Summary of My International Travel 2018

Part 3 – Battambang and Phnom Penh – Cambodia

Following from my Part 2 Blog of Siem Reap, my 8 day tour guides Sun (Guide), John (Driver) & I left the floating village of Tonle Sap Lake and headed towards the Cambodian North Western city of Battambang (Battum .. bung) along the central highway incorporating some 3 hours drive (a long loop connection road). Of course, we participated in the appearance of a free-for-all driving manners and staying in the ‘rules’ of traffic manoeuvrers. Within every kilometre I lost count of how many different modes of transport and what each was carrying. Everyone and everything used this highway. Humans, roaming and herded animals, buses, trucks, scooters, bicycles all doing their different speeds. Prayed everyone was using their utmost concentration.

From all the different modes of transport as outlined above, Sun pointed out the ‘Chinese Cow’ along the way and there were so many of them. They are hard to describe. A mini tractor of sorts with only one set of wheels and long steering bars that towed all kinds of trailers and machinery. They are used everywhere, from transport to ploughing. Sun explained the machinery originally came from China and quickly replaced their dependence upon cows, bulls, oxen and elephants, hence “Chinese Cow”. They transported loads of caged or harnessed animals, timber, roofing iron, lucerne/ hay, bricks .. just about anything and there appeared to be no load limits either. 

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Arriving in Battambang (Cambodia’s Rice Food Bowl region) at mid-day (population 200,000), John dropped me off at the Battambang Resort tucked away at the edge of town on a very dusty road amongst paddocks. There are no options of doing any sightseeing walking due to the surrounding wilderness solely of paddocks. The staff greeted me immediately with a mango juice drink and a light lunch in their café, beside the pool prior to being escorted to my private Lake 14 bungalow to unwind. The pathway was not conducive to open walking as you had winding stepping stones, low hanging vines and overgrown gardens. If you had suitcases you would be required to carry them the entire way. A half hour later I was provided a fantastic private massage for just $5USD. Totally relaxed now. The bungalow was very unique with a circular central bathroom and shower, a king-sized bed looking out at the pool and the wandering geese that took a liking to my bedroom window. Perverted geese.

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Late afternoon, Sun & John picked me up for a 1hour drive to visit the bat cave below the temple of Prasat Bannon. Tourists were lined along the tiny roadway, next to a cemetery and local stalls selling all types of snacks, drinks and cooked insects (Spiders, ants, etc). My appetite escaped me promptly. As darkness drew, miniature bats started out from a tiny cave opening just above the roadway. The bats soon numbered in their millions and it takes some 30+ minutes for all of the adults to stream out. The young obviously stay within the cave until old enough. They are known to travel some 50klms each night and provide great insect control to the rice production in the fields. Time escaped us to venture to the temple of Prasat Bannon above so it was back to the resort for dinner and much needed sleep.

Waking up the next morning I felt quite ill with severe Gastro. Not sure if I obtained this from the resort or from the café on the way to Battambang. Gastro is usually from lettuce or tomatoes, etc where salads are washed in bad water. I have taken my drinking water in bottles, never tap water so I’m blaming something I ate. Luckily, I had my added first aid supplies with hydration tablets and diarrhea tablets. I doubled dosed initially considering the tour must proceed at the correct pace even though my strength has almost totally deserted me. So drained.

Today, Monday was my free day to wander around Battambang for site seeing but I was certainly not up to this. I retreated to the hotel, my bungalow and surrounds for the day. I took a meandering walk around the pond and overgrown gardens and wound up back at the pool for a sunny deck chair. You would think that would be relaxing but a close neighbouring temple had been using their loudspeakers ‘celebrating’ their worship and some sort of chanting ALL day long. To be honest, if I closed my eyes, I could believe I was at the races. Chanting was like a race call and very loud. Don’t know who won? LOL!!! It was sad it was a nothing day so caught up with my journal and tried to get well.

Tuesday, fully dosed up again I was packed and ready for Sun & John who were both upset of my new illness and seemed to take it personally. Once I showed them the normal Aussie way of dealing with things, they became more relaxed but they made sure I was taken the best of care of. Such gentlemen. Breakfast was mostly my favourite mango juice and toast (stale like bread with 10seconds in the toaster I think) and lots of jam. Food intake on hold after that.

