Finally we are here.
I've wanted to visit this country for almost ten years and here I am!Dramatically mind you, we flew in through a forked lightening storm where our plane was forced to circle for a good half hour. Pretty scary being trapped in a tin can in an electrical storm. The landing was the icing on the cake, for reasons unknown the pilot doubled our speed to land then slammed us down - BANG - on the runway leaving me blinking my eyeballs back into their sockets. Definatley my scariest landing yet!
It was and is so great to see Rach - easy to spot her smiling face and blonde curls amongst the Cambodian crowd.
Phnom Penh is different to what I had expected. I imagined something similar to Bangkok, with busy, crowded, crazy streets, instead PP has wide empty streets for the most part with lush palms and vines dripping from beautiful french/Indochine architecture. Don't get me wrong the traffic is crazy but not like other cities. there are no traffic lights, you just beep and slow down when you come to a intersection, oh and its right side drive so crossing the street can be a tad confusing.
We're staying in 'NGO Land', the part of the city that houses most of the NGO's, and the UN. Its a relief not to be in the main tourist part of the city, and from the little i have seen is a very beautiful part - with boganvillia everywhere. BTW - boganvillia's nothing to do with 'bogans' despite the excellent name - it's the vine with the pretty pink leaf like flowers.)
We ate some bugs the other night, cicada,s crickets, grasshoppers and grubs. The staff at a bar we were drinking at had two bags full of various fried creepy crawlies and were munching away and offered us some. It surprised me as i had always thought it was just a trick pulled on westerners as something really crazy to do like 'woah man - i ate spiders in Cambodia!' but as they were chowing down on them and were seriously offering them we gave it a shot. They were surprisingly yum, very oily and sauteed in soy or something like and yes its true, they taste rather nutty. I had three in all and most preferred the grubs, less crunch.
We visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum today which was hard going. The site was a high school which was used as the Prison by the Khmer Rouge during the civil war. As you know this is where horrific torture was carried out and blood still stains the floor and the air. I still feel pretty ill thinking of it but it was a side that I wanted to see. There's a lot of information, and photos and artifacts (including skulls) from what went on in display to give you a very clear idea of what went on.
Typically my worst thought is usually right. For example, the exterior walkway of the top floor of one of the buildings was fenced in with barbed wire...my first thought, to stop people jumping off- later this was confirmed. argh.
It was a reminder of the scale and how horrific and recent it happened. There is not a Cambodian living today that wasn't effected.
x
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I have shared my own Cambodian 'firsts' with Andy and Emm. I've lived in Cambodia 1 year now, and I saved the Toul Sleng Genocide museum and grub-tasting for their arrival. Grubs were yum... I think cockroaches were in the mix too?
Toul Sleng... well... Emm is right in saying that every Cambodian alive today has been directly affected by the genocidal Pol Pot regime of 1975 to 1979.
I've resisted visiting the very graphic reality of this prison and torture enclosure, particularly as time has passed and I learn about the personal history of my Cambodian colleagues and friends... some harrowing personal stories of escape, being shot and hiding in forests, eating roots, grass and grubs and treating their own wounds.... wandering back into Phnom Penh when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge... finding their homes again and the eternal wait for family members to all unite again... many of course did not return.
Just this morning walking to a work meeting I passed the house I used to live in Phnom Penh with my friend... passed the Cambodia young man who lives with the family downstairs in the house I used to live... he suffers mental stress as a result of the Pol Pot terror... he was a young boy at the time... there is rampant mental illness and post-traumatic stress amongst a high percentage of the population in Cambodia.
But what I do find healthy is that the Cambodians do confront what happened to them. Cambodians in the 30-something and older bracket confront and talk about this era... it is not ignored. Unfortunately, the younger generation now going through high school and university are not 'taught' about what happened... so there is a generational gap of 'knowledge' of the events already felt.
I find it personally distressing to look around at the people being busy and going about their daily lives knowing that they still suffer loss from the Pol Pot time, but also still in this time as they now suffer extreme poverty and a loss of their rich heritage and identity.
It is true that Cambodia has many decades of healing to persevere with... and many decades to work on being rid of power and gender imbalances that severely limit their rights as human beings to this day.
Rachael
Post a Comment