Around-the-World with Drew & Erin: Cambodia

Join The Blogging Post as we head around-the-world with our friends Drew & Erin. They’ll be sending us regular dispatches and updates from around, across, and all over the globe. This is their first post from Cambodia…

Contrasts of Cambodia

Cambodia is a land of contrasts. On one side, the Cambodian (or Khmer, as they call themselves) culture is responsible for one of the man-made wonders of the world in the ancient temples and cities of Angkor.

However, more recently, the same Khmer people are also responsible for one of the darkest episodes in recent human history during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Both of these extremes were on full display for the visitor and were central to our visit to Cambodia.

Siem Reap
We flew by air from Vientiane, Laos to the bustling city of Siem Reap, Cambodia, which is the gateway to the ruins of the ancient Khmer empire. We enjoyed a wonderful stay there as we had a friendly guesthouse where the staff enthusiastically taught us their language - or at least did their best to try. During the days, we explored the extensive temple ruins by bike and by tuk-tuk. A tuk-tuk is the local method of transport consisting of a motorbike pulling a carriage behind.

The ancient temples are truly spectacular owing to their immense size - some structures are up to a mile long - and intricate detail of stone carvings and bas reliefs depicting Hindu, Buddhist, and secular stories and figures. In the evenings we reveled in Siem Reap’s lively nightlife for travelers and traditional Khmer food which is delectable. As we were enjoying our visit with another American couple who are our best of friends, we were having a splendid visit to Cambodia.

Phnom Penh
Upon arrival in the capital city in Phnom Penh, however, the tone of the trip changed. Our first full day there, we tackled some local historical sites that deal with the reign of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge (which means “red Khmer” in French) were a radical Communist group that won a bloody civil war and ruled the country from 1975 to 1979. As a key tenet of their rule, they attempted to transform the society into an agrarian communist state. In reality, they ruled with an iron first and ran the country into the ground with the Cambodian people suffering immensely. During half a decade of their rule, nearly a fifth of the population of about eight million people died as a result of execution, starvation, or exhaustion from overwork.

The Killing Fields
In the morning of our first full day in Phnom Penh, we visited the Tuol Sleng Museum. This museum is a former high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a top-secret prison of their security police. S-21, as it was known, is one of the most morbid places I have ever set foot. During its operation, an estimated 14,000 prisoners passed through the walls of S-21, and only seven survived. The rest were detained, interrogated, tortured, and executed. It’s a rough place to visit.

In the afternoon, we visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. The Killing Fields are the location, about 15 kilometers outside of town, where the prisoners of S-21 and other enemies of the Khmer Rouge were brought to meet their end. It’s a memorial site covered with mass graves containing up to an estimated 20,000 bodies. As you can imagine, the combination of the Tuol Sleng Museum and the Killing Fields makes for a tough day of sightseeing.

Royal Palace

After that initial shock, we did manage to take in some of the more enjoyable sights and experiences of Phnom Penh, most notably the Royal Palace and Independence Monument. We enjoyed a pleasant walk and some people-watching along the riverfront promenade, as well as some quality time and laughs with our friends. We even tried some of the exotic
local foods like a mouth-watering plate of frog legs in ginger. These were actually quite tasty, sort of comparable to eating chicken wings. We declined to be more adventurous and try the spider, cricket, grubs, snakes, or sparrow that were also offered in the street markets. I think that was a wise choice.

All in all, we had an unforgettable travel experience in Cambodia - but one with an edge. This made for a different and more challenging style of travel than that to which I am accustomed, but it provided some valuable and eye-opening lessons for me. And out of fairness to Cambodia, I should note that we saw only a limited scope of the country and that which is more urban and touristy; explorations of the southern beaches and rural countryside would surely offer widely differing experiences. Regardless, the nature of the visit made us look forward to our final few days on the beaches of Thailand to wrap up our stay in Southeast Asia.