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Our first stop was the temple of Wat Ek Phnom. The old temple is quite small (1100AD) and severely damaged and looted over the centuries. The new temple setup adjacent shows more restoration and an enclosure to store statues, ornaments, etc. It is about 10klms North of Battambang so we had to backtrack South after this site towards Phnom Penh. We didn’t spend a lot of time here due to the timeframe ahead of us and that includes returning South 23klms from Battambang to Prasat Banan for the temple viewing.

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Prasat Bannon Temple is an 11^th century structure with 5 huge stone towers with the central one being the highest. To get there, plus to see the surrounding view of villages and pastures you must gain your stamina to climb the insane 358 stone steps flanked either side by nagas (dragons) to a height of some 400metres. The optimum word here is “INSANE”! Each step is approx. 400-450mm high with no relief until you get to what I call ‘Level 1’ … let’s say, 300+ steps, where there is a woman selling drinks and snacks out of an esky and a table. That was my Mt Everest … could not go any further .. so drained. I watched the 2 small boys (around 8 & 9years) interact with their mother after they climbed with me carrying a very large block of ice between them all the way up to their Mother’s esky. Can’t see how they can do this ice delivery every day (twice) for Mum to sell drinks and ice creams, etc. Their world was full of happiness. As I sat there ‘recovering’ I looked down at the mountain of steps to see a small group of New Zealanders all struggling too but their language was far more colourful and not really suited to a temple viewing, cursing EVERY step and this continued on their downward journey too! They were very heat drained and not looking good. The most insane temple steps encountered. Sadly, I was not able to see the temple and its 5 towers, nor the country views.

Finally, I managed to return to the van where John had my cold face towel and more cold water. I could hear the towel singe steam off my face! Such a relief! Sun broke up the several hours drive to Phnom Penh with some stopovers and the most surprising one was a small pottery factory off the highway run by 3 families. Such sad living conditions but everyone was very happy even though their pottery market was struggling more each day. They generally make the clay fired bricks and pots for the traditional Cambodian fired stoves however, the population is becoming more electrically and stainless-steel savvy in their cooking requirements. The men were all sitting around a work table having their morning break when out from around the corner I saw a couple of young children being coy (seeing a strange Aussie certainly) so I gave them a colouring-in book & pencils out of my backpack. All of a sudden, I was swamped with children from the property house some 50m away (all 3 families live together in this one standard house). They all had huge smiles & much laughter/ cheering. I managed to have the exact amount of books & pencils. 14 sets in all went in 30 seconds. So many young children and the mothers could not stop smiling and seeing the kids show some pages to them with excitement. I finally was rid of the 6kgs of extra weight in my backpack. Whew!!! Not one of the family’s members could speak English so Sun translated. They were immensely grateful, bowing heads and hands in prayer mode numerous times however their smiles alone were enough for me. Sun was also grateful that I gave him one set for his nephew living back in Siem Reap.

Back onto the highway the construction works started and the traffic congestion increased by manoeuvring in and around the roadworks. China is investing in the Belt and Road Funding where they are upgrading the highway to a super highway and a rail line alongside that will allow both to cross the open lands of Cambodia and enter into Thailand in the North. The project is huge but there appears a major lack in proper Project Management, not to mention safety. China is putting Cambodia into severe debt that they won’t be able to recover from. I was to find out later how much invasion China has inflicted upon Cambodia to the detriment of the country every passing day.

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Our last stop before we get to Phnom Penh is an historical town of Oudong (40klms NW of the city) where we visit the mountain, Phnom Oudong. Here we find a temple with ancient steps but seems to be to today’s acceptable standard. These steps I can manage and notice my strength is returning. Yay!!! The temple is in very good condition and the surrounding landscape view is a sight well received. Looking down you can see the royal residence and Oudong was the capital of Cambodia for some 250 years until the 1850s and where Khmer Rouge first took hold in the early 1970s. The details of the temple carvings and walls are beyond belief. Such artistry. I was not allowed entrance into the temple. A sacred day I believe.

