Phnom Penh again, ready to teach in Cambodia

We left Nha Trang by train and made our way back to Ho Chi Minh, a journey that looked destined not to happen as our original train had crashed and a number of people had been killed-not the greatest thing to find out when you arrive at the train station! During the chaos, we bumped into a couple and their son whom we had met during our final days diving, they had very recently relocated to Ho Chi Minh from Australia and had hit Nha Trang for a few days before their work was due to begin. It’s always great to share times of uncertainty with others, and eventually we managed to negotiate ourselves onto a night train later that day. The journey itself turned out to be much longer than expected, but with the aid of engaging company the time passed painlessly and soon we staggered bleary eyed into Ho Chi Minh once again. Given the extended train journey and the uncertainty in times of arrival, we decided to stay the night in Ho Chi Minh again before catching the bus to Phnom Penh-and so we returned to the Blue River Hotel where we had spent so much time over the last six weeks.

Catching the bus the next day and we were overjoyed to be greeted by a disco bus, chandeliers included-it seemed only right that we would be leaving Vietnam in such a beast! It was the very definition of kitsch, and with the complementary Vietnamese egg pastries we settled in to the relatively short journey of 6 hours to Cambodia.

Chandeliers?!?! Of course!

Egg pastries, water and a Danish…Simple pleasures!

No grumbles here, the journey went absolutely fine, the only amusement coming at the border crossing where you get harried and hurried along with no idea about what’s going on. Various people taking your passport and then seemingly passing it around to anyone in a uniform to check-quite confusing, but as with pretty much every travel experience that we’ve had-it all worked out in the end. By now even my usual travel anxieties have been numbed, not entirely, but I am noticeably more relaxed than I was before our adventure.

Prior to leaving for South East Asia, both Jo and I completed an online TEFL qualification-with a view to finding volunteer work to help us extend our time here, while not spending too much money, and getting some invaluable experience for future opportunities. Not long after leaving Cambodia in November we had done just that-we secured ourselves a volunteer role with an organisation called SOLS 24/7.

The organisation is pretty impressive, you just have to take some time to look at their website and you will see that they have schools across Malaysia, East Timor, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Their provincial program focuses on teaching English to anyone, no matter your age or financial situation-their belief is that a basic grasp of English should be available to everyone. Furthermore, at their main centres they offer opportunities to study in their ‘Science of Life Studies’ program, offering a comprehensive life and business skills course, at a minimal cost, to people who want to improve their future prospects. Indeed at the main centre in Phnom Penh it is claimed that they have a 100% success rate in their students getting employment on the day that they graduate. That’s a pretty impressive statistic, bearing in mind that, at the time of writing, there were approximately 300 students studying there.

The organisation was founded by a Malaysian gent referred to by everyone as ‘Big Teacher’, he writes and develops all of the courses that they teach. At the core of their programs is their English language teaching system, with which they look to get students speaking English within three months. It is a very simple concept based on teaching a number of formulas, system words and a limited vocabulary. Once the students have grasped the basics, it is up to them to build out their repertoire.
We didn’t get to meet ‘Big Teacher’, however he is certainly held in high regard by everyone who knew him, and he was recently one of ten candidates in contention for the Nobel Prize for teaching.

The main centre for Sols 24/7 in Cambodia is based just outside the centre of Phnom Penh, so we afforded ourselves a weekend in the capital before getting down to the serious business of teaching English for the first time. It was great to return to the Cambodian capital, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but we have grown extremely fond of it and were looking forward to negotiating the frenetic and unforgiving streets once again. We took the chance to explore even further, and soon found an area that was lined with funky street cafes and bars, as well as a couple of nearby bakeries-result!

