Over the past month and a half, I’ve learned that Cambodia is a fascinating country, full of paradoxes and irony. Even though this country is still desperately trying to come to terms with the atrocious violence it experienced in the recent past, Cambodia is also filled with beautiful, kind people, many of whom are bright-faced children who giggle and wave at passing westerners. But this country is also full of corruption and the mistakes of governmental inadequacy. Politicians are overwhelmingly corrupt, civil servants don’t usually seem interested in helping people, and law enforcement is a joke. And yet there is hope. This country is filled with NGOs (non-governmental organizations), staffed by Cambodians and foreigners who just want to help. And they are making some progress, but there are new battles to fight everyday. I have been very surprised by the number of westerners that I encounter here, and even more surprised that so many of them are not tourists. They are, instead, long-term volunteers and trained professionals working for meager NGO salaries and students here for the summer from colleges and law schools all over the world. And they’re all here to help. In this blog entry, I will update everyone on the activities of the last six weeks and try to record some of my observations of this puzzling country and its wonderful people. From the start, I want you all to know that I have been comfortable here and we haven’t encountered any problems we haven’t been able to solve relatively easily (I was even able to get my laptop fixed here, after a leaky air conditioner in our hostel in Singapore put it out of commission for a few weeks -- and it only cost me $20!).
We got here on a Sunday evening back in early June and were met at the airport by Heleyn, the woman with whom we have been communicating for the last few months. Heleyn works in the defense section of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (also known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts in Cambodia, or ECCC, if you please). She helped us set up our internships here and has been a valuable resource in adapting to the Cambodian way of life. On our first evening in the country, she accompanied us to our hotel and joined us for dinner, during which she gave us recommendations for restaurants and taught us how to navigate the city.
Getting around Phnom Penh is pretty easy, once you get used to it. The city has no public transit to speak of, and although parts of it are walkable, at times you must use a motorized vehicle to get to your destination. So, you may ask, how do you get from point A to point B? Well, you have several choices.
The city is filled with tuk tuks, which are two-wheeled covered carriages pulled behind a motorcycle. These are best for larger groups of people or when you are transporting a lot of stuff or when the weather is bad, and although the drivers maneuver these vehicles through the city streets with relative ease, tuk tuks don’t go very fast.
If you’re on your own and need to get somewhere, you’re probably better off taking a moto. Motos (driven by a man called a “motodup”) are basically private motorbikes that will take you anywhere in the city with relative ease and speed. You just hop on the back and give the driver directions as you go.
Heleyn made this process infinitely easier by teaching us how to give directions in Khmer. The phrases “bat ch’weng” (turn left), “bat sadam” (turn right), “to trung” (go straight), and “sum chup tinee” (stop here, please), have been my saving grace for the last few weeks, because most motodups speak little or no English (unless you pick one up in the tourist areas, but those drivers usually demand a higher price). When taking a tuk tuk or moto, you almost never negotiate the price before starting off. Instead, when you get off at the end, you pay the driver however much you think you owe for the journey. Heleyn taught us how much you should pay to go certain distances (about $.50-$1.50 for motos and about twice that much for a tuk tuk).They also have vehicles called cyclos, which are bicycles with three wheels and a seat in the front.
The driver sits behind the passenger and pedals. These are exceedingly slow and the drivers seem to have a cumbersome time maneuvering through traffic, so I haven’t taken one of these yet.My first few days in Phnom Penh were spent exploring the city, mentally mapping its contents (tourist attractions and useful things like markets), and studying some of the reports produced by the NGO with which I am interning this summer. On Monday morning after our arrival (a little more than 12 hours after getting into the country), I walked with Ian to the office of his internship, then continued on foot to explore the surroundings, walking up along the riverfront (two rivers converge here – the Mekong and the Tonle Sap – and then split back into two just south of the center of town). As I walked I stumbled upon a number of the city’s main tourist attractions (the Royal Palace, the National Museum, etc.), but I was mostly interested in getting a feel for the city, so I kept to the streets. Eventually, the sun was too hot to continue, so I looped back and headed back to the hotel (we stayed at a great place called the Boddhi Tree – it’s a quaint wood villa turned into a hotel that boasts an incredibly friendly staff and a peaceful little restaurant on the second floor). By the time I got back to the room, I realized that I had acquired a terrible sunburn; my skin continued to redden throughout the day until it reached a reached a very lobster-like shade. Later that afternoon we visited the Russian Market (so named because the Russians liked to shop there in the 1980s).
