Cambodia Travelogue

Table of Contents

Part 1 - "Temples & Trees"
Part 2 - "Tourists & Touts"
Part 3 - "Genocide & Graffiti"
Part 4 - "Rivers & Rites"

Genocide & Graffiti

Rusted barbed wire crowns the two walls that enclose the dilapidated school.  A few Cambodians stand outside the only entrance.  One is on crutches; he holds a cap for change, his leg amputated above the knee.  Most tourists walk by without a second glance, lost in their own dismay, having witnessed far worse than the carnage caused by forgotten land mines. 

In 1975, the insurgent Khmer Rouge seized the capital, Phnom Penh, and with it the entire country.  They restarted the calendar (calling it Year Zero), abolished currency, split up families, and enslaved everyone—including children, the elderly and the infirm—into 15-hour-a-day labour.  During the three years, eight months, and twenty-one days they were in power, an estimated two million Cambodians lost their lives from starvation, overwork or execution.  Twenty thousand of those were caged within these institutional walls, the school that came to be known as Tuol Sleng, or Security Prison 21. 

To visit a country and not pay respect to their people, and what they have gone through, seems somehow discourteous. Too often tourists are armed only with a camera and a long itinerary, and I am determined to do more than conquer Angkor Wat and flee home with a full memory card.  Many people flash photos inside Tuol Sleng, ghastly mementos of conditions that would make concentration camps seem almost agreeable in comparison.  I take only one shot—so I will not forget.

The first set of classrooms turned prison cells includes iron barred windows, and a single bed with an attached shackle.  A blown-up photo of a dead Cambodian, barely recognizable as a human, rests hauntingly above the bed.  The very educators that worked in this room as teachers were incarcerated in these hellish conditions.  And when they died, in a final act of grievous disrespect, a photo was taken of their emaciated, bloodied body. 

Engineers, ministers, farmers, diplomats, even monks were brought here.  Interrogated and tortured, they were coerced to follow nine strict rules, including Do nothing. Sit still and wait for my orders and While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.  The unfortunate survivors were taken to the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh and forced at gun point to dig their own graves.

In the school courtyard stands a set of high bars with rope where children did their exercises.  Except the Khmer Rouge used it to hang people upside down until they lost consciousness, and then plunged their heads underwater.  A playground converted into a gallows. 

One exhibit in particular brings me to stunned silence.  The room has photos of every victim, a casualty catalogue meticulously recorded by the Khmer Rouge.  Each board displays hundreds of black and white photos, arranged like a giant checkerboard—thousands stretch from one room to the next.  My girlfriend barely crosses the threshold before seeking sanctuary in the courtyard, too distraught to continue.  I console her and then return in stubborn determination.  To do what, I’m not sure.  But I need to see what these people have seen, even if I can only manage a small glimpse, in the hopes of finding some sense of understanding. 

Vacant stares from eyes that witnessed daily horrors follow me as I venture sluggishly around the first room.  I move from one dire face to the next:  hollow, gaunt, not an ounce of spirit remaining in the shadowed windows of their eyes.  Each person bears a numbered necklace, a way for the Khmer Rouge to keep track of every victim.  I feel like a scientist, an objective and impartial observer of Cambodian history.  Purely a defensive mechanism to keep my emotions at bay, for I know how easily I could be overwhelmed. 

From the corner a woman emerges, tears streaming behind the hand on her cheek.  I approach the area with trepidation, wondering what greater horror I will find.  I move around one display to another.  A hundred sets of eyes gaze back at me, their colour and light gone.  And yet each seems to be screaming:  why?  My heart bursts, unable to contain its sorrow and despondency any longer.  Tears unashamedly fall, heavy and full.  I cannot understand.

Children fill the entire board.  One photo after another; a boy that just entered teenagehood; a pre-pubescent girl; countless other toddlers younger than my own nephews.  In fact, two thousand children were killed at Tuol Sleng.  In the school where they had come to learn, to feel safe, to play in the courtyard, they were instead separated from their families, shackled, tortured, and murdered. 

I flee from the room, not with remorse, but with a rising nausea originating from incredulous disbelief.  The neighbouring rooms offer no solace, photos of joyless mothers clutching babies to their shrunken breasts, naked men with protruding hip bones.  Those little eyes follow me wherever I go, begging, pleading, surrendering.  Why?

As I step stoically from classroom to classroom, floor to floor, building to building, my body becomes numb.  I see cells made of hastily stacked bricks, walls with layered bloodstains, interrogation rooms with torture devices at which even the most hardened would cringe.  Yet I stumble across one alcove of comfort, one place where no tainted remnant of the Khmer Rouge lingers. 

