Don Det to Champasak

I have some catching up to do. I did basically nothing in Don Det. I was still getting over the food poisoning. I wasn't actually feeling that bad, just lethargic. It's a shame, because there are apparently some nice waterfalls there.

The place I stayed there was what I imagine a Guesthouse would be like if I ran it. When I checked in the owner pulled out a crumpled up school book and gave me the inside bit of a pen to fill in my details. One night I was in bed and heard a rattle at the window, then the curtains parted and the owner's head burst through. He wanted me to pay part of my bill because he had no money for change. There were puppies and kittens running around everywhere. After I'd eaten the mother cat would come and jump on the table and finish my scraps. Despite this the food was excellent and cheap considering the portion sizes. I did nothing, but it was a bloody good place to recover in a hammock.

After Don Det I caught a bus a little bit north to the sleepy town of Champasak. It reminded me a bit of a slightly larger version of Gladstone. It consists of one long street along the banks of the Mekong with a main road running parallel. There are a few guesthouses and other shops geared towards tourists. There was even a shop selling small appliances like blenders and stereos. There were virtually no other tourists. Apparently this is the very end of the tourist season.

As an aside, I'm currently sitting on a bus watching a guy load his motorbike into the luggage compartment.

The main draw of Champasak is the nearby Vhat Phou temple. I've seen it spelled multiple ways but it is pronounced "What poo?" I rented the worst scooter ever and took myself out there yesterday. It is basically a (much) smaller version of the temples at Angkor Wat. At the ticket office the staff were all riveted by the latest new release - Jaws 2. They were hooping and hollering and screaming at the TV.

What poo is situated on a hillside. At the bottom there are 2 large buildings that were being reconstructed. There appears to be archeological digs in progress at the site. I know this because I walked along a ledge and when I arrived at the other side I was at the dig site. After some frantic gesticulation I turned around and went back.

There are stairs leading up the hill to the sanctuary. It is only a small building. It actually looked exactly like what I imagine a sanctuary would look like.  Inside the sanctuary a monk was praying so I decided to wait. Instead I went to see the sacred spring, which is behind the sanctuary. It looked nothing like what the pictures on water bottles would have you believe. It was a crack in the rock that water dripped from before it was collected in a gutter and funneled to a probably sacred font. When I went back into the sanctuary I was surprised to see the monk was still in there, but now taking photos. He might have just been a bloke in orange, come to think of it. Bloody tourists.

Off to the right of the sanctuary was a carving of an elephant on a boulder. Behind that I came across a makeshift dump where they dump all the offerings that are left to Buddha. I was certain that each afternoon they'd just take the offerings and sell them again the following day. I guess these ones weren't sale quality any more.

Last night I went to this outdoor cinema thing. It was a film made in 1924 in Laos by the bloke that made King Kong (Peter Jackson is older than I thought...). It was called Chang. Because it was a silent film they had locals doing the music and sound effects. It was basically Hercules Returns.

The film was about a family who moved into the jungle and a Leopard killed one of their goats, so they killed just about every animal they could find. Because it was 1924 they really killed all the animals too. Tigers and leopards and snakes and lizards and armadillos. All of them copped it.

They trapped a baby Chang, which is an elephant, and decided to keep it. It was tied up under the house when the mother elephant came and rescued the baby. She destroyed part of the house in the process of freeing the baby, then she destroyed the rest out of spite. After that she went to get the mighty herd (300 of her friends) and they destroyed the nearby village as well. I would've liked the film to continue along those lines but unfortunately the villagers built a big trap and trapped part of the herd, which caused the rest of the herd to disperse. For $15 you can ride the tortured ancestors of those elephants.

I'm now heading to Savannakhet. It is a long bus ride, made longer by speed of this bus. I could bicycle faster.

Angkor Wat

Two days ago I got up early to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. I met 3 other people at the hostel who wanted to go as well, which at least brought the price of the tuk tuk down. There was an English guy named Martin, a Dutch girl called Lotte and a Polish guy called Tomas. Tomas didn't speak any English. I'm not sure if he spoke Polish either.