The next two days I spent time walking around and getting ready to start my internship that Thursday. I also slowly began to acclimate to both the heat and the traffic. It can be sweltering here, but I don’t think it’s quite as bad as some summer days in Texas (it usually gets up to the 80s or 90s each day in Cambodia), and since it’s the “rainy season,” most days there’s a mid-afternoon rain shower to cool things off. The traffic, on the other hand, is not quite like anything I have ever seen. Traffic control devices (stop signs, traffic lights, etc.) are viewed more as a suggestion than a matter of law. Many smaller intersections don’t even have a stop sign, so drivers blare their horns as they approach to warn others in the vicinity. I haven’t seen a single speed limit sign here, and although everyone drives pretty slowly, those wishing to break away from the flow of traffic also use their horns to warn slower vehicles to get out of the way. It’s also common for drivers to turn down the wrong way on a street and drive along the curb until they see a break in the traffic so they can cut over to the other side of the road (this is usually only smaller vehicles like motos and tuk tuks, not really cars). Despite this being what might seem like complete chaos at first sight, somehow this system seems to work in its own way. Because everyone drives pretty slowly, they can react to obstacles more easily, and when a traffic jam happens, people work together to untangle the situation. I also haven’t noticed any signs of road rage, and I think there might be something to be learned from this seeming pandemonium.
I reported to work at LICADHO (which is the French acronym for my organization, which is known in English as: The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights – www.licadho.org) on Thursday of that first week, and received a warm welcome from the other staff and my fellow intern, Sophie, a law student at McGill University in Canada. LICADHO is a human rights NGO founded by a Cambodian woman who studied medicine in France and decided to return to her home country in the mid-1990s. Now her daughter (Naly, my boss) serves as the director of the organization. Much of my time at work was initially spent reading reports and brochures and generally familiarizing myself with the human rights situation in Cambodia. This was a thoroughly depressing task, but I am pleased to be working for an organization that is striving to change the status quo. LICADHO works on a number of human rights issues, including women’s and children’s rights, media censorship by the government, judicial corruption, and land-grabbing cases (where the government either awards private land to corporations, or wealthy individuals snatch it up through fraud – long-term residents are evicted (sometime violently), and in some cases their possessions have been burned and they have been rounded up in trucks and dumped in the middle of fields far away. These residents are expected to form a new community despite a complete lack of resources, such as running water and electricity). My work so far has mainly focused on land issues. This is a third-world country striving to achieve development, but sadly when urban land (suitable for building hotels and offices and the like) or fertile cropland (suitable for sugar or rubber plantations) is valuable to investors, the government is all too willing to evict residents and property owners without a second thought about the consequences. As a result, “development” has become a dirty word among many Cambodians, who resent the fact that their government is willing to literally bulldoze their homes in the name of “progress.”