While scanning the local papers in one of the afore mentioned bakeries, we came across a review for a local arts festival being advertised in the Lakeside area of the city. For those of you that don’t know, there is no lake in Phnom Penh anymore, around five years ago the government sold the land for development and drained the lake-ergo the popular tourist hub found itself relocated to riverside, and the area became something of a forgotten jewel of the city. The guesthouses here are cheap and cheerful, the area has something of a rough reputation, but based on our experience it is a lovely place to base yourself while in Phnom Penh. The discovery of this arts festival was something of a hurrah moment, so we eagerly went along to see how the locals were looking to boost its popularity once again. What we discovered was an awesome street festival with various circus performers, graffiti artists and upcoming local music and dance groups-it was superb. The atmosphere was great, a real community spirit working together to dispel the myths that have sprouted up about the area. It felt like good things were happening in Phnom Penh, and we couldn’t be happier about it!

Having had a few days of socialising and ‘freedom’, now it was our turn to try and do something constructive, and to find out whether we had the necessary skills to engage with students looking to study the English language.

….And now for something completely different!!

It goes without saying that our first day in Phnom Penh had a profound effect on both of us, and so the evening passed as a quiet and sober affair with contemplation and discussion of the day.
The following morning Thearea once again picked us up from our guesthouse and we set out for a day of more ‘traditional sightseeing’-The Grand Palace, The National Museum, and Silk Island (otherwise known as Mekong Island). Rather than another wordy post-a few pictures from our second day in Phnom Penh:

A view of the internal courtyard of The Grand Palace

As you can imagine, the Cambodian people are extremely proud of Angkor Way, and it’s a symbol you see everywhere-this is a replica featured in the Grand Palace

The Grand Palace hosts a number of different monuments within it’s grounds

As is the norm, a stunning day without a cloud in the sky!

There are many, many Buddha statues in and around the Grand Palace…. and everywhere really!

Buddha?

Not Buddha!!

Spot the butterfly?!

One of the numerous temples in the grounds

This is actually in the Palace grounds, and is a temple hidden within some shrubbery… what’s that I hear you say? SHRUBBERY?

An absolute picture of calmness, always the way when travelling in Thearea’s Tuk tuk!!

A picture with the man himself on the ferry from Silk Island

From Phnom Penh and the craziness of a major capital city in Asia, the beach called-next stop Sihanoukville and the first island of what we hope is many, Koh Rong Samloem!

Phnom Penh: S-21 and Choeung Ek Killing Fields

….And so Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor fade into the distance as the next leg of our journey takes us on an eight hour bus journey to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. It was a long, hot, but relatively comfortable journey-it’s pretty much a single road that runs the whole way.

As you enter the outskirts of Phnom Penh I definitely noticed a sense of foreboding, after the wonder and beauty of Angkor, being thrust into a capital city is quite a shock to the system. As the bus pulled in to our drop off point, we were greeted with the usual gaggle of tuk tuk drivers touting for your business-I find myself having to bite my tongue at these points,as after a long and cramped bus journey, having to try to negotiate with tuk tuk drivers isn’t at the top of my to-do list! All I really want to do is stretch my legs and consume the environment that I now find myself in-but that just doesn’t ever really work out, so you just have to click into ‘negotiate’ mode and try and get the best price for your journey.

It was at this point we met our driver, Thearea (pronounced Thierre), and his first input to our journey was to strongly advise us against our choice of area to stay in….However we were not to be moved, we had found a bargain and we were sticking with our choice. As it turns out the guest house was great, but it was in a really dodgy area of Phnom Penh, and we were advised not to leave the premises after dark for fear of getting robbed! “Welcome to the capital!”
Thearea talked us into hiring for him the next day to takes us round the must see sights of the city, and so we retired to our lodgings for some food, a couple of beers, and a nice early night before the sightseeing to come.

The next morning arrived and we set off to immerse ourselves in some of the more upsetting and dark details about Cambodia’s recent past. I am, of course, referring to the atrocities that occurred in Cambodia under the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Lifting directly from Wikipedia for the sake of accuracy:

‘The organization is remembered especially for orchestrating the Cambodian genocide, which resulted from the enforcement of its social engineering policies. Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the death of thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria. Arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978, are considered to have constituted genocide’

The Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured, and eventually executed anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed “enemies”,^[30] including:

Anyone with connections to the former Cambodian government or with foreign governments.