Hidden underneath a staircase is a wall of colourful graffiti.  Words are scribbled in pencil, pen, or whatever else visitors to the genocide museum had with them. 

Never again.

Give peace a chance.

God is love. 

It’s not common to find refuge in graffiti, let alone proclamations of hope and faith.  But here, in one corner of the former school, are overwhelmingly positive affirmations.  I breathe in the soul-lifting messages like a deep-sea diver who has come up for air. 

Not all responses are so gracious.  One of the most disheartening sights comes towards the end of my gloomy tour.  I discover more graffiti, this time on framed photos of members of the Khmer Rouge.  One can understand the survivors’ anger—utter hatred—at a regime that eradicated one-fifth of the country’s population.  Yet even the men and women whose association with the Khmer Rouge was questionable are defaced by the bold markings of outraged Cambodians. 

I go back to the courtyard and find my girlfriend.  While we sit in silence, the couple beside us begins to argue.  Their words escalate in a petty dispute about itinerary.  I can’t help but think, hate breeds hate.  If one cannot forgive, then hate endures.

In my visit to Cambodia, I truly cherished the kind-hearted people and their cheerful smiles.  Despite living impoverished lives, with polluted water, diminutive houses that sleep dozens, backcountry littered with land mines, and where a good day is marked by having three meals, they never failed to greet me with generosity and warmth.  Tuol Sleng revealed two extremes of the nature of our species:  how the power of a misguided few is capable of producing great evil, and the strength of the human spirit in overcoming unspeakable atrocities.  Cambodians struggled through a horrendous 20th century, with occupations by nearly every neighbouring country, covert carpet-bombing by US forces for four years, and devastating famine following the Khmer Rouge regime.  They have persevered through it all.

If there is one thing I can now understand, it is the smile on the face of every Cambodian.

Rivers & Rites

“It’s a long hike, but well worth it.”

“Not as spectacular as the photos make it out to be.”

“I was not enamoured.”

These were the conflicting reports we heard from recent visitors to Kbal Spean as they passed us on the trail.  The climb was steadily steep, and we were not entirely sure what to expect of these carvings made right in the riverbed of Stung Siem Reap.  Perhaps disappointment was routine.  Most tourists hit Angkor Wat first, then visit some of the more distant sites, such as Kbal Spean.  After the grandeur of thousand-year-old temples surrounded by flooded moats and walls engraved with countless statues, a few figures in the bedrock of a stream somehow don’t seem quite as impressive.  Yet for me, with rivers being a major theme in my next novel—coupled with my fascination of freshwater ecosystems—Kbal Spean was the very first thing I highlighted in my Cambodia guidebook. 

“I guess we’ll find out for ourselves.”  Jen sounded optimistic.

I didn’t say anything, lost in the sacredness of the rainforest.  Birds were everywhere, heard but seldom seen, their songs replacing the growls of motos and insistent calling of touts found at every tourist attraction.  The meandering path up the mountainside reminded me of a stream; the dirt ran in smooth rivulets, with a bed of trespassing roots instead of flattened rock.  

Every animal needs water.  But to Cambodians, water is more than a necessity:  it is sacred.  Rivers and lakes provide a source of cleansing, sustenance, transport, revenue, habitation, and religious rites.  Holy water is used to bless worshippers and monks.  Pilgrimages are made to the Siem Reap River in Phnom Kulen, where devotees wash themselves under the falls.  The King, inside his royal palace in Phnom Penh, is ordained with water brought from Kbal Spean hundreds of kilometres away.  Houses float on the Tonle Sap.  Livestock are kept on buoyant pens.  Boats ferry people up, down and across the banks.  Both dried and squirming seafood line the streets of the capital, mussels and sea cucumbers in one bucket, catfish and eels swimming circles in others.  Waterways hold the same importance here as the busiest streets of Vancouver; without them, Cambodian society would collapse. 

A couple days later, Jen and I bore witness to the Cambodians’ celebration of water on a boat trip over Tonle Sap and along the Sangker river, where white-breasted kingfishers followed us for a time.  Women washed themselves on the shore, wrapped in wet sarongs blossoming with colour.  Fishermen pulled dip- and gill-nets through the water, or checked giant bamboo fishing fences for holes.  Children slid down mudslides on the bank, laughing and vigorously waving as they jumped over the surf created by the wake of our boat.

“Why are we stopping here?”

I had only just asked the question when Jen snapped a photo of the answer.  A young girl with a bamboo pole manoeuvred her canoe next to our boat.  A monk, unseen by the other thirty passengers before now, jumped from the stern of our long, narrow craft onto the center of the canoe.  Presumably, she had arrived to carry him to the shore temple supported by stilts, and took care not to touch his orange robes.  For a woman to do so is considered unclean.