The first weekend in Phnom Penh, we visited the Tuol Sleng Prison museum on Saturday and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields on Sunday. Tuol Sleng, which is also known as S-21, was a Khmer Rouge prison and torture facility. Of the 20,000 people who passed through Tuol Sleng, only seven survived. The prison was housed in a converted high school, and the Khmer Rouge sliced up the classrooms and built torture chambers and jail cells. The grounds have a very spooky ambiance, and I began to feel a little queasy after looking at pictures of the thousands and thousands of innocent Cambodians who passed through the prison; most of them were later sent to the Killing Fields where they were shot or bludgeoned to death and thrown into mass graves. On Sunday we visited the Choeung Ek Killing Fields, where thousands of skeletons have been unearthed from mass graves. There’s not much to the area, which is located about 15 kilometers outside the city, but you can see dozens and dozens of large pits that once served as the final resting place for victims of the Khmer Rouge. In memorial, the government erected a large stupa on the grounds. The stupa contains the skulls of victims who died in the fields; the skulls are sorted by gender and age. It was all very sobering, especially when you consider that this all happened just a couple of decades ago and many victims and perpetrators are still living in the country today. The Khmer Rouge was a twisted communist faction that destroyed the infrastructure of the country and killed anyone who was educated, ambitious, or outspoken (and sometimes just for things like wearing glasses). They destroyed schools, religions, and human dignity. And, what I'm learning at my internship is even scarier because a lot of similar abuses are still going on today (government intimidation, press censorship, land grabbing by the rich and powerful, political manipulation, etc.). Also, to silence their opponents, the government can and has arrested people for “crimes” like defamation and “disinformation,” both of which can be criminal offenses under Cambodian law.
In mid-June, Ian and I both got a holiday from work for themel queen mother's birthday, so we used the day to the Royal Palace and the National Museum. Even though most buildings are off limits at the Royal Palace, it was very interesting to see the ornate grounds and the famous Silver Pagoda, a gorgeous Buddhist temple with floor tiles made of silver (each one weighs a kilogram, or about 2.2 pounds). The Silver Pagoda also holds a collection of Buddhist relics and a beautiful jewel-encrusted Buddha statue that weighs about 180 pounds. At the National Museum we wandered through a very nice collection of art and artifacts from the various kingdoms that have ruled Cambodia, including the Angkor Empire, the kingdom that constructed the world-famous Angkor Wat temples, which we traveled to see in person about a month later.
On our day off, Ian and I also signed a short lease for an apartment in Phnom Penh. It’s quite nice and it comes furnished. We also have a nice little balcony overlooking the street and the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers. It’s been quite nice to have a home base to come back to when we’re traveling and a nice place to relax after work.
The next weekend, we went to a little beach town, called Sihanoukville, which is about five hours away by bus. Ian and I went with two other interns (one from each of our offices). We had a lot of fun just playing in the beach and hanging out. We stayed in a nice little hotel right on the beach, and most of the daytime was spent sitting on the beach and playing in the waves. Somehow, I got sunburned yet again (this seems to be a reoccurring theme this summer), despite the fact that I was reapplying SPF 50 about once an hour.
On our third weekend after leaving Singapore, we took a weekend trip to Vietnam to visit Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City). It was very interesting to see my first communist country. It was only about a five-hour bus ride, and we got in on Friday evening, found a hotel, and had some good Vietnamese food for dinner. We mostly did our sightseeing on Saturday and Sunday. We visited some interesting sites, including the Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum, the market, and some very pretty Chinese pagodas. The palace was the place where the South Vietnamese president lived until the communist North Vietnamese (Viet Cong) took over the south during the Vietnam War. Now it is a tourist attraction and sometimes used for meeting and government receptions. We had a guide who gave us a tour in English and we watched a propaganda-filled video (mostly about the evil Americans and their war of aggression) before leaving the palace. We then went to visit city's marketplace, a huge covered building with hundreds of stalls selling housewares, clothing, food, souvenirs, and more. After lunch we went to the War Remnants Museum, which purports to document the Vietnam War (here it is called the American War) and its effects on the Vietnamese people. There were exhibits about all the horrible things Americans supposedly did to the Vietnamese, including displays on Agent Orange and napalm victims. The only display that appeared to be even a little bit unbiased was an exhibit on journalists who covered the war, many of whom died during combat (and we were pretty sure that the exhibit was only neutrally presented because it was sponsored by several American corporations and—for some reason—the Commonwealth of Kentucky). Later on Saturday afternoon, we walked around the city and saw the Notre Dame Cathedral, the ornate post office, the city hall (with a statue of Ho Chi Minh in front), and the Saigon River. For dinner we had Vietnamese soup, and later that night we had desert at a place called the "Milwaukee," which we both thought was pretty funny. On Sunday we had to catch the bus at 1p.m., so we got some breakfast and took a cab to Chinatown, where we visited several Chinese pagodas (which were built over 100 years ago for ancestor worship -- they were not Buddhist temples). The bus ride back was pretty fast, and we were home by about 7:30, although we unexpectedly hit some traffic on the ride back to our apartment because it turns out someone had been shot in the leg, just a few blocks south of our apartment. The man had been taken hospital, but there was still a crowd gathered around.
