Cambodia

On March 13, we left our beloved Vietnamese tour guide, Bunny, in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon and boarded our bus across the border into Cambodia. Land border crossings are always more time-consuming than flying or taking a boat somewhere, so a big chunk of the 9-hour travel time was spent waiting in line to get our passports stamped and waiting for the bus, full of our luggage, to clear customs. But we made it eventually!

When we arrived in Phnom Penh, it was late afternoon, and the bus dropped us off in the wrong place. It was a public bus, but so many of us on board were in the same tour group that they were supposed to take us directly to our hostel. When we realized the error, we quickly arranged for a few rideshares to take us the rest of the way to the hostel and everyone who paid for them got reimbursed by the tour company, so after a few moments of confusion, it ended up being fine. But that was our first introduction to Linket, our Cambodian tour guide. He was genuinely a very nice guy but he was so laid back that I don't think tour guiding is the right job for him. Especially compared to Bunny, who was so extremely organized and proactive, Linket was incredibly chill and loved to drink with the people he was guiding. Multiple times, when I was looking for him to ask him a question or something, I would literally find him in a hammock with his feet up. That said, good for him for doing the bare minimum and still paid for it. I always respect the hustle and people who have a good work/life balance!

After we dropped our stuff at the hostel, Linket took a group of us to get Cambodian riel out of ATMs and to get temporary SIM cards. Our hostel in Phnom Penh was really nice and it had a rooftop pool and bar, so we had a chill dinner up there and some people went swimming, and then they all headed out for a bar crawl after dinner. Being 30, I don't really enjoy bar crawls and this one required a $10 deposit, which covered a t-shirt and drinks at each bar. I fully admit I was being cheap when I refused to go and went to bed early instead.

View of Phnom Penh and the Mekong River from the rooftop bar at our hostel

The following day was the most emotionally heavy day on our tour. I had been upset by the War Remnants museum in Saigon, which detailed the war crimes committed by the Americans during the Vietnam war, but what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia is maybe worse.

A brief history lesson for anyone who doesn't know: the Khmer Rouge was a Communist regime that overthrew the pro-American Khmer Republic when they won the Cambodian Civil War in 1975, and kept control of the country until 1979. The Republic had only been established 5 years earlier, in 1970, when the National Assembly removed the Cambodian prince as the head of state in a coup d'état. So between the Vietnam war and their own civil war going on, followed by the Cambodian genocide, the 1970s was a terrible time in Cambodia. The first order of business when the Khmer Rouge triumphed in 1975 was to forcibly evacuate the cities, which they did by telling people that there were bomb threats from the Americans and that the countryside was safer. Once they got people into the countryside, they essentially slammed the gates shut and wouldn't let them come back home, leading to mass displacements and homelessness. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, attempted to create a self-sufficient, agrarian utopia by essentially forcing every eligible worker in the country to become a farmer. According to Wikipedia, "the Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivisation led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, including the supply of medicine, led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria. The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Summary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population." The Khmer Rouge was finally overthrown by the Vietnamese in 1979, when the Khmer Rouge retreated to hide in the jungles near the Thai border. Pol Pot was placed on house arrest shortly before his death in 1998, but he never served any more serious time than that and he never repented for his crimes; according to Wikipedia, shortly before his death, "Pol Pot stated that his 'conscience is clear' but acknowledged that mistakes were made and told Thayer that 'I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.'"

That day in Phnom Penh, our first stop was Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide, aka S-21. Also according to Wikipedia, the museum "is a former high school building, which was transformed into a torture, interrogation and execution center between 1976 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge called the center S-21. Of the estimated 15,000 to 30,000 prisoners, only seven prisoners survived." S-21 was basically a holding prison before people were sent to the Killing Fields to be executed, which was obviously a form of psychological torture. The inmates knew that once people were loaded into the truck to be driven to the fields 9 miles away, they never came back. I can't imagine how excruciating the waiting must have been. A few of the 7 survivors are still alive, one of whom was at the museum the day I was there. He was spared because he knew how to repair typewriters, so the guards kept him around because he was useful to them.

Warning: The photos below include those of human remains.

Inside the interrogation room at S-21, where prisoners were tied to this bed and subject to torture during interrogations.

The cells in the prison were open at the top, and there would be 10 or 12 cells in each room, but the prisoners were forbidden from speaking to one another and were beaten if they broke the rules.

The cells were too small for anyone but the very shortest of people to lie down, so they had to stand or sit on the floor all the time, even when they were sleeping.

Human remains from a mass grave discovered at the prison.

The balcony was roped off with barbed wire to ensure no prisoners were able to jump to their deaths.

Our tour guide at the prison told us that, due to the volume of people who were murdered, everyone alive in Cambodia today has a story about a relative or a friend or a neighbor who was killed by the Khmer Rouge. For him, it was his grandparents. His grandfather was educated, which meant that he was automatically an enemy of the state, so he was rounded up one day and loaded into a truck with a number of other prisoners, and his family never saw him again. His grandmother, on the other hand, was disabled and she wasn't able to work in the fields, so one day she was marched out back and killed. Similar to the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept many records of their crimes, so eventually, my tour guide's family discovered where his grandfather was murdered. Most Buddhists choose cremation, so once the Khmer Rouge was overthrown and they knew it was safe, his family went to collect his grandfather's remains to cremate them so they would be able to create a memorial and so he could finally be laid to rest. Unfortunately, they discovered that he was in a mass grave, and they had no way of identifying which remains were his, so they never received any closure.

