Scott G Trenorden

The stares on the faces of the people scattered throughout the small, dank room spoke the same silent message…

Room after room, face after face… A horrifically solemn place.

“How can people do that??” I later mused to my dear German friend, which in retrospect was probably a very disrespectful and badly thought out thing to say (my apologies Anja).

Face upon face lined board after board stretching from room to room, making up just one floor in one wing of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

Not a smile to be seen, not a laugh to be glanced at… Not a voice to be heard. One by one we shuffled through, staring limp-jawed at the photos of every day Cambodians.
Some of the now-deceased even had the audacity to smile subtly when their photo was taken. What a mark of bravery. What a symbol of defiance, if any such thing remains when you knowingly wait your torture and subsequent death.

Upon entering the premises, it’s not hard to fathom that Prison S.21 was previously school grounds. With the blossoms in bloom and a quiet disposition to the place, at first glance it seems rather pleasant.

Then the mood, the ‘air’, strikes you before you’ve even made it into the first of the converted classrooms.

A converted class room…

Close your eyes hard enough and you can hear the screams of the victims, strung up by their wrists with ropes (arms behind their backs) dangling meters off the ground, whipped until they pass out (if they haven’t already from their shoulders dislocating and muscles tearing), then having their heads plunged into pungent sewerage water to revive them; only for it to be repeated.

Maybe this will give some idea of the sight, the smells, the screams of the place.

Again I will ask, how can people do that?
What vital string of human decency has snapped to allow any person - leader, grunt or loved one - to actually condone and carry out such atrocities?

How do you look a child in the eyes and tell them they have - like Pol Pot had - the potential to grow up to commit genocide? How do you even explain the meaning, that a human is capable of such a thing?

A cat finds a comfortable place to rest where no one else can.

Places like Tuol Sleng remain as testaments to the lowest points of human history. They stand as a monument to remind us what we as a race, as a people, are really capable of, whether we choose to accept it, ignore it, deny it or embrace it. They remind us that we really aren’t far removed from the animal kingdom in our savagery and brutality.

If we are removed at all?

A dark stairwell, stained by the shuffling of many feet.

While sitting on the beach in Sihanoukville, I saw ten or more kids playing together, dancing, skipping, setting up and orchestrating games of who-knows-what; American kids, Australian kids, Cambodian kids, German kids. No inhibitions or pre-judgements, just kids of several races playing together.

In our darkest days, there will always be this hope.

“What’s wrong with me?!” I scream to all and sundry, upon realising I’m hoeing into a plate of fried rice when there was a perfectly good ‘Sunday Burger’ (with the lot!) on the menu.

I’m not all-converted though. I’m currently blaring Muse through my headphones while sitting at dinner in a long lost attempt to drown out the Khmer karaoke DVDs that get played all over the place.

Two Siamese cats having sex comes to mind when trying to describe the singing… and that’s when the locals haven’t joined in.

Ok, that’s not doing. Time for some Tool… or maybe I’ll just have to go straight for the P.O.D playlist. Or Slayer…

I boarded a bus early yesterday morning bound for Phnom Penh, feeling less than 100%, only to realise the bus I was booked on belonged more in the ‘budget’ than ‘first class’ range (worst yet, the two descriptions won’t correlate with anything you’re used to).

Squeezing into a seat next to a Khmer girl, I settled in for a long and bouncy ride, keeping water and an iPod handy.

Somehow I managed to sleep. So did the Khmer girl apparently, having woken up to find her drooling on my sleeve. She looked comfortable at least.
I slept again, I am surmising, as I woke later to see people around me flush with Coke and sweets, fresh fruit and water bottles. “Nice of Drool Girl to wake me…” I thought, watching her picking at some fresh-cut mango. She was probably too embarrassed to I imagine, going on the fact she refrained from making eye contact for the rest of the trip.

On a side note, what the hell is with tourists getting bitten by dogs in this country? A German girl has just limped in with a large bandage on her leg (which wasn’t there when I saw her this afternoon), and after a brief and subtle enquiry, sure enough, it appears she was dog-bitten.
That must make at least a dozen tourists I’ve seen/spoken to so far with dog bites.

Hmm, so where was I at? Ah yes, a mango-munching Drool Girl almost mocking my much needed rest with her chewing sounds and high pitched giggles at the Khmer DVD playing on the bus TV.

It seems in order to do comedy in Cambodia, the male actors have to don a moustache.

Any time I’ve seen a comedy here, the blokes are doing a Merv Hughs and pulling funny faces.
It must be working, going on the constant giggling from the locals spread throughout the bus.

And that’s about as exciting as the drive from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh got.

I guess I pretty much skipped Sihanoukville in my bloggings. It’s an interesting place with a very dark side to it. It would be good to explore the place more in the future, but I knew if I didn’t get away when I did I’d waste too much more of my remaining time. You could indeed write some very juicy and provocative blogs on that coastal town (read Mark Roy’s blog if you dare), and I no doubt will in a retrospective way.

In a way, I am now wishing I’d not stayed in Siem Reap as long as I did, as my time seems to be rapidly running out.

But it’s all been a fun experience. And I’ve yet to hear a bad word about Laos, so hopefully it’ll be a worthwhile diversion.

I just have to work out how I’m going to get from Laos to Singapore…

So, Phnom Penh; you would think this city was smaller than Kampot, going on the “I saw the sights in a half day” comments from people who have been here a couple of days.

My interpretation of a glorious Phnom Penhian sunset

I went for a wander down near the river this afternoon (and found a café doing decent iced coffee slushy things!) and took photos of some place I should really find the name of. It’s not as negative a place as I first took it for on my way from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville, but it’s definitely not the nicest, most mellow place I’ve been to.
Which is hardly surprising, going on the fact it’s a massive city.

It’s quite like Siem Reap in its oppressiveness (”Tuk-tuk?!” from every driver in a ten meter vicinity etc) but doesn’t have anywhere near the mellow vibe of a Sunday arvo in the XBar.

Drive in, waste time, move on.

A charming fellow waters the lawn opposite an expensive looking building.

So as it turns out, you do need to organise your Laos visa in advance when crossing in from Cambodia - a ‘one working day’ process. As in, give them your passport at 9am this morning and get it back at 5pm tomorrow afternoon, spending another night here before getting a bus at 6:45am on Thursday morning. The bus stops at a town short of the border for the night (due to the border crossing being closed by the time the 10+ hour bus ride arrives) and continues on to the Laos border crossing from there.

What happens when I get to the other side is anyone’s guess.

Thank god I brought my own passport photos. I’m not entirely sure how I’d go about getting them otherwise, as it could be a hard one to explain.

A young Chinese boy chases pigeons - Phnom Penh.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking the tuk-tuk drivers are stupid though. Several of the drivers I’ve chatted to know all the key phrases and necessary lingo of several languages.

Similar to how a lot of people in Cambodia used to be able to speak fluent French, Khmer, a good amount of English and other bordering languages, but were murdered for being ‘educated’.

What a wonderful world.

So I have a day to waste tomorrow. I should do the history thing and maybe go have a look at ‘Smoky Mountain’ in the afternoon.

I’ve only been here a day and a half and I’ve already got Phnompenhitus!