Author: Kathryn & Rick World Travelers

We left the hotel at 8:00 this morning.  Here is a funny notice we found on the desk in our room at the hotel giving the prices of “lost”, aka stolen, items.  We were tempted to spend the $510 for the mattress, but ultimately decided against it.

We headed to Siem Reap and the ancient city of Angkor Wat that morning.  The bus ride is 7 hours, but luckily we have a couple of stops en route.  The ride gave us an opportunity to get to know our guide, Vuhta, a kind, gentle, funny 34 year old Cambodian man.  He didn’t live through the Khmer Rouge, but he has known the hardship associated with that period in history. As a child he almost dropped out of school because he was literally starving.  Luckily his father found a job as a construction supervisor in Siem Reap and thus was able to provide food for his family.  Vutha lost one of his grandfathers to the Khmer Rouge.  

He gave us lots background information.  Cambodia is the size of Oklahoma and has 16 million citizens.  The prime minister has been in power for 34 years.  There was an opposition party for a while, but it has now been eliminated.  The prime minister and his family are worth somewhere been $0.5B and $1B. The prime minister’s son is expected to eventually take over for his father.  

Vuhta talked about education.  Cambodia doesn’t have enough teachers, so children are slotted into one of two sessions a day in primary school, receiving just four hours of school per day.  In lower and upper secondary school there are not enough hours to teach the students the necessary information to pass the graduation exams,  so parents need to pay for supplemental education if they want their children to continue beyond secondary school. Many kids just drop out.  

The medical system is similarly tragic.  They don’t have enough doctors to care for the populace and medical school is very expensive.  Corruption within the system is prevalent, so candidates who do not pass the necessary exams to become a doctor just bribe officials to get their license, further degrading the system.  In effect there are many people impersonating doctors, providing inferior medical treatment to those they serve.

About 45% of the people do not have access to electricity.  The government says they have a plan to bring that number up to 85% in five years, but it is likely just words.  Limited electricity service significantly diminishes Cambodian’s access to information via the internet, fueling government ability to keep people ignorant and keep the current regime in power.   

We passed a lot of rice fields.  80% of the Cambodian population are farmers.  Vuhta explained the process of growing rice.  The farmers lack the technology to make the rice fields as productive as neighboring countries —  the fields in Vietnam yield twice as much rice as the fields in Cambodia.  

Vuhta also talked about Chinese visitors to the country. The government is encouraging Chinese investment in Cambodia, but the Cambodian people don’t like it.  Chinese investment and Chinese people are effectually flooding the country.  They are buying property (they can’t own land but they can own buildings) and, as a result, drive up the price of housing and services, displacing poorer Cambodians.   Furthermore, the Chinese have been upping the price of some of the most lucrative Thai sea coast areas to build casinos.  Cambodians can’t afford to visit these places any longer and are thus being shut out from enjoying what was once a national treasure.  Cambodians are very concerned about the amount of power the Chinese have and the leverage they use to impact their people.

There were about eight million land mines placed in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese.  Today approximately two million remained buried.  The government projects that it will take about ten years to clear them, making a walk in the jungle a potentially lethal experience.  Vietnam ultimately invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge out of power.  During the Vietnamese reign of the eastern provinces they sent young Cambodian boys into the forest to clear the land mines.  We saw a number of people who were missing limbs as a result. Today, while that land has been returned to Cambodia, the Cambodians remain suspicious of Vietnam’s territorial intentions.

So while all of that is grim, it seems that most people have enough food to eat and shelter over their heads.  Better than some places we’ve been.  

We made several stops during our ride.  The first one was Skuon, a village famous for tarantulas.  We pulled up to a woman’s house.  She has four children and selling tarantulas helps support her family.  The Cambodia people have learned to eat quite a few things that seem gross to us including snakes, scorpions, and silk worms, out of necessity.  It’s evidence of what they have been through.  

Tarantulas live in holes in the ground where they feed on the roots of trees.  Together we walked to the backyard,  she found a hole and started digging.  It wasn’t long before she had a tarantula in hand. He was feisty and ready to fight.  She picked him up from the back and clipped his fangs with a pair of pliers.  She has been bitten twice and she told us that the bite turns into a red, painful bump for several days.  Allison, in our group, held the tarantula.  We took the tarantula back to her porch area where she cleaned several of them in water.  Then she killed them by pinching their bellies.  Next she mixed together a little salt, pepper, garlic, and chicken powder, coated the tarantulas with the mixture and put them in hot oil to fry them.  Preparation time was five minutes. While she was cooking, Rick got a good laugh by saying, in his best Julia Child voice, “first you take the tarantula . . .”  Everyone except me tried at least a leg.  Some people ate the bellies too.  They all said it tasted pretty good.  I couldn’t bring myself to try one.

Later along the road Vutha stopped the bus to buy lotus plants.  He showed us how to peel the plant to find the seeds.  I tasted one of these, it was OK!?