We arrived at Angkor Wat with a few thousand other people and awaited the sunrise. It wasn't particularly good because of the clouds. The temple was impressive. But it was still a temple. Most ancient places you can wander around and try to figure out what each room was used for. At Angkor Wat each room was for praying.

After that we went to get breakfast then went over to have a look at the gates to some other part if the complex. One side of the road leading up to the gate was lined with statues of demons while the other side had statues of humans. Our tuk tuk driver told me it was related to some Buddhist story, but he couldn't remember what.

At the next temple we started to realise Tomas was a few sausages short of a bbq. He had brought a football scarf from his team back in Poland and would pose in front of the temples and make the sign of his football team, which happens to be the L for loser sign. He didn't make it on his forehead, but it still gave us all a giggle. Martin's shorts ripped quite badly as well, which was cause for much merriment as well.

The other temples are probably more interesting to look around. They are missing a trick by not allowing paintball in all these places. The stones are really worn but in the places they aren't there are really intricate carvings. In the past every surface would have had those carvings. It would have rivaled any city on earth in it's prime.

We went to the next temple and climbed up the top. It was a steep climb in the heat. We got yelled out a few times for being in places we weren't supposed to be. The climb down was more difficult. My old knees could barely hold up.

We were excessively sweaty by the time we reached the bottom. Not sweaty enough to take our shirts off and wring them out in front of everyone. Oh hang on, Tomas was that sweaty! Lotte and I both almost threw up. Other tourists were horrified. It wasn't just the sweat wringing, it was also the fact he was mostly stomach and spoke in grunts.

We went back to the tuk tuk and sat down while the driver talked to us about what to do next. While we sat there the front wheel spun to the right and suddenly the tuk tuk was rolling over! We jumped off and managed to save it, but not many people can say they almost rolled a parked tuk tuk.

The last temple was the tomb raider temple. It was my favourite. It is laid out on one level - no stairs. It was made more impressive by the trees that had grown over the temple. Tomas went to get his obligatory loser photo in front of one of these trees. He didn't realise there was a queue, so when he got into position and someone else got into position as well he went into a grunting and stomping fit. It didn't help that he'd bought a shirt 14 sizes too small; skin tight with his belly hanging out below.

After that we left to go back to the hostel. I went immediately to the pool. Tomas came up with his washing and hung it out... on the bar.

All up in glad I did visit the temples. The ticket was us$37, which is really expensive by Cambodian standards, but isn't actually that much. I'll tell you what though, nobody in Cambodia (especially the tuk tuk drivers) are happy that the price has gone up so much. The hotels in Siem Reap are half empty and the tuk tuk drivers are struggling.

That night I went to get food with Lotte and another Dutch girl. I only had a $100 with a slight tear in it. They only accept pristine notes in Cambodia. The tear was about 3 mm long but they could spot it every time. I cut a tiny slither of sticky tape and taped it up, but they could spot the tape too. I ended up leave the other 2 to try to find a place to exchange this note. Every place would tell me another place to go, so I went on this wild goose chase around Siem Reap.

Eventually I hit a dead end and had to enlist the help of a 10 year old girl, as she spoke flawless English. The little legend directed me to one last place. They didn't want to accept the note so I told them they could have it for $90. They discussed it amongst themselves and offered me $95. I thought these people were supposed to know how to haggle.

That night I was up all night with food poisoning. I got the bus yesterday with food poisoning. A nice French lady gave me some medicine on the bus so I don't feel too bad now. The explosions have stopped. I'm in Don Det. It is an island in the middle of the Mekong. I stayed in a bungalow last night so I wouldn't disturb anyone.

I think I'll stay here a couple more nights then move on. This place seems boring. It is very pretty but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to do.

Killing Fields

I leave tomorrow, so I headed off to the Killing Fields this afternoon. It is a fair way away which means it was expensive to get to. US$14 there and back. It would've been cheaper if I could find someone to go with but this hostel is virtually empty. My 6 bed dorm is occupied only by me.

The site is actually called Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre. The term killing fields was coined by Dith Pran, who is the bloke in the movie The Killing Fields.

The place was quiet and peaceful. The buildings that used to be there are long gone, removed and repurposed by a desperate population after the Vietnamese invaded. Instead they have cartoonish looking pictures on signs where the buildings once stood. There were only a couple of buildings originally anyway. The admin centre, a building to lock up prisoners if they had too many to kill and a chemical storage building.

The chemical being stored was DDT. For those that don't know it was a common, powerful and extremely lethal pesticide. It has been banned for quite some time in western countries as it bioaccumulates and causes incredible damage to entire ecosystems. The Peregrine Falcon was almost wiped out by this chemical.

The Khmer Rouge would sometimes push their victims into the pit alive and spray the them with ddt. The audio guide said this was to kill them, but to be honest I don't think DDT can kill that quickly. The second reason was to mask the smell of the bodies - nobody knew what this area was being used for and I suppose they didn't want the smell to give it away.

Near the old site of the chemical storage building was a palm tree. It wasn't like a normal palm tree, but I can't remember it's name. It had a big fat trunk with wide palm leaves extending from a long, hard stem. The stem had jagged thorns coming from it. These stems were taken and used to slit the throats of prisoners. They'd also use hoes, blades, hammers, axes and pretty much any farm implement you can imagine.

When I went to Gallipoli a few years ago I kept my eyes on the ground, hoping I would spot an old spent cartridge that someone had missed. In fact somebody on my tour kicked at the dirt and found one. In Belgium a couple of years ago there was a place where the guy has thousands of cartridges, found after plowing. At the killing fields, the bones and rags of clothing actively climb out of the ground. Most of the mass graves have been exhumed of the large bones and skulls. They now reside in a stupa (which is a bloody big monument thing) that was built on the site. But still, there are fragments of bone that make their way to the surface. The brochure kindly asks you to avoid stepping on them. It was like spotting shells at the beach. I eventually stopped taking photos. Every few months the "keepers" gather up the bones that have surfaced and "care for them". I thought this was a lovely way to put it.

Walking around I came across the famous magic tree, where the loudspeaker was hung to blast revolutionary music to drown out the cries of the dying. I thought at first that was to keep the guards sane, but actually it was to disguise what was happening so people outside didn't sus on.

I also came across the tree they'd throttle kids against and toss them into the ditch. That is one of the mass graves that hasn't been exhumed. The guy who discovered the graves described how he was looking for potatoes when he noticed blood and brains on this one tree. He dug down and found the grave. Man I bet he wished he went looking for apples or something instead. The place was a Chinese cemetery before the Khmer Rouge though, admittedly with only 16 occupants, but still not a great place to look for potatoes.

People throw money on the graves, which I find weird. Someone had thrown a $100 note on there. I'll admit... I thought about it. They also throw wrist bands and the occasional hair tie. I've been looking for hair ties for days so I'll admit... I thought about that too. I probably need to be clear in case my reputation precedes me:  I DIDN'T though.

There was another grave full of headless men in Khmer Rouge uniforms. They had been stationed near the Vietnamese border. They had either defected, or more likely, Pol Pot was paranoid they would defect. They were decapitated because they were "Cambodian in body but had Vietnamese heads". Pol Pot had heaps of sayings like this and they were pretty much all just as shit. I bet he thought he was pretty bloody clever.

There was one other story on the audioguide that I thought was worth mentioning. One of the survivors said how he was in Tuol Sleng, being tortured as a teenager. He'd make stuff up to confess to, but one day he ran out of stories. Basically, he had confessed to literally everything he could think of. Once you run out of things to confess to, that was it, you'd be executed.

A neighbouring prisoner heard him not able to think of more things to confess to, so he pestered the guards, telling them to let the boy go, he shouldn't be in this prison with adults etc etc. He kept at them until the decided to execute him instead, thus saving the teenagers life.

After I came back, the tuk tuk driver and his mates were going to have a few beers, so I joined them on the footpath outside the hostel. They were good value and genuinely nice guys. I learnt a lot about the day to day lives they live.

