My stopover in Phnom Pehn was short but intense. I arrived late afternoon when all the amenities had already closed or were about to do so. So, after dropping my stuff at the hostel I took a long stroll along the Tonlé Sap river and had some dinner on the way -best papaya salad ever!
Although it's certainly not Bangkok -for the better, I dare say- I found the Cambodian capital to be more developed than expected, with locals enjoying a nightly walk along the boulevard or a beer or two beside the river bank. I went up to the night market, where the crowd was watching some local pop-stars singing on a stage in the middle of the square.
 |
| Cambodian X-factor in action |
The day after, the main reason for me dropping by the capital was waiting for me: the killing fields. Of course I would have liked to do the palace and the Silver Pagoda, but since I was constrained by time, instead of being blinded by the grandeur of the empire, I turned to the human factor. And I didn't regret it.
The first thing that strikes the visitor upon entering the killing fields is how nice the site appears to be. How could such a bright, peaceful place surrounded by vegetation ever have been a place of the deepest doom and sorrow?
 |
| The Killing Fields museum |
It is mainly because there is no trace of the old barracks: they were all dismantled for their much needed wood and metal when Pol Pot's regime fell. On the spots where they used to stand, there are signs depicting how the scenes might have looked then. Such a pity that the original buildings weren't preserved to remind the world of the atrocities of the past, and of the fact that they could happen again if forgotten. Maybe that's why Cambodians smile. Maybe that's why they seem to live, oblivious of their history...
 |
| A drawing depicting the prisoners crammed in the barracks |
The common graves of the victims of the purges stay there though: when the killing fields turned into a museum, the bones were removed and are now on display both inside glass cabinets and the memorial stupa. New bones emerge each season when the soil is stirred by the rains, and if I looked close enough, I could distinguish among the dried leaves tiny pieces of a different sort of dried material: human bone.
 |
| Bones disinterred from the common graves, from shinbones to jaws and teeth |
Also on the common graves, the victim's clothes are perfectly distinguishable. 40 years haven't wiped them out of the earth completely. The colourful ones normally belong to children.
 |
| Rags withered by the passage of time |
Festooning the very centre of the killing fields stands a memorial stupa, built to enshrine the uncountable skulls and bones of the dead. A notice explains the weapons that the soldiers used to massacre the population -simple yet lethal ones, from hoes to wooden poles- and how to identify which one was used to kill whom by looking at the breach or hole in a given skull.
 |
| The memorial stupa holds the remains of the victims |
 |
| Broken skulls on display inside the stupa |
For anyone interested in the Khmer Rouge topic, I recommend "Survival from the killing fields". It is a brutal, true story written by Haing Ngor -a survivor himself- and Roger Warner. It was later made into a Hollywood movie.
After the killing fields, to continue with the same topic, I decided to briefly visit the Genocide Museum. If it is ironic that the killing fields look almost like a park, it is even more so to imagine that this Communist prison used to be a primary school. It still preserves the original distribution, the inscriptions, and even the bars to exercise in the courtyard.
 |
| The school courtyard seen from atop one of the wings of the building |
 |
| Old classrooms turned into cells, with their original beds |
Luckily for me, the museum was holding an exhibition on women working in the gulags during the Pol Pot years. The Khmer Rouge gave a lot of importance to reproduction as a way to glorify the nation and spread the ideals of the regime, and they used to couple single people as they saw fit. The couples of course didn't have a say, and opposing the marriage meant death. A number of survivors, women of 50-60 years-old now, speak about their feelings towards having to take unwanted strangers as partners.
With these and many other testimonies echoing inside my head, I glumly made my way to the bus station. Back home to Battambang.