The next day (a Monday), we got up early and caught a bus out to the ECCC (the Khmer Rouge Tribunal). The entire experience at the court was one large exercise in frustration, and I can understand why many Cambodians are justifiably overwhelmed and confused by the terribly inefficient process. It took over an hour to check in, and the long line of people snaked into the parking lot, in the hot Cambodian sun. Once we were in the chambers (after missing the first portion of the hearing), the day's arguments proceeded extremely slowly, in part because the tribunal was set up to allow for a tri-party system (with a prosecutor, defense, and a civil party representing all the victims of the Khmer Rouge). The main issues of the hearing were the defendant’s (an 82-year-old former foreign minister for the Khmer Rouge -- his name is Ieng Sary and he was known as Brother Number 3 in the regime) ability to stand trial, whether trying him under the ECCC would be double jeopardy (since he was convicted by a Vietnamese-established court in 1979, and whether a royal pardon (which was politically motivated) in the 1990s exempts Ieng Sary from prosecution under the tribunal. Eventually, the judges adjourned for lunch and to make some preliminary decisions, but when they returned, the defendant wasn't feeling well. So, they called in the doctor to testify that he was not strong enough to continue for the day, and decided to adjourn until the next morning. The entire thing was conducted in three languages -- English, French, and Khmer -- with simultaneous translation. There were so many hiccups in the day (transportation issues to and from the court (which is well outside of town, past the Phnom Penh Airport), no access to food or water, one bathroom for about 300 people, no good location for visitors to find lunch, etc.) that I would be sorely disappointed (even disgusted) if I was a Cambodian attending the court proceedings that are supposed to bring about justice and accountability for a brutal regime that killed at least 1.7 million people (about 1/4 of Cambodia's population at the time).
Ian and I got back to Phnom Penh by mid-afternoon and decided to swing by the American Embassy because we needed to have extra pages added to our passports (he was completely out of free pages and I only had 3 left). Many of the countries in southeast Asia use full-page visas, so it takes up a lot of space quickly. The process was efficient and pretty painless, which stood in stark contrast to the tribunal proceedings we had observed that day. For dinner we went to the Foreign Correspondent's Club, an expat hangout that used to be a hotel and restaurant for foreign journalists.
The next Friday was the fourth of July, so we spent the weekend celebrating like good Americans. On Saturday, we went to Wat Phnom, a temple built on the only hill in Phnom Penh. It’s said that a woman named Penh built the temple on the hill and when the city formed around it, they named it Phnom Penh (“hill of Penh”). Afterward, we went to a shooting range where you can pay to shoot various kinds of automatic rifles and other things like grenade launchers. I shot a Tommy gun and Ian shot an AK-47. Then we went to a go-kart track, where we dangerously raced each other around sharp curves (I left Ian in the dust).
On Sunday, July 6, we went to an Independence Day party at the American Embassy. They had live music (by the navy’s 7th Fleet Band), a hot dog-eating contest, clowns, and lots of American foods (hamburgers and hot dogs and ice cream). It was really nice to get to go inside the embassy grounds themselves because usually that is impossible for security reasons. The ambassador gave a brief speech and then took his turn in the dunking booth. There were red, white, and blue lights up everywhere and they had erected a tent with red, white, and blue stars hung from the roof. The embassy isn't far from our apartment, so we walked home after it was over. As we were crossing the street, we could hear loud chirping noises coming from a big tree about 50 yards away. I initially thought it was a bunch of birds roosting during dusk because the sun had just gone down. But as we got closer, Ian said, "birds don't hang upside down." They were GIANT bats!! There were dozens and dozens (maybe hundreds) of them. So creepy!
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