For instance, the tuk tuk cost my driver us$1200 second hand, not including the bike. The other driver paid $3000 for a new one. That is an enormous sum for these guys. I'd been giving him shit earlier because he wanted to take me to some other tourist trap and I told him "I can't afford it, we aren't all earning tuk tuk driver wages". I'm glad he took it as it was intended.

He told me there are too many tuk tuks to make any decent money now as the government wages are so low everyone decided to drive a tuk tuk. He also told me he is younger than me but already has 2 kids. That annoyed me, because he is 31 and just assumed I was older. Jerk.

I tried to steer the conversation towards the past when he mentioned his village is on the border with Vietnam. I asked if they were bombed when the Americans began bombing the border. He really knew very little about it. I told him the dates and he pretty much described it back to me in extremely simple terms. Basically, "Our king helped Americans, but then he helped Vietnam to kill Americans. Americans got mad a bombed us. Our King wasn't very good."

I was shocked, but then again, why would he know it more accurately. He certainly wasn't a stupid guy, he just probably has never been told what happened. Possibly, that dropped down the list of priorities pretty bloody quickly!

He did mention that the Prime Minister now is like the King was then. I've seen thousands of signs for the Cambodian Peoples Party on the roads. So many that they couldn't possibly afford them independently, so I googled them to see what the go is. I already knew they are corrupt and they crush resistance. 

But this guy very carefully told me the same thing. He said there was no way he could talk to another Cambodian about this stuff. Too risky. Only foreigners. There was a protest a few months ago about 800 metres away from here where they killed a bunch of protesters. There is an election coming up, and people wanted to change the way elections are held. The elections are always rigged, he said, so the only way to change anything was to change the elections. Those people have already been rounded up and they're all in jail. I get the feeling they're just trying to hang in there while old age sorts these bastards out.

Tonight I went to a restaurant with a Dutch bloke I met at the hostel. We went to a place called Mok Mony. I highly recommend it. Excellent food and the policy is, if you don't like something send it back. They won't charge you and will give it to the poor, and you can order something different. As far from as policies go, I thought this was only second to their "for a $1.50 we'll add 2 shots to any drink on the menu" policy.

It's really late and I'm tired. All the photos are of the killing fields. Most have signs. If it looks like a picture of nothing, there is probably some bone fragments. Underneath the "don't step on the bones" sign there are large bones pieces (arms or legs) embedded in the dirt. I don't mean the stick, trees don't have bones. The picture of the tree is the magic tree.

Goodnight.

S21

This morning I went to S21. It is one of 180 or so interrogation centres that were located across Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge dickheadery in the 70s. It was originally an old high school. It's name is Tuol Sleng, which was actually the name of the primary school next door. The original school was called Chao Ponhea Yat High School, but Tuol Sleng translates to Hill of the Strychnine Tree, which sounds scarier. In the courtyard they had various mango trees from when it was a school, demonstrating that someone had at least one good idea in Cambodia in that period. In true holocaust fashion, the weather was perfect.

Of the 14000 people who were processed through the prison, bugger all survived. It is commonly stated that there were 7 survivors, but this is incorrect. 179 others  were released at different times before the place was liberated but it's unknown if they survived the rest of the regime; and five kids survived as well.

The place consists of 4 buildings. All of them are almost completely open to the public. There are signs all over stating "no pokemon game here".

The first building was for important prisoners. High ranking government officials from both the previous ruling party and the Khmer Rouge. Each cell was preserved as it would've been, with a photo on the wall of the final occupant as they were found. The tile floors are stained brown with blood and decaying body juices. It doesn't stink or anything and I don't really understand how tiles can stain, but they have. The rooms have a metal bed frame, some shackles, an ammunition box for a toilet and sometimes a writing desk for writing confessions. I don't actually know what these rooms would've been when it was a school. They were too large and segregated to be offices and too small for classrooms.

Building B was definitely originally classrooms. They were decent sized ones too. The guards knocked holes in the walls and built pretty shoddy cells inside out of brick. 11 cells to a classroom. Some would argue this is how all schools should be. Not me though, of course. The cells were about 6ft long by 3ish feet wide. Block C was the same deal but the cells were wooden.