After we finished our tour of the prison, we loaded into some tuk-tuks and made the 9 mile drive to the Killing Fields. According to Wikipedia again, "the Choeung Ek Killing Fields are located about 15 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. Most of the prisoners who were held captive at S-21 were taken to the fields to be executed and deposited in one of the approximately 129 mass graves. It is estimated that the graves contain the remains of over 20,000 victims."

In Buddhism, a stupa is "a place of burial or a receptacle for religious objects." This stupa, at the Killing Fields, is the final resting place for the bones that were discovered in the mass graves there.

A closer up of the stupa to see the remains inside. Taking photos inside felt inappropriate.

One mass grave site, where they found 450 victims.

Rags of victims' clothes

The killing tree, which still turns my stomach to look at. The bracelets are left by mourners to honor the children who were killed.

As I said, it was a very heavy day, but it was also very enlightening and I think it was important for us to go and to educate ourselves. We took the tuk-tuks back to our hostel and had some time to regroup and reset before heading out on a sunset cruise on the Mekong River.

View of Phnom Penh from the river. There's a lot of development and new construction going on in Phnom Penh, so much so that I got the sense the city will look totally different in 10 years.

The other side of the river from downtown Phnom Penh

Enjoying the sunset cruise!

A party boat in front of the riverfront gate of Cambodia's Royal Palace

After the cruise, we explored the Central Market and had dinner there before heading back to the hostel.

In the morning, we embarked on a bus to the coast to get a ferry to Koh Rong, an island in the Gulf of Thailand, which is in the South China Sea in the Pacific Ocean (Water names confuse me so I figured I'd include all of them!). I really don't have anything to tell you about Koh Rong because I didn't do very much there, in a good way. I got to lay on the beach and float in turquoise water. After two days on Koh Rong, we took another boat to Koh Rong Sanloem, a smaller island where we went snorkeling and did a night swim with bioluminescent plankton. Between the two islands, we were there for 4 days and it was delightfully chill.

Koh Rong

If it looks like paradise, it's because it pretty much was.

Couldn't resist a photo with the swing!

Snorkeling on Koh Rong Sanloem

Sunset on Koh Rong Sanloem

Restaurant on the beach on Koh Rong Sanloem

Went swimming here on Koh Rong Sanloem and it was basically like my private beach.

After four days in paradise, we took a ferry back to the mainland and then boarded an overnight sleeper bus to Siem Reap. We arrived very early in the morning and got a few more hours of sleep in the hostel before we headed out to sightsee.

Holy cow sculptures at Wat Preah Prom Rath, one of the oldest temples in Siem Reap.

Statues in the temple garden, including one who's being disemboweled by birds??

Riverfront path on the Siem Reap River

Siem Reap's famous Pub Street

I had loc lac, which is a marinated beef dish, and vanilla iced tea for dinner on Pub Street and it was one of the best meals I had on my trip.

As per usual, I called it another early night after I had dinner because we were doing a sunrise tour of Angkor Wat and we left our hostel at 4:30am.

According to Wikipedia, "Angkor Wat is considered the largest religious structure in the world. Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire by King Suryavarman II during the 12th century, it was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the century; as such, it is also described as a 'Hindu-Buddhist' temple." The most famous temple at Angkor Wat is the main temple, but it's actually a collection of temples within a gigantic complex.

Entering the main complex at Angkor Wat for sunrise

Sunrise at the main temple

Closer up of the main temple

Posing with the main temple and already a sweaty mess at 5am!

Inside the main temple complex

Closer up of the interior

Another close up of some of the detail. I took this one because I think it makes it obvious that it was originally a Hindu temple, which I think many people don't know (myself included).

Inside the temple. This is the dress I got tailor-made in Vietnam, so I got to pick out the fabric!

After we finished exploring the main temple, we went to two of the other temples in the Angkor complex: Ta Prohm, better known as the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider temple for being a filming site of the 2001 movie with Angelina Jolie, and Bayon Temple.

Ta Prohm, aka the Tomb Raider temple

Closer up

I don't know if you can tell from the photos but this temple has a lot more character and was much more fun to explore than the main temple

Lara Croft apparently slides down this tree in the movie, so it's a famous tree!

The timestamp on this photo is 11:30am, which means we'd been out for 7 hours at this point, and I fully admit that by the time we got to Bayon Temple, I was kind of over it and was ready to head back to the hostel, so this is the only photo I took.

For me, Cambodia also had the most stifling weather on my trip. It was so hot and sticky that I was already pouring sweat by the time we got to Angkor Wat at 5am, let alone how hot it was at Bayon Temple at noon, so I was eager to get back to some air conditioning.

I had a bite to eat and then took a nap at the hostel before heading out on my final activity in Cambodia: a sunset quad ride through the countryside. I had been on a 4x4 once before in Namibia and loved it, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to do it again.

Quadding in the Cambodian countryside. I don't know if you can tell but I am absolutely covered from head to toe in dust, so the mask really came in handy!

Living the dream

That was our last day in Cambodia, and the following day we took a bus across the border into Thailand. The official end of the tour was in Bangkok, but I had visited Bangkok and Phuket in December with my sister, so I got dropped off at the airport in Bangkok with plenty of time to make my evening flight to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand.