A very guilty landscape in Phnom Penh
Piet bought a ticket for the luxury bus to Phnom Penh. Fatal decision! I should have understood that there is no such thing as a luxury bus from Pattaya to Phnom Penh. As punishment for my stupidity, after a five-hour delay at the border and a seemingly endless bus ride through Cambodia's murky countryside, I arrived in their capital at 01.00:XNUMX AM.
By chance I had myself taken to a simple boarding house and collapsed into bed, worn out and worn out. The next morning, fortunately, I found myself close to one of the places I wanted to visit in that city. After having breakfast in the neighborhood, I turned my steps towards Tuol Sleng, the genocide museum, where the Khmer Rouge tortured thousands of people in the second half of the XNUMXs before sending them off to the killing fields outside the city.
One of the genres in which Dutch painting excels is the landscape: the Dutch, the Mediterranean, the Romantic, the Impressionist, the Expressionist, etc. etc. At the end of the last century, the painter Armando added a completely unique type: the guilty landscape. Paintings in black and red that express a great deal of threat and horror and depict (very abstractly) imaginary places where terrible, indescribable events have taken place. Tuol Sleng could easily be included in that series, were it not for the fact that this is neither abstract nor imaginary, but on the contrary a very concrete place to which you can actually go. So I did, with many anxious premonitions about what I would see there.
I entered the entrance wing of the building complex (a former school) and from the first moment I was very shocked by what I saw there. The torture chambers, the prison cubicles… The sight of the hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs of people who have been brought in here and the instruments of torture used to reduce them in no time at all to beings overcome by agony and horrific pain, became increasingly difficult to bear. Of the 12.000 people who were brought here, only seven survived!
I felt increasing defeat at the moral abyss I was facing. Nietzsche once said: if you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss will stare back at itself. I gradually got angry and started to lose my faith in my fellow man at lightning speed. So it's true: homo homini lupus (people are wolves to each other). Here was hell on earth, and we don't even need the devil as a tormentor: we take on that role ourselves with great enthusiasm. Estranged from my usual positive attitude to life, I completed my wandering through this extremely guilty landscape after several hours of total confusion.
To my great fortune I then met one of the seven people who survived: a friendly old boss who sells a booklet there in which the story of his experiences is written down. His name is Chum Mey. I was extremely relieved to see someone in front of me who survived the horrors there. Someone who has come back from hell and can still smile kindly. I shook his hand with emotion and enthusiasm as if he were a dear old friend I met again after many years. Of course I bought a copy of his booklet, as a sign that we shouldn't give up all hope. I really felt that someone had saved me at the very last moment from plunging into the moral abyss that had been staring back at me intrusively and invitingly for hours.
That day I was otherwise incapable of any serious mental activity. Apathetically I tried to rid myself of the horrors I had learned and clung to the idea that I had found an old friend, who retroactively proved to be my guide through hell and out. Of course I continued to struggle with the question of how it is possible that people systematically and on a large scale horribly torture and kill their fellow human beings.
A possible answer to that question occurred to me the next day when I visited Phnom Penh's ancient library. The beautiful building, still from colonial times, is a stone's throw from the temple on the hill where the city was founded long ago. Above one of the entrances is a striking saying in French: La force lie un temps, l'idee enchaine pour toujours. Freely translated: violence forces a short time, the thought binds forever. But what if the idea also means that you may, yes, must use unlimited violence against your fellow man? But what if the thought is that the other is not a fellow human being but an evil being who needs to be tormented and destroyed? What then?? Yes, then the most terrible things happen and the guilty landscapes that we know all too well arise.
Over and over and over and over….
A very beautiful and sincere piece! I've been here a few years ago and it's still on my retina brrrr. You have an idea of what is happening there, but only when you actually take a look there do you really realize what has happened. I was supposed to visit the killing fields after Tuol Sleng, but I skipped those I had seen enough of the horrors that people can do to each other.
Also visited this place: the pictures of the girls, boys, men and women: before and sometimes also after their death.
Killing fields where, especially after a rain shower, pieces of clothing material and bones still come to the surface in front of your own feet. Then you wonder: whose would that have been? The infamous tree, where babies were hit with their heads.
Hell couldn't be worse there. Humans: the worst kind of mammals. And civilization: a thin layer of varnish.
The bus journey is indeed a drama. I have done this trip several times and initially when you buy the ticket they tell you that the departure is 8am from Khaosan Road and the arrival time is around 8pm.
Departure is fine. However, the bus from the border only leaves at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Arrival was then at 3 am.
I then reported this and the answer was smiling yes we can't do anything about it because in cambodia we have no possibility for control.
So it's just selling ticket and see.
However, the bus back goes reasonably according to schedule.
Phnom Penh is a city with a number of attractions.
The killing fields and the genocide museum are impressive, the history is shocking.
I also visited the Tunnels in Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, equally impressive.
Russian market, the night market and central market are also places where you can have a good time.
Next to the central market is a shopping mall that is large for Cambodia.
Here were Cambodia's first escalators, on which the population stood very strangely watching how this worked, fear and trembling.
The grand palace is very beautiful and also a boat trip on the river is nice and relaxing.
