Why We Skipped Phnom Penh

It seems rather 'ignorant tourist' like of us to skip through a country's capital city doesn't it?

The bus station in Phnom Penh

I’m usually all about the history. I love to know what makes a country the way it is. And everyone said “You must go to the Killing Fields in Phonm Penh.” I had every intention. The impact of the Khmer Rouge on this country is completely understandable. But when our schedule was looking too tight and we took into account all that had happened the last year, how obviously wound up we were all ready, and the fact that one of our closest friends died that week making for two deaths in my life in the space of 12 months (and I think at this point I’ll add that my beloved poodle, Bruno also passed away this last year)…I knew that I probably wasn’t going to handle the Killing Fields very well. I didn’t really want to test myself. And Cambodia is close enough (and we like Kep enough) that I’ve no doubt we’ll be back sometime in the next few years. That and the more people we talked to told us not to go unless we were really prepared. So we didn’t.

To give you a very, very brief background because I think a lot of what happened in Cambodia, happened without the rest of the world really knowing and understanding. Almost 2 million Cambodians died between 1975 and 1979. This is what happens when you’re a small, impoverished country I guess. They were ravaged by Pol Pot’s guerilla warfare, famine and its said that many weapons were sold into the country by other bigger countries, namely China and Thailand (Thailand and Cambodia has always experienced friction) and indirectly, even the USA. The Killing Fields in Phnom Penh is like a mass grave yard. Apparently there were over 8000 skulls found, men, women and children, many bludgeoned to death in an effort to save bullets. In 2005, the government sold the site to a Japanese company who now apparently charges even Cambodians to visit their own family graves. You can imagine how the Cambodians feel about this.

Although a peace has now been reached, the country still bears the scars. There’s a lot of torn down remnants of buildings and the people are still very timid. I can’t really describe the people of Cambodia to you in one word. Its like they are just happy to be alive. They seem to have a mentality of ‘eat and drink because tomorrow, you never know who’s going to overthrow the government and kill everyone’. Even though the government is currently secure. No one seems to plan for the future. They are really just happy to be alive today.