh in Khmer) with a $1 bag full of junk food (potato chips, Milo, and Mentos). Dany was happy with how I did though. I also learned how to tell time today; and we have just begun writing lessons too and that is very complicated.                                                                                                                                                                                

 

If you have seen my handwriting then you know that I have penmanship that resembles a drunk monkey’s. Add to that trying to write using Word’s Shapes function and a mouse pad and you really have a recipe for unrecognizable writing, but truly this is approximately how Khmer looks for the numbers 1 – 10. My homework yesterday was to do math problems using only these characters.  

Election Protest

Having had a very long with the students from Japan I got only a few restless hours of sleep before waking up early to attend the election protest rally at Wat Phnom (the center of Phnom Penh). As I cycled down Russian Blvd I noticed that as I neared the street named Monivong there began to be a strong military and police presence. As soon as I crossed Monivong the noise level jumped and huge crowds could be seen. The roads were jam packed and I was on my bike. I braked as a group of teenagers slowly began jaywalking in front of me, but a tuk tuk that was behind me and to my left misjudged his width and the distance that separated us. Although using my brakes I could not stop and I just got pushed from behind by the tuk tuk and into the group of jaywalkers. Thankfully they were able to avert getting hit; although I was only going at a snail’s pace anyway. At Wat Phnom there many people gathering on both sides of the street and in front of businesses. I parked my bike and began to walk. Although it was still before 8:00 it was already a scorching hot day.

As I walked towards the front of the gathering the crowd got much thicker, louder, and more energetic. A stage had been constructed on the North end of the park and there were many people on it including a few monks. The ages of people at the protest spanned the spectrum from teenagers to very elderly with most of the elderly in the back (south end). To the side of the park there was a continuous line of parked motos and across the street tuk tuks - some of them with political signs posted on the side. It seems that one major theme if the signs saw is "my vote, my life".

 

The crowd was mostly seated and yet very energetic. Before today there were many people who were very concerned about the danger factor for this protest. They recommended that people (especially expats) just stay home and/or avoid the Wat Phnom area. But the demonstration was very peaceful and military presence was barely noticeable at the protest. There were a lot of police present, but they were also calm and just helpful to make sure that traffic kept moving and that people were able to safely cross streets. 

 

 

On my way home I was able to take a picture of an empty military flatbed truck - the kind that I mentioned in an earlier post that transports dozens of soldiers wearing helmets and facemasks, and holding rifles. As I took this picture and officer came running up to me and ordered me to get moving away.