One of the most astounding natural phenomena in the world takes place in the very lake we were crossing.  The Tonle Sap is the largest body of freshwater in south-east Asia, stretching 150 kilometers long.  However, at the peak of the wet season its area expands five times in size, increasing from one to over ten meters in depth.  Many Cambodian houses are built on stilts; otherwise, they would be washed away by the rising waters.  In some places, corner stores are found at bends in the river, and schools themselves are built right over the water.  The gymnasium is a giant cage, the wire mesh ensuring errant balls don’t float downstream. 

The actual alluvial miracle I referred to occurs when the Tonle Sap River floods.  Two-thirds of the year, the river flows south from the lake of the same name.  The wet season brings rain down from mountains in Laos and Vietnam, augmented by snow melt all the way in Tibet, which significantly raises the Mekong River.  Near Phnom Penh, a tributary connects the Mighty Mekong with the Great Lake.  When the Mekong rises above the water level of the Tonle Sap the river actually reverses its course.  Thus, between the months of June and September, in a seemingly gravity-defying run, the water flows upriver.   

Trees are wholly submerged, transforming forest to swamp.  Mudflats become inundated floodplains.  Perhaps this phenomenon is what gives water its mystical quality in Cambodia.

Back at Kbal Spean, Jen and I reached the upper end of the trail.  We discovered our first view of the Siem Reap River:  a gentle waterfall next to a bank of boulders and ferns.  Aching legs and the rush of adrenaline from the uphill climb added to our appreciation; hard work always sweetens the reward.

“Do you see any carvings?”

“Not yet,” Jen replied.  “Still looking.”

We knew the waters of the Stung Siem Reap moved over the riverbed sculptures—dated back to the 11th century—of Kbal Spean on their way to the temples of Angkor.  In doing so, they were blessed by the carvings of Vishnu and Brahma.  Cleansing through ritual bathing, known as the Hindu ceremony of abishek, can therefore be done on a grand scale, as all the passing water becomes charged with spiritual energy.

“Here they are!  Look at all the lingas.”

Jen stepped beside me, taking stock of the myriad phallic symbols under the current—row after row of stubby circles.  The Stung Siem Reap was well-endowed, giving it the nickname “River of a Thousand Lingas.”  The water flowed over these Shiva lingas, awarded with the force of the Hindu lord of the universe. 

Jen and I continued along the riverbank, feeling like detectives in search of forgotten artifacts.  We found yonis—the female fertility symbol—embedded in the streambed.  But the dry season meant most carvings were exposed, skilfully placed within the natural features of the river—pools, outcrops and rock faces.  There was a frog, crocodile, and Nandi (the sacred bull, and Shiva’s mount) at the top of the falls.  A reclining Vishnu rested on the water-facing side of a boulder.  Then we stumbled upon the bridge.

Kbal Spean means “headwater bridge.”  This natural river crossing—a huge slab of sandstone with potholes large enough to swallow unwary passersby—provided the best view of the finest assortment of sculptures.  Jen and I busied ourselves with photographs:  Shiva and Uma riding the bull Nandi, and lingas and yonis aplenty.  The water ran between two more Vishnu’s, one with a seven-headed naga behind him, and his wife Lakshmi massaging his legs as he dreamed the cosmos into being.  Slightly further north Brahma the Creator sat on a lotus, three of the god’s four faces visible on the stone. 

Enjoyment is all a matter of perspective.  The comments of other visitors could have deterred us; instead, it made us more determined to discover the wonder that had eluded those that passed before.  For me, exploring undisturbed riverbanks, hearing the rustle of water over century-old sculptures—each ensconced in meaning—all in the quiet confines of the mountainside…well, you can imagine how I felt.

Regardless of one’s appreciation (or lack thereof) for Kbal Spean, there’s no denying the power of water in Cambodian culture.  The huge Tonle Sap is a massive reservoir for this sacred entity, one used everyday by countless Khmers. 

For this trip, I brought two sets of family ashes from Canada.  My hope was to spread them over Cambodia’s holy waters, and thus fulfill the last request of my Mom’s two departed sisters:  my Aunt Betty, who passed away in 1983, and my Auntie Chris, who left us this past summer.  While in the coastal town of Sihanoukville, I found my chance.  Next to the ocean, away from the bustling restaurants and shops found elsewhere in the popular bay, I opened the small tin my mom had given me and set my aunts free on the waves.  Many of Cambodia’s rivers flow into the Gulf of Thailand.  Perhaps now Vishnu and Brahma are blessing Chrissie and Betty.   

See more photos from the trip

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