The dark side of Cambodia
07.20.2007 - 07.23.2007
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My two days in Phnom Penh have been some of the most, exciting, educational, and heartbreaking of my life. Beside the beautiful palaces and wats, this city is home to several memorials to the victims of the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot in the late 70s (more about this after the amusing stuff, but before that rant on corruption).
Amusing stuff:
I will briefly try to describe motorbiking through the streets of Phnom Penh: First off, the motorbike I rode was not an automatic, simple scooter like those of Thailand. This thing was somewhat like a Honda Trail 110, or mini-motorcycle with combo hand/foot brake and four speeds changed by foot. (I rented it from "Lucky! Lucky!" instead of "New! New!" motorbike rentals.) Pulling into the street for the first time was very intimidating and I had to carefully look both ways before turning right, because there are almost as many people driving on the left side of the road as the right side. Because most traffic signals don't work, major intersections become chaotic free-for-alls where tuk tuks inch around turning trucks and the occasional motorbike flies through, almost taking your rear-view mirror off. Oh, and stop signs mean nothing at all. In fact, stopping at a stop sign puts you at risk of getting rear-ended by the thousand of flying motorbikes behind you. The best you can do is slow down slightly and pick a trajectory that doesn't conflict with someone going on the cross street. To make things worse, there are traffic police sitting on some corners, waiting to pull people over for infractions. I got pulled over for "running a red light" and the cop simply wrote "$50" on the back of a ticket, of which I gave him $20. Turns out $1, or even a few cigarettes, would have been enough to get set free, but sometimes you have to play the fool to learn. (I think Ben warned me about this exact scenario, but he said it was common in Vietnam.) I returned the motorbike after that, and I think I will wait until the slightly less lawless country of Vietnam to try again.
As for crossing the street on foot: it is a bit like a game of "Frogger" where you have to jump left and right, back and forth to avoid being hit by a moto or tuk tuk.
The money situation here is quite amusing as well. ATM machines spit out American dollars, which I found quite bizarre, and prices for most tourist-oriented products are quoted in dollars. The Riel (Cambodia's currency) usually looks like Guatemalan Quetzales (like it has been through a garbage disposal) and is used for change below a dollar (4000 Riel ~= $1). Also, they seem to accept Thai Baht at many places, though at a crap exchange rate.
Drinking whiskey with Claire, Anna, and Nicola
Still drinking whiskey
Drinking with Alex the tuk tuk driver/hotel staff
Cambodia beats Guatemala in the clown-car olympics
Royal Palace in Phnom Penh
Nice Spire at the Royal Palace
A big photo of the queen at the Royal Palace
Oh, that's just nasty
Heartbreaking stuff:
I was a bit too young to learn much about the genocide in Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot, but it is something that stares you in the face while in Phnom Penh. The Tuel Sleng genocide museum is converted from a Khmer Rouge era prison and tells the story of the millions of Cambodians who were tortured and killed because they were a threat to the lifestyle envisioned by the crazy ruler Pol Pot. Any person with an education, who spoke a foreign language, who were not ethnic Khmer, or just sort of bothered the administration were imprisoned and subsequently lined up near mass-burial ditches to get their heads bashed in (to save bullets). The Khmer Rouge were trying to create an ideal agrarian society (Communism at a very basic level) in which anyone who had independent thought just didn't fit in. Turns out people get pretty pissed off when their friends and family get taken away to be killed. The experiment didn't quite work out, and the lack of infrastructure, overwhelming sense of mourning, and general chaos screwed up the rice crop and another million or so people died from starvation. Though these facts can be learned in a history book or on Wikipedia, they become quite a bit more real once you visit Cambodia. The thousands of sad and scared looking victims staring at you from photos behind glass cases look just like the smiling women who serve you fried noodles, tuk tuk drivers who bother you for business and drink whiskey with you if they can take the night off, the five-year-old boys who know every American state and capitol, and the playing children laughing at you while riding a bike through flooded streets. Those of you from Stockton or Lodi ever wonder why there were so many "Asians" at Morada Middle and Tokay High School? Well, a good portion of them are Cambodians from families that certainly lost many loved ones and managed to escape to the "Promise Land" before they were killed themselves. Also, I realize that after a week in Cambodia, I don't remember seeing more that a couple of people over 60 years old, a very strange feeling. Visiting the Choeung Ek killing fields, you can see the ditches dug to disinter the mass graves and a pillar of over 8000 human skulls as testament to Cambodia’s darkest years.
The rules at Tuel Sleng Prison
A few of the thousands of genocide victims shown at Tuel Sleng
A few of the 8000 skulls on display at Choeung Ek
Monument of 8000 skulls at Choeung Ek
The ditches at Choeung Ek are disinterred mass graves
More heartbreaking stuff:
The last week in Cambodia has been so densely packed with amazing adventures, "I almost died" stories, and memorable people that I would be sitting in the dial-up internet cafe for far too long recording them all. But the underlying government corruption that makes this country so lawless and exciting, is so blatant that it sickens me.
First the guard at the border processing visas: On the front of the visa it says "US$20", but the guard charged me $35 (He pulled out change from the wad of money in his pocket which doubles as the cash register). Multiply that $15 excess by a couple hundred foreigners crossing at Poipet a day and it is quickly apparent that this is the richest man in Cambodia. To be fair, I hear he splits the money with his family and some of the other border guards. Most of the people around here survive on about two or three dollars a day.
Next, the story of the road to Siem Reap: At the Cambodian border, the asphalt ends abruptly and a shoddy dirt road rattles the hell out of anyone bold enough to not fly from Bangkok to Siem Reap. Apparently Thai Airlines pays a nice chunk of cash to the Cambodian government to postpone the sealing of the country's most important road. This seems pretty stupid, because it must decrease the number of tourists visiting Angkor Wat, but it gets better...
Third, the Angkor Wat ticket sales: The government does not own the rights to charge admission to Angkor Wat, they sold it to Sokimax Petroleum Corporation. (No wonder they don't care how many visitors see it) I need to do more research before asserting any hard facts, but suffice to say that most of the money earned for admission the Cambodia's world-class tourist attraction never even sees the Cambodian government, let alone the people. But certainly that cannot be too much money? Try the $40 I paid times about 3-4 million visitors a year and you get something well above $100 million. In Cambodia I think that would buy every last person a shiny new motorbike. It could most definitely send a few kids to school so that they can learn a decent education and not just random facts about rich countries. Oh, and Sokimax is responsible for reporting the official number of visitors each year, and they supposedly low-ball it, so that they keep more for themselves.
Fourth the traffic cop: Was an asshole, but the same thing happens in Mexico.
The moral of the story is this: Such monumental corruption and short-sightedness in the government will keep this country in the lowest brackets of world poverty. Perhaps if all of the wealth in the country was shared there was a central body to oversee this and... wait, I think that is what caused the genocide. Well, one could argue that Communism is the root of all evil, but it is much more complex than that. (In fact the richest nations in the world [those Scandinavian bastards] are basically socialist countries.) It is the corruption and the greed that makes people stop doing their job of overseeing the country and forces nations like Cambodia and Guatemala to burn their trash on the street. That is why corruption cannot be tolerated and the Dukster should not have been given any leniency for selling his seat in Congress to the highest bidder. This might seem obvious to most of you, and you could even probably could have written an essay with these exact arguments, but this was simply a discussion topic and not a belief of mine before I came to Cambodia.
Oh yeah, and I couldn't rent a motorbike in Siem Reap because the competition for Angkor Wat transportation got so cut-throat that the tuk-tuk drivers were sabotaging the rental bikes and vice-versa, so the government disallowed motorbike rentals to tourists. The next update will be from Vietnam and shouldn't be such a downer...
Tom
Posted by tommydavis 07.23.2007 03:24 Archived in Cambodia Comments (1)
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