Nearing Phnom Penh you can feel the population swarm towards and envelope you with larger highways, traffic bedlam and horn blowing, scooters too many to count but they say around 7 Million (almost matching the population) and a cluster of high-rise buildings marking the CBD area. Winding through the convoluting narrow streets, not knowing which was North, South, East or West we came to an abrupt stop at a paved area where two valets met us operating out front of the Lumiere Hotel – 4star, a recently built high-rise. Sadly, it was time to say good bye to Sun & John, for they now hand me over to two local guides waiting there also to take me around Phnom Penh for the next day. Sun & John immediately returned to Siem Reap (5.5hrs, 320klms) which worried me until around midnight when Sun text me stating he had arrived home safely. I insisted Sun text me immediately he arrived home. So glad he did. There are no penalty or overtime rates in Cambodia so I gave them quite a large tip to make up for their wages. I was so glad to have them for the 7 days.

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My hotel room and the view from the 14^th floor was superb. The city lights and a whole building in the distance had a large ‘tv’ screen on its entire wall. So different in this city scape and it kept me occupied. Gaining the much-needed sleep after midnight I was able to get my wonderful brekky at the hotel on the top floor to an even better view of the city however, time was not available to soak it in. It is now the last day of the tour and my guides await me in the lobby.

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Sadly, with smiles and my normal welcome, my guides are not too overjoyed. There is an instant disconnection .. names were casually thrown about, hence Sophea (Guide) is my only recollection to who they were. It took just seconds for me to be placed into a SUV and off to our first stop to the Royal Palace which is amazing and boosted my excitement. The grounds were impeccable and with a great museum showing how the palace operated and what clothing and rituals took place. A special flag was flying this day showing the King was present at the palace. He has maids in his care wearing the traditional gowns of the old days and there are 7 costumes used which allows the King to know which day of the week it was. True! The King is becoming old and remains single and has no children so I’m unaware what the future now holds for the dynasty. He has a nephew still but no news of such dynasty succession.

Our next trip was rather silent with some general conversation to a village 16klms away on the southern outskirts of Phnom Penh called Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre. It is commonly known as the “Killing Fields”. My guides leave me to wander to the entrance (fee is $6USD & included in my tour) and you are given a headset for walking commentary to respective locations around the site.

A point to note is, the village is very poor and run down and it goes along with the tragedy I’m about to uncover. The village grew out from the military post so I wished it would have been relocated as I do not know how the people here could live so close to this genocide. Surely, it must be a permanent scar to their living and feels more like a life of existing.

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This blog can never achieve the tragedy and ruthlessness in what this place is unfolding to me. As you walk among the retrieval pods (only a few were unearthed) of mass graves you can still see clothing and bone matter protruding through the ground surface. It is visibly confronting. Some pods were approx. 5mx3mx3m deep and enveloped from 300 to 400+ people of all ages.

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When all the pods for viewing were encountered, I was left with the centre piece monument to view. An amazing white and gold pagoda in a traditional Khmer architectural style some 25m in height. It has a central glass tomb housing thousands of human skulls in a museum type shelving system some 8m high. You are provided a very small floor area around its perimeter to closely view the horrendous crimes upon humanity. There is a catalogue of how each person was killed, some you could not even contemplate to be that evil against another person so I’ll keep this memory to myself. I was left shaking, knowing I was looking at thousands of skulls at very close range, and quite a few were children and I could not imagine any normal person spending more than 15 minutes in this monument. It is so confronting but respectfully done as best it could.

The Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot – Marxist Dictator) military 1975 – 79 used loud music hailers to muffle the screams of torture and killing. Prisoners arrived in the dark of night and mostly murdered before dawn. The transport finished just before midnight of each day so as not to raise suspicion. A nearby local farmer protested to the military of the horrendous smells overcoming to his property but took their answer as being an abattoir for the soldier’s food requirements. He was none the wiser even when the civil war was over. Baffles me how 2million people were killed in just these 4 years with virtually no interference from outside countries or world organisations. Pol Pot incredibly fought successive Cambodian Governments right up to the 1990s. It took the Vietnamese to invade Cambodia to defeat the Khmer Rouge in January 1979.

Returning to my guides, they communicated more openly to me, possibly due to my lifeless face before them. One of things I remember they stated was Cambodians still have difficulty with people wearing reading glasses. They were the first rounded up by the Khmer Rouge due to being associated as an educated person. I made damn sure after that I was discreet when I had to wear mine.