I have now taken the plane again. Is not much more expensive with an early booking. The visa costs 20$ at the airport while it costs 1000 baht at the embassy in BKK. difference 10$ anyway.
Waiting time at the airport about 15 minutes. so it saves a trip to the embassy.
From the airport by motorcycle tuk-tuk.
The hustle and bustle is different from Bangkok but nevertheless very nice.
Every time I try to make the boat trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, but the water is always too low.
A trip to Shianoukville from Phnom Penh is again doable.
Cambodia, Phnom Penh in addition to Thailand/Bangkok I really like to go there.
Probably a long time ago, now border visa 35$.
greetings, H
Very sincere and sensitive and sensible report. He also worked there for 1 year and even outside the killing fields and the Athens torture story, I can show you dozens of other gruesome places where you never want to have been in the times of Pol Pot.
Unfortunately, I recently met some Khmer veterans in Surin who had “enjoyed” participating. Of course the order was an order, but they still live comfortably and undisturbed in Thailand without having to worry about the atrocities they honestly admitted to having committed, such as…. excuse me…a competition to cut through a child with the least number of blows from the machete.
I think it's a bit cowardly of the Thai government to leave these people alone and they know them very well. I've had the pleasure a few times ??? I was happy to talk to Hung Sen, who found Thailand's attitude particularly base on this (perhaps other) issue.
I would like to see those responsible before an international tribunal and see their last day of life placed in an uncomfortable cell.
Sorry, I had to get rid of this after this story
Rene, there is indeed a tribunal, the United Nations-backed 'Cambodia Tribunal', which has already issued a number of verdicts.
Furthermore: if by Hung Sen you mean the man who rules Cambodia in a dictatorial manner, you must realize that the man is a former battalion commander of the infamous Khmer Rouge, the regime under which all the terrible crimes mentioned were committed. In that light, his statement about the attitude of Thailand sounds 'something' different…………….
A serene yet emotionally written piece. Thanks and respect. As a tour guide I have been there a number of times with Dutch and Belgians. Again and again everyone is very affected. The frightening idea that there is a monster within man is especially poignant here in Tuol Sleng because many of those monsters were young, brainwashed teenagers. All of Cambodia was hell. A hell of torn families, of children who were encouraged to report the slightest thing to their parents and brothers and thus send them to certain death. A hell of slave labor. A hell of famine. And the remarkable thing is that the Tribunal that Cornelis cites finally only came about after heavy international pressure. Precisely from the countries that looked away during Pol Pot's reign of terror. Because Pol Pot also hunted the Vietnamese living in Cambodia, and the West was fine with that during the Vietnam War. The enemy of my enemy… Cambodia has been freed from Pol Pot thanks to his fateful decision to invade South Vietnam when it was on the verge of collapse. Whereupon the North Vietnamese army made short work of him and his executioner regime. But we…yes, we can feel a little guilty.
Beautiful piece. Lots of feeling. I think I can put into words what everyone experiences when visiting these kinds of places. Whether it concerns the Killing Fields, Tuolsleng or Auswitsch.
Memory of this kind of horror must remain;
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
What really bothers me, however, is talking about collective guilt.
People of a certain age who lived in a time when bad things happened and had the opportunity to exert influence can feel guilty from me. But I and many others are careful not to feel guilty now, in 2013, for: The crusades, the extinction of the dodo, the massacre of Native Americans (Indians), Slavery, oppression of "blacks", betrayal of Jews in WWII, police actions in Indonesia, the Vietnam War or the horrors in Cambodia. Let alone that we still have to pay for this financially.
So no, we can't feel guilty about that!
The day before yesterday Cambodia, yesterday Yugoslavia, today Syria.
Taking the bus to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap is a good option, but my advice is to stay one night in Aran and go to the border early in the morning, buy your visa at the border for 30$ and then go to the bus station with the free shuttle bus and buy there. a ticket.
If you don't get to the border until 11.00 a.m. or 12.00 p.m., it's a drama, waiting times of 2 hours are no exception, the return route applies from Phom Phen, take the night bus or hotel bus, departure around midnight, arrival in Poi Pet around 8 a.m., departure from Siem Reap. at 06.00:XNUMX am
Have done this several times. Buy your own bus ticket in Aran to Bangkok or Pattaya unless you have a combination ticket (risk of waiting for your fellow passengers who may come with another bus). I always do it myself.
Ben
Pol Pot was supported by the US and allies, including the Netherlands, but also by China, because he was the enemy of Vietnam.
Incidentally, it is the Vietnamese, 'our' enemy at the time, who defeated Pol Pot's regime.
And then unleashed their own terror on it. My wife, a Cambodian war victim, can tell about this beautifully - and full of hate. Without going into details, I can tell you that the Vietnamese were even more cruel if possible, and deeply hated, especially among the northern Cambodian population.
A beautiful piece and so recognizable because we have been there ourselves. It leaves a deep impression. Then there is the sequel, the visit to the killing fields just outside Phnom Penh. Put on the headphones that are placed there, listen and shiver. The voice and the music and the sounds provide ice cold chills in a tropical Cambodia. We still have a photo collage of this Tuol Sleng prison on youtube…. https://youtu.be/rgPDRsOxHl4