Professionals and intellectuals – in practice this included almost everyone with an education, people who understood a foreign language and even people who required glasses

Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai, and other minorities in the Eastern Highlands, Cambodian Christians, Muslims, and the Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden (ḥarām). Many of those who refused were kill. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.

“Economic saboteurs” – many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage due to their lack of agricultural ability.

Those who were convicted of treason were taken to a top-secret prison called S-21. The prisoners were rarely given food, and as a result, many people died of starvation. Others died from the severe physical mutilation that was caused by torture.^[58]

Our first stop was to visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum, the place where 20,000 people were held, tortured and killed. Under the Pol Pot regime education was abolished, and so quite perversely the prison known as S21 was previously a school.
Thearea picked us up at the guesthouse as promised, and as our journey began-the real impact of the recent history started to become more and more apparent. Thearea is 46 years old, and he lived through the genocide that the country faced in those four years-and as we ride in the back of his tuk tuk, he began to share his personal account of what happened. The stories that he shares over the next two days are incredibly moving, he looks forward with hope and optimism despite the atrocities that he personally witnessed, and for sure Thearea emerged as something of an inspiration.
We arrive at the museum and the first block you enter is the part of the school that was converted into the torture cells, and the atmosphere is thick and menacing. As we went through the cells where the torture occurred, the mood drops significantly and you can’t help but feel upset and sickened at what had happened in these rooms-metal bed frames and iron shackles littered throughout, and ominous stains on the floors.
Through these cells and you come to a collection of pictures of some of the victims held at S-21, as well as many of the staff who were responsible for their incarceration. Many of the Khmer Rouge army were young children and teenagers, taken from their families at a young age, and brainwashed into following the command of the regime-often their first victims would actually be their own families, as part of the indoctrination to the army.

The torture cells, complete with leg shackles

Pictures of the victims found in the cells

The holding cells

View down on the prison yard

Feeling pretty overwhelmed, we continue our journey and follow what would have been the final journey for those who were incarcerated at S21, The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. There are many of these sites across Cambodia, roughly 1.4 million Cambodians were executed in total, but Choeung Ek is perhaps the most famous and is now a Buddhist memorial to the victims. It is believed that all 20,000 people who were at S-21 found their final resting places here.

As with all of the stories relating to this period, the history is horrific-prisoners were transferred blindfolded from S-21, being told that they were being transferred to another prison. They would arrive at Cheoung Ek at night, and they would be executed and deposited into mass graves. To make this even more disturbing, the Khmer Rouge didn’t want to waste bullets killing these prisoners, and so they were killed using implements found at the site-from using farming tools to club the victims to death, to utilising the serrated edges on a palm tree to slit throats-the details are things of nightmares. Men women and children were slaughtered here indiscriminately, and bizarrely the Killing Fields today are quite beautiful.
Still bone fragments rise to the surface during the rainy season and these are collected and displayed in memory, they uncovered some of the mass graves but made the decision to leave the rest of the site untouched.
As you walk round you listen to an audio description of the atrocities that occurred, and it is quite overwhelming. At the end of the tour you come to the final resting place for many of the skulls and bones that were uncovered, sorted by age, sex and method of execution. A final tribute to those who lost their lives not only at S-21 and Choeung Ek, but throughout Cambodia at the time.

I had some knowledge of Pol Pot and his war crimes before we came here, and I shall take away a little more…However this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the story of Cambodia and it’s people in recent history-and for sure I don’t have the words or complete understanding to do it any justice.
One thing that I can say though is that my experience of the Cambodian people has been fantastic-everyone that I have met has been so friendly and welcoming, given the fact that these atrocities happened in living memory for many-it’s testament to the resolve to move onwards-or at least that’s the impression that I get.