So:
After Siem Reap, we hopped on a boat and spent six hours passing floating villages while we sunbathed on the roof and dodged the branches of watertrees that whipped at us and showered us with ants. This was in order to arrive in Battambang, which is not an Italian pizzaria as the name may suggest, but rather a small town nestled amdist rice fields where headscarved peasants laboured beneath sun and dust and lush forests concealing thousands of unexploded landmines. As per usual, there were more temples than you could shake a stick (of incense) at.
We visited the Killing Caves, which is where Khmer Rouge soldiers would throw the dead (or dying) bodies of bludgeoned victims. Shafts of sunlight illuminated a platform where an old man knelt by a large golden Buddha selling sticks of incense to be lit in solomn tribute. A glass case nearby housed the shattered skulls and bones of victims. A natural stone staircase led down into the belly of the damp cave, illuminated only by the flickering candles we held, and it would have been an incredibly chilling experience had a young boy not skipped head, his mother yelling at him to for-goodness'-sakes-be-CAREFUL while her cellphone chirped a tinkly tune. Thus, Cambodia: past and present.
Next, we explored one of the many temples, the grounds of which actually included a labrynth of small caves, each concealing a golden Buddha in its shadows. Our guides included two local boys as well as a chainsmoking monk-turned-photographer-turned-model, Mr. Ned (no, seriously), who commandered our cameras and insisted our journey be documented every fifteen feet.
From Battambang, we endured an incredibly long bus journey (made especially arduous by the Cambodian wedding kareoke vidoes played at top volume on repeat) to Sihanoukville. Sihanoukville is a beach town, and we took full advantage by befriending a group of fellow backpackers, soaking up the sun, enjoying the nightlife, and doing absolutely nothing of any cultural value whatsoever. Jet skis, inflatable bouncy floaty things to flip off of, endless movie afternoons, Halloween celebrations (for which Sara was the white ninja and I was Facebook), boat cruises, artery-clogging Western cuisine; it was grand.
One (mis)adventure to note was when one of our friends, while attempting to drown another friend, was suddenly smoten by karma and stung by a white jellyfish the size of a beachball. Awful as it was at the time, there's something undeniably funny about a twenty-something-year-old Irish man lying on the beach screaming at the top of his lungs: "For f***'s sake, somebody wee on me!!!" In fact, the only thing that could've (and did) top it was the English girl who loyally squatted and proved her friendship in front of a beach full of slack-jawed onlookers. Of course, as it turns out, peeing on a jellyfish sting--contrary to what that episode of 'Friends' may have led us to believe--actually doesn't help in the slightest. But it does make for a great Facebook status. Fortunately, our friend was alright in the end (if not slightly smelly), though the lashes on his legs remained ugly and bleeding for days and will certainly leave some fierce battle scars.
Eventually, we managed to drag ourselves away from our new friends and our life of hedonism and hit up Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. There, the mood of our trip took a drastic turn as we visited the Killing Fields, the spot where approximately 20 000 Cambodians were executed during the Khmer Rouge war. If you ignore the 17-level glass stupah housing skulls and bones, the area looked almost like a golf course, covered in grassy dips. These dips, however, were mass graves--the largest of which held 450 bodies that had been forcefully decomposed with DDT. In one, all the bodies had been decapitated; another was filled with naked women and children. There was the tree where babies and small children had been literally smashed to death against--a few teeth remained at its base. As we walked, we could see bits of clothing poking up through the dirt. Apparently, every time it rained, maintenance had to go through and collect bones and other bits that were washed to the surface. In fact, half of the area remained a swamp; graves that hadn't yet been exhumed. However, possibly the worst element of the place was the strange smell that lingered over the area, and the hundreds of flies buzzing about incongruously.
We also went to S-21, a highschool turned interrogation camp where victims were tortured for information under orders of the Pol Pot regime. Classrooms had been divided into tiny cells with wood or bricks. Any open area on the upper floors was concealed behind barbed wire to prevent victims from committing suicide by jumping. Shackles remained, as did the mugshots of the over five thousand victims (including children) who passed through--like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept detailed records of those kept in the camps. There were also grainy photos of the dead, as they had been found.
Something that struck us about both the Killing Fields and S-21 was how fresh it all still felt. While obviously the majority of the carnage had been cleared away, the fact that there were still bones on the ground and stains on the wall voiced the fact that this was not Long Long Ago, legends of evil men in evil times, but rather atrocities that had been committed just over the shoulder of time. And the survivors of this holocaust were not frail grandmothers with unwravelling minds, but rather Average Joes who continue to drive the tuk-tuks that tourists take to visit these places. You could write off why the spots haven't been totally cleaned up and fully transformed from 'Site' to 'Museum' (as now they linger somewhere between the two) as due to slow Cambodian progress--but perhaps it's almost intentional, a way of reminding everyone of just how recent this was, of how it occurred not in another time but in OUR time.
Today we fly to Bangkok, leaving behind jellyfish-ridden beaches, historical grounds, vogue-ing monks, great friends, and some of the coolest temples we have ever seen. So long, Cambodia--it's been awesome! :)
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