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Without knowing (still in a tragedy maze) we arrived back into the city to view the commonly known S21 Prison, now called The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, slightly South of the city centre & West of the new Government area and embassies. Here a school was taken over and converted to a holding prison. Each main building (3 of) were 2 storeys high and the entire site surrounded by a high wall stone fence with broken glass bottles and barbed wire topping. The cells were anything from 3mx3m to a miniature 1.7mx1.3m of floor area (600 wide doors). Not all had windows either and most were above head height. There is a small steel box (ammunition box) in a corner for ablutions. Inside 2 of the other buildings there are hundreds of B&W photos of prisoner’s arrival. Each photo shows sheer terror on their faces, all of different ages. So, confronting and it takes courage from you to look into their eyes. Tears cannot be withheld and the viewing is held in supreme silence of those walking around. You then pass all the vile tools, shackles and stocks they frequently used.

The torture inflicted here is horrendous to the extreme. Most of the torture ‘survivors’ were later sent to the ‘Killing Fields’ for their final torture and ultimate death. If there was a blessing it is believed each were blindfolded in the long line ready for the mass killing … but this was a scheme to ensure no-one saw an execution or to raise the alarm to other prisoners. It was a matter to keep everything quiet for the loudspeakers to be the main accepted noise in the darkness. What evil clouds must of hovered above.

S21 prisoners, at times were hung high on a beam mounted on large posts with their feet and hands high with arching backs, then lowered head first into large kettle pots that were full to the brim of the entire prisoner’s excrement, bad water, etc later used for field fertiliser. This was their main interrogation method. Prisoners were also whipped and washed in sea salt. Sometime after they were returned to their cell, unwashed from the excrement. There were many forms of torture used here and all too frequently.

Upon leaving towards the prison’s exit I encountered a souvenir area. Behind the counter of one table was a very old, tiny and frail man asleep in his chair. It was Mr Bou Meng, one of the remaining two living sole survivors of this prison. 7 prisoners survived when the prison was invaded where some 16,000 people including Mr Meng’s wife were tortured and killed. Their children ultimately died from starvation at a KR children’s camp located elsewhere. Out of deep respect I dare not wake him for conversation, so I bought his book and clasped my hands in prayer and bowed leaving him in peace. To date, I have not managed to read his book ‘Bou Meng – A Survivor from Khmer Rouge Prison S-21’ by Huy Vannak … maybe soon. He knew if he saw the hour before midnight of each day; he would endure another day of terror here at S21 hell hole. He attends each day to promote the truth to the hardship faced by his people.

He possessed the courage to survive and ensure the perpetrators would be held to account and ultimately he was to provide a witness statement to the ECCC .. commonly known as The Khmer Rouge Tribunal commissioned on 2^nd January 2001, and helped obtain a guilty verdict towards the military personnel, although several perpetrators were later given high ranking Government positions due to their spin and blame towards the US, etc while the Vietnam War was still circling in the arena. It was beyond abhorrent their feasible reasoning and demeanour was predominately accepted, even by the United Nations (who I personally have NO time for) and lived comfortably for the remainder of their lives. Where was the true justice?

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A short walk away is the National Arts Museum which can take a while to wander through even though there is a volume of similar artefacts to encounter. I had trouble taken all this in due to the genocide visits earlier so I can’t recall anything magnificent here. My guides later took me to the historical area and fringe of the CBD to view atop, Wat Phnom, a Buddhist temple (built 1372 & 27m high) which is Phnom Penh’s central point and located on the only hill surrounded by major city roads. It is a place where all their festivals are held and a general area for families to bond and in the next few days Easter will be celebrated in a big way. It was a relief to finally get back to the hotel and now I find myself alone in Cambodia, my 8day tour has ended. Gulp!

In summary, from this last day it would take me about 3 more days to deal with the atrocities uncovered by this Khmer Rouge genocide. So, confronting. I’ll leave this blog here for now and rejoin you with Part 4 where I wander Phnom Penh and relocate to another hostel and ultimately seek out Sihanoukville.

I appreciate your time in reading my blogs and trust you will look for Part 4. I look forward to any feedback. Take care and be kind to each other. Be strong & nice during this Corona-virus lockdown.