Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

The bus to Siem Reap from Phenom Penh traversed dusty Cambodian roads and the worst car accident I have ever seen. Whenever the bus stopped, children would swarm around to sell exotic fruits or coconut rice cooked in hollowed out bamboo shoots. "Ladiiiiiieeee. You buy from me ladiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee" they sang, holding up plastic bags mango. When we finally arrived in Siem Reap, Tuk Tuk drivers shoved each other to stand in the bus door, each desperately trying to be the first to gain our attention. The sweat caused the dust to stick to my legs and face; I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the sun and pushed my way through the sea of men shouting about Tuk Tuks and accommodation. I found my bag and walked away from the commotion, too tired to worry about finding a ride. The people still suffer from the Khmer Rouge takeover and tourism in Siem Reap is a huge revenue for profit. Most men earn their family's keep by shuttling tourists around and they know that if they meet you when you get off the bus, you will probably use them every time you go to the temples. It's fierce competition and a lot to handle after dealing with fruit ladies all afternoon.

We eventually met a man who would guide us through the week, shuttling us to Angkor Wat in the pitch dark so that we could watch the sunrise over the ancient temple. He took us to his favorite temples: the crumbling Angkor Thom, the bridge of the giant snake tamed by Vishnu, the mounds of Bayon with the faces in each direction. The complex of the Angkor Temples was massive, stretching over 400 square kilometers with dozens of temples and crumbling friezes of battles and the Ramayana: the roots of ancient Hindu culture in Cambodia. A family of monkeys played by the side of a road, gathering a crowd of tourists in their Siem Reap t-shirts and locals who fed them bananas. One mother scurried toward the food, chasing away the juveniles, while her infant clung to her underbelly screeching. In every temple, roots of trees tore through the stones toward the earth and planted new trees on the rooves, so that the roots would surround the structure like rain. The temples, though a gorgeous reminder of history and culture were no match for nature, giving the compound an Ozymandias air to it.


At the entrance to one of the temples, a group of men played traditional music. When I stood and listened, I noticed their missing limbs and their scarred bodies. They were a troop of landmine victims who chose to play music instead of beg for their living. They smiled at me and invited me to sit with them and play music with them. I was given reeds and began banging on an instrument that resembled a harp. When I had successfully destroyed their song and meekly returned the reeds to the man with the huge smile, he giggled and gave me tiny cymbals instead. We were driven through the ruins in the Tuk Tuk carriage, and then to the lesser temples farther away. Passing through the villages, the children would raise their arms to wave at us from their shady, bamboo huts. Women washed by soaking themselves with water from an enormous clay pot in the yard, while adorning colorful sarongs. One child rode a bike that was so big for him, he looked like a light brown Kermit the Frog. I let the wind cool me down and listened to Bonobo, watching the rice fields and the water buffalo stream by.

The Killing Fields and S-21, Phenom Penh Cambodia

The first time I heard about The Killing Fields was through my friend Jose's blog. He described the scene in harrowing words that shocked me, but nothing could prepare me for the feelings that this place stirred in me. The pain and sadness that came from me that day was not a simple mourning like the loss of a family member, but something more profound. What I saw that day, what caused me to stagger around the complex in a shock of sorrow, was the loss of humanity that results from the abandonment on reason.

The creed of the Khmer Rouge was even simpler than the creed of communism, against which America was obsessed: destroy anyone who has a mind and exterminate their families. Drive fear into the hearts of any who would think for themselves, anyone who has an education or knowledge. When we got to the compound and began to explore, the first thing I saw was an enormous tower, constructed for the exhumed bones of the Khmer Rouge's victims. The skulls were categorized according to age and sex, layered shelf upon shelf to the top of the tower. My eyes lifted toward the glass shelves and my friend asked, why would they display these bodies so ungraciously. So it doesn't happen again, I said. I'm not sure if I can believe that. There is no expiration date on the cruelty of which human beings are capable. We have seen these themes repeat throughout our history, from the Viking raids to Hitler's Holocaust, the brutal have always sought power.

We wandered around the complex, from mass grave to mass grave. We saw the killing tree, against which children were tortured, and read about the loud music they played throughout the day so that people working in the fields beyond would not know what was happening in the complex.

After the Killing Fields, we went to S-21, a high school transformed into a torture facility and prison. I walked along the corridors, stepping into a few classrooms along the East side of the complex which had been converted to large, single cells. There was an iron bed, wrought iron leg shackles and an iron box for the prisoner's excrement. I made my way around the bed, my imagination surging until I saw the photographs. When the Vietnamese raided Phenom Penh, after the "American War", they found the remains of the Cambodian victims of S-21 and photographed them. When S-21 became a memorial museum, these photographs were mounted on the walls and the beds placed as they had been. After the first photograph, I was shocked and left the room. When I came upon the second, I started to cry.

When I turned around to look at the grounds, it was as if the facility had been resurrected in all of it's horror. I looked onto the grounds of the compound, picturing the smiling school children running for recess, until my imagination played fast forward on the tape. The children are rounded up and kicked out, barbed wire is coiled, scaffolds builts, bayonets thrust, the blood and and the screams. The center building contained a gallery of rows upon rows of photographs, mug shots of the victims upon their entry into S-21. Some men wore a vigilante glare, daring the photographer to attack. Others were terrified, unable to protect their loved ones. I came upon the children before I saw the women, little babies in navy blue suits staring blankly at the camera. The youngest that I saw was a child so little, he was cradled in his mother's arms. The vacant look on her face is not afraid or even alive anymore. It's as if the child she holds is already dead. As I walked the rows, staring into the eyes of these people, struck by the myriad of emotion conveyed through their eyes, I came upon one girl who moved me to tears. She had been beated, her eye was swollen shut and bruised but she was still fighting. She faced a fear greater than any I will ever see, but she looked at her captor and raised her head proudly.

The dilemma that this experience brought to me was profound: The tragedy of this totalitarian government is so appalling that we want to keep these things from happening in the future. However, the only way to do this is to assert a moral superiority to these intolerable actions and one can only achieve this by establishing that there is such a thing as RIGHT. This means accepting that RIGHT exists, not "right for me" and "right for you." One's right to life supersedes the world's cultural ideals: the individual's right to life is the highest moral ideal. It is against these atrocious acts that people must stand and defend the world's smallest minority: the individual.

(Since writing this post, I have read First They Killed My Father by Luong Ung. For more information and a non-fiction account of being a child during this time, I refer you to the book)