today i went around and saw all the sites of phnom phen. a lot of them were really depressing. mot of you probably already know this, but in case you slept thru world history class (like i did), cambodia is the site of one of the bloodiest revolutions in history. from 1975 to 1978, communist forces called the khmer rouge took over the government and then tortured and killed around 2 million people. they said they wanted to start a society led by the working class, but really what they did was kill everyone who was educated. a lot of this happened in phnom phen and because of that there are several sites around town that are a tribute to the victims of the genocide.
the main one one in town was the tuol sleng museum. this is a highschool within the city that the khmer rouge took over and turned into a prison/torture center called S-21. they surrounded the whole city w/ corrugated iron fences and barbed wire, turned the classrooms into prison cells, and began the long task of tagging people and torturing them. most of the people detained here were eventually taken to choeung ek to be killed (more on that later), but about 100 people per day died at s-21 from the torture.
walking around thru the halls of this place was really really unsettling. so odd… how on one hand it looked like a highschool w/ long halls, chin-up bars, etc… but on the other hand it was surrounded by snarls of barbed wire. you could walk into the little cells and inside they had pictures of the different methods of torture that were used here. truly horrific. and then… there were the photos. the mugshots taken by the Khmer Rouge of everyone before they were executed. there were rooms full of these photos… tons of them on every wall… each face looking lost and mournful while holding up their prisoner number. it was so devastating to look at this sea of faces while knowing that none of them were alive anymore. how could people do something like this?? it was all just so *so* sickening.
inside one of the rooms, you could watch a documentary about s-21. they interviewed some people who had survived,and others who had been guards here. at one point, they were interviewing one of the guards and he was explaining how he would go about killing the prioners… AND THE BASTARD WAS SMILING THE WHOLE TIME. UGH!!
the other place i saw today was choeung ek, the infamous Cambodian Killing Fields. this is where most of the people were taken to be killed. the whole places is surrounded by huge pits used as mass graves. you can still see bits of rags that used to be prisoners clothes floating about and bits of bone in the pits. did i mention that since bullets where expensive, pretty much all of these people were bludgeoned to death? sheez. walking around here was really eerie and horrible. the place was filled with lots of green grassy fields, with *tons* of butterflies peacefully floating by… it was hard to imagine what kind of heinous atrocities happened here. at least it was hard to imagine until i saw the memorial stuppa in the center of the field. it’s a huge golden monument that’s several stories tall dedicated to the victims that died here… and as you approach it and come closer… you realize that the whole thing is filled w/ skulls. yes, over 8000 skulls in row upon row and shelf upon shelf. it really gives you a sense of just how many people fell victim to this place.
anyways, the last place i saw today was the silver pagoda by the royal palace… but somehow i think that writing about beautiful temples would be out of place in this entry. so i’ll skip that.
tomorrow is my last day here and i fly back to thailand in the afternoon, but not before trying out some crazy illegal shit that my moto-driver is taking me to… more on that later.
-v
Wow, it’s difficult for me to comprehend that what you’re talking about actually happened. So, I was watching the Two Towers a while ago, and during some of the battle scenes I started to think about how awful violence is and how scary it must be to live where a war is happening… you know, the kind of shit you think about when you’re into a movie and then it’s scary. Anyway, after the uncomfortable moment of fear/horror at the violence, I suddenly got that nice, warm rush of relief: “it’s only a movie.” And then it occurred to me that all kinds of violence is taking place all over the world right now, and people are actually living in it. So, Vlad, you remember Melissa Kurland, right? Well, I might have told you about how she went to Palestine to act as a “human sheild” using her status as a US citizen to facilitate certain transactions (like movement of ambulances across zone borders, etc). So, while she was there, she had a livejournal thing too, and I read her comments and felt her horrror. All the images of destruction and poverty plus violence haunted me and still do. It’s weird… it’s like one day I just realized that really bad stuff does happen– is happening all the time. It’s so unsettling. Now your description of Tuol Sleng is vivid in my mind. My reaction to the images is to reason it all out– arguments about psychology, those prisoner/warden tests they did in the 60’s or whatever, stuff like that. Sometimes analyzing it is comforting, but the truth is that no matter how much I may try to distance myself from it intellectually, it exists. It’s actually very terrifying if I let myself think about it too long.
That must have beena weird experience for you to have all alone, especially followed by your guns experience (which ironically sounds like lots of fun, not creepy at all). I actually held a gun for the first time recently; I guess it was a 9mm or something. Anyway, it wasn’t weird or scary at all. In fact, it just seemed like a toy.
Oh, it’s all so strange.
kay bye
Sharon (gerbode to you)
ps: miss yo
yeah… the world is definitely a fucked up place. you know how you were writing about the “two towers” just being a movie… actually i just read an article about how that trilogy was very heavily influenced by WW2 (the book was written not too long after). and all the decriptions of a “great evil” taking over the land threatening to wipe out humanity and all that is good, although fictional, definitely were meant to reflect WW2 and the threat of evil destroying society.
wow, i cant believe melissa did that. so hardcore!! has she come back? or is she still over there??
yeah, seeing all that depressing stuff was really intense. much in the same was that it was intense going to the holocaust camps in germany. it’s crazy, you can see movies about it all you want, but really being there and seeing stuff first hand is just so gripping. and definitely, i did think of all the psychological experiments that tried to prove that humans were not capable of evil and yet failed miserably.
so, umm… what were you doing w/ a 9mm?? eck is err hhhangster?? heh.
miss ya too gerbode.
-v