On the walls where the hooks for the keys used to hang there are numbers. In one place the numbers had been scratched into the wall as a tally: I  II III  IIII  IIIII etc. Apparently the guard couldn't write numbers. If they'd kept it as a school they could've helped the dumb bastard. Later another guard came along and wrote the numbers in paint.

In the courtyard outside buildings A and B, amongst the mango trees, there are 14 white stones marking the graves of the last 14 people to die there. They're the only ones to have recieved a proper Buddhist burial (cremation).

Amongst the cells were photos of the victims. Most of the records were destroyed but they didn't have time to destroy all of them. There are literally thousands of photos left. Confessions were obtained and recorded meticulously through torture. The torture was also applied under strict rules, although they did seem to have some leeway to get creative. Beatings, starvation, water boarding (if you're American ignore this one, it's not a torture according to you lot), electrocution, hanging, humiliation and dismemberment were all on the cards.

If a prisoner died, however, the interrogator or guard was likely to become a prisoner him or herself. Including if they committed suicide. Prisoners were only allowed to die when it was ordered, which was after they'd (almost always falsely) confessed. They'd rat out anyone and everyone. In turn those people would be rounded up and repeat the process. Anything for a quick death.

One guy managed to kill himself during an interrogation by stabbing himself in the neck with a pen. Another one got hold of the kerosene lamp and poured the oil on himself. Another escaped from his cell and dived off the verandah. They put up barbed wire after that.

If someone looked like dying before they were supposed to, they'd call for a medic. They'd killed all the doctors though, so some bloke would rock up and pour salt water on the wounds. Other prisoners, instead of being killed outright, would undergo "destruction for blood". They'd literally bleed them dry, I assume because the military needed blood.

There were also some foreign nationals imprisoned there, including Aussies and Kiwis. Most of them were sailors who had drifted into Cambodian waters accidentally and been picked up. They were forced to confess to being CIA operatives and had to rat people out, but of course they had nobody to rat out.

One Kiwi bloke, Kerry Hamill, confessed that his superior, Colonel Sanders, had been working directly with him and reporting back to General Ruse. Good sense of humour considering the circumstances!  He also implicated a Mr S Tar, which was believed to be a coded message back to his mum to let her know he was thinking of her before he died. Her name is Esther.

The final building contained paintings by Vann Nath (pronounced one nut).he was one of the 7 adults that survived at liberation. He was kept alive as he was a talented artist. He had to paint pictures of Pol Pot. If the likeness wasn't very good, he'd have been killed. But the shitty artworks weren't allowed to be destroyed as destroying even a rubbish likeness was a death sentence. Instead they'd bury it whole.

I suppose I won't write anymore. This is getting long. I apologise that it's probably boring. I mostly write it for myself, so I remember. The poo stories are for you, 7 people that read this blog. 

I remember I titled a previous blog as "people who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" or whatever. Maybe the Auschwitz one. I think that quote is probably bullshit. Remember or not, people will repeat it. These morons that wrecked this country all studied in Paris in the 50s and 60s. They definitely remembered the past, it was only 5 or 10 or 15 years earlier that the Nazis got up to no good. They'd all studied communism, they knew exactly what had happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin when they collectivised the farms. They were modelling their shitty system off China's Great Leap Forward. Same shit! It doesn't matter if you remember or not.

At least I'll have something to do in Syria in 15 years time.

Photos:

No pokemon

Great day to visit a holocaust - building A.

14 graves + plus mango trees.

Above the door were air vents, which were boarded up to muffle the screams.

Cell

Rules

Cell

Those pots were full of poo and water. When the prisoners were being strung up, if they passed out they'd dunk their heads in that to revive them.

Map of evacuations of cities into the country side. The left is the original, the right are the evacuations the following year. Cities had to be abandoned.

The Kiwi bloke (on the right) and his American mate.

Cells

Cells

Cells

Dumbass that can't write numbers.

Took a photo of this dude because I was shocked by his shirt. It's the sort of terrible shirt I'd have worn as a kid.

I took a photo of this bloke because his eyes are looking up and to the right and I was wondering what was going on that made him look away.

The memorial, in the courtyard outside buildings C and D