Like a bad smell in Cambodia

Feeling like we needed to stretch our legs and take advantage of another year in SE Asia we organised a month off and headed to Cambodia. The weekend of our departure was a public holiday and suddenly there was a mass exodus in celebration of the death of a king and the whole city was grounded. All buses and trains and most flights were full. For once the nervous dedication to planning that I learnt at my mother’s knee paid off and I smiled smugly as we climbed on to a bus to Phnom Penh, waving tickets purchased 3 weeks before. Happily we sat back expecting delays, pointless stops and karaoke music blasted out at ridiculous volume; we weren’t disappointed.
After only one night, like rats hearing of a particularly filthy sewer in swarmed the Devon contingent.
Any visit to Cambodia, is said to be incomplete without the Killing Fields and Angkor Wat; more of the latter later. Two smiling, nodding tuk-tuk drivers escorted our party to S-21, Tuol Sleng. The building was formerly a school until the Khmer Rouge took over the city in 1975 when they turned it into the largest prison in the country. We paid for a guide and he led us through torture rooms, pointing out blood stains and re-enacting torture scenes in a nonchalant manner. The Khmer Rouge were organised in their torture and everyone that came through the doors of S-21 was photographed and their confessions recorded. Rooms lead into each other with rows and rows of photos of the dead, looking out with vacant or wounded expressions. It was sunny day when we visited and the trees were in blossom, a pretty, quiet place that is hard to reconcile with the location for the destruction of a people.
The killing fields are on the outskirts of the city, where S-21 prisoners were taken to be executed. I’d read that it was a difficult place to visit but I was unprepared for the tranquil beauty of the surroundings. The tower of skulls that had been erected in the middle made it difficult to forget the reason for your visit but it was hard to appreciate the sheer volume of people whose life was ended there and in what horrific circumstances. Scraps of clothing still poke out of the ground from the mass graves and work is going on to excavate further sights. Someone said that the scraps had been strategically placed, I heard others discussing how they thought the tower of skulls seemed distasteful at a later date but I soon got sick of hearing Westerners contemplating exactly how they want to be shocked and depressed by the sights. Perhaps the Cambodians can decide how it will remembered.

We left the city, running for the peace of the south. We stopped in Kep, a small seaside town. We slowed down our pace, riding bikes and eating seafood, only once increasing speed to watch the sunset from cunningly named Sunset Rock. After going to the wrong place, confusing a security guard, re-tracing our steps whilst blushing, we started the march up the jungle covered mountain with limited time. As the incline got steeper we hurried up, watching the sun start to sink. We practically ran the last part but we made it in time to an uninspiring sunset, everyone covered in a sheath of sweat inches thick. As soon as the sun disappeared from view a thick blanket was dropped over the jungle and torches were whipped out like lightsabers. We waited a minute while the hippies stood winding theirs up and then plunged back down the hill. The silence took on a sharp eerie edge as we all concentrated on our foot falls. I could almost hear the tense music of a horror movie as we shuffled past rustling bushes and barking dogs but no psycho killer leapt out with a chain-saw
On the drive back to our hostel we didn’t see anyone, hear anything for a full 10 minutes. No traffic, no stares, no kids, no-one selling us anything. It felt like we were the last people on Earth and I felt guiltily pleased. I thought what would Ray Mears do? Not Bear Grylls.