Next stop, a village that specializes in stone carvings.  We stopped for only about 5 minutes.  Here are pictures.

We drove on to our lunch spot and had a very nice lunch on the shore of a lake.

Back on the bus our next stop was the ancient bridge of Kampong Klein. The bridge was built in the 12th century during the reign of King Jayavarman VII (CE 1181 –1220). Until recently the main traffic in the area was still crossing this bridge.   Nowadays the bridge is closed to trucks, busses and cars — only pedestrian and light traffic can cross the bridge. We walked across the bridge while our bus drove over the new  bridge to meet us on the other side.

Our last stop along the road was to buy kralan from one of many women with roadside carts.  These women fill hollowed out bamboo with a mixture of sticky rice, beans, coconut milk, and sugar.  Then they stuff banana leaves on either end of the tube to seal it.  Finally they roast the tube over hot coals.  To eat the mixture you remove a banana leaf from one end, peel the tube away like a banana and eat the rice with your fingers.  It was tasty!!

Eventually we arrived at our hotel.  We had a little downtime before dinner so Rick and I walked to the supermarket next door and got some wine.  We had a little cocktail hour with Ann in our room and moved to a restaurant across the street for dinner.

We are all very tired in the evenings a hit the hay fairly early.  These OAT folks really keep us moving!

This morning we started the day by going to the Killing Fields of Choeunk Ek.  During the years that the Khmer Rouge was governing, 1975 until 1979, 1.7 million citizens out of a total population of 8 million were beaten and killed.  Almost all of societies  intellectuals, often their entire family, were killed because they were considered a potential threat to the government. If you wore glasses you were considered a potential intellectual and were killed.  Doctors, lawyers, the people that essentially inspired and moved the Cambodian civilization  forward were subjected to brutal torture and death.  By the end of their rule in 1979, there were only 45 doctors left in the entire country, more than half of which proceeded to leave the country.  The torture took places at Tuol Sleng prison, referred to as S21, where they were brutalized for 2-4 months prior to being sent to Choeun En.  They gave up whatever accurate or inaccurate information they could about friends and neighbors during their daily beatings, nail pulling, water boarding and hanging and were offered a better life in a new location for their compliance.  A brutal death and a mass grave in the killing fields was their ultimate reward.  

The killing fields were originally an ancient Chinese cemetery, some of the headstones still remain.  The government didn’t want to waste bullets so the soldiers had to get “creative”, so the guards beat, bludgeoned and killed their victims.  Over 17,000 people were killed at this site, one of hundreds throughout the country.  Eighty-seven of one hundred twenty-nine mass graves at Choeun En have been excavated.  The bones were placed in a shrine erected at the site.  Eventually it was determined it would be best to leave the remainder of the graves in peace, as they remain today.  Needless to say it was a very emotional experience to learn about this place of death.  It was equally, if not more difficult, for Alex, our guide, whose heritage was entwined with this place.

Here are some pictures.  

After the killing fields we went to the Tuol Sleng prison or Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum as it is now called.  It was a former high school.  Ann, Pam, and I didn’t want to go into the prison so we waited outside in a sidewalk cafe where we had delicious lime smoothies.  Rick said it wasn’t too graphic, but the fact remains that thousands of likely innocent Cambodians were subjected to brutal torture, facing imminent death while here.  Only 7 people survived the prison.  Three of the survivors were there, each selling books about their experiences.

On leaving we went to lunch and returned to the hotel afterward.  We had the option of relaxing in the hotel or going to the Russian market.  Three of us, Allison, Judy and I decided we wanted to go.  We took a remork. 

Named for its popularity among Russian expats during the 1980’s, the market is known for selling traditional handicrafts, antiques, and everyday goods.  They had everything from clothes to shoes, meat to seafood, automotive parts to kitchen equipment, restaurants to beauty and nail salons.   Allison and Judy bought some cashews and Judy got her fanny pack fixed.

The driver had waited for us so we easily found our way back.  It was fun to be riding in a remork through the streets of Phnom Penh!

We had one more site visit for the day, the Royal Palace.  The actual palace where the King lives is closed to visitors, but we saw the throne room were he was coronated as well as several other buildings constructed with typical Thai architecture.

On the site are several stupas which contain the ashes of past kings.  

The Silver Pagoda is also in the royal palace complex.  The Silver Pagoda draws its name from the more than 5,000 silver tiles that cover the floor in the temple.  It’s home to numerous Buddhist artifacts, including the Emerald Buddha.  There were no pictures allowed inside .

Alex told us several jokes today.  None of them were very good, but his face really lit up while he was telling them as we rode along on the bus. 

We went back to the hotel for a little downtime before dinner.  I tried to nap but couldn’t.  Rick enjoyed views of the city from the roof bar.  At dinner we discovered that Alex had a girlfriend.  He was very cute and wanted us to meet her, so he called her and told her to meet us at the hotel.  She was there when we returned.  They were very cute together.  Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture.  We also met Vuhta that evening, our guide for the journey to Siem Reap.