Hello Cambodia. Phonm Penh- Capital

7 hours later….. Welcome Cambodia. It’s funny, we never have problems at the borders, but you always wander if they’re going to let you through or if you forgot to do something properly with your papers  But they let us through once again. Yeahhhh. And we got stamped. Our passports are starting to look professional and used finally.

always fun once you're through the border and stamped

Phnom Penh is our first stop in Cambodia (pronounced Nom Pen). The Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers converge here at this city, which has been the capital since the mid 15th century. It was one time very charming and lovely we are told, but is definitely now a boom town with property development, traffic, and poverty that follows. The riverfront made for a nice area to take a couple morning runs though, and we heard there is much available partying options to be had as well. Continue to be patient and prepared for begging, poverty and children selling, coming openly to your dinner table areas.


It’s different here in Asia. No one runs beggars or the poor off, they’re freely allowed to request at your table or post up on the street corners. Children weave in and out of restaurants freely trying to sell you a book or small bracelet or token. No police chase them off park benches, or from under shade trees. No restaurant manager’s pick them up by the ears and toss them out. It’s in your face, you’re aware of it and constantly reminded they are with you. It’s humbling and a fresh change to be forced to be reminded daily of how blessed, lucky and fortunate we truly are. For our situations could be all together different if not for the lucky circumstances of our birth. It’s difficult to see, but a great lever to change your attitude quickly. We can’t obviously support everyone that asked, but if you can’t daily spare a few notes to someone in need, you just don’t have a heart. Travel really cracks you open as my sister says. Very True.

We enjoyed some fun lunches and dinners to say the least, as we experienced a new cuisine we’d not yet seen. It’s apparent you can enjoy some very good pizza in Cambodia and if you are interested in a good mood, you can request your pizza “Happy” style. If you don’t have plans of any for the rest of the day, you can even opt for “Very Happy” style. Just plan to walk around with a smile. Happy Herb Pizza Restaurant is located down by the river front and is easily identifiable. Being the explorers we are, we did partake in the local delicacy, as we feel you should experience all a culture has to really offer, hahahahah. Quite an afternoon and evening. We in turn had some enjoyable Indian food one night as well. Grubbing on pahn breads brushed with butter and garlic, and spicey chicken tandoori and Indian curry for dipping.

For most tourists- us included, Phnom Penh is the place to stop and experience the “Killing Fields and S-21 Torture Prison” that were made infamous by the Khmer Rouge (Red People) during the American/Vietnam War. We spent an entire day touring the S-21 prison (once a children’s school) and the Killing Fields. It was a sobering day and important to us to understand more. These events truly occurred, the skulls, photos, mass graves, beds, and torture rooms, still exist on display. People were transported to S-21, imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured. After extracting a forced confession by torture, they were secretly shipped to the Killing Fields (about 10km outside of town) at night in large trucks. Once there, they were systematically kneeled down at the edge of large pits and murdered by blows to the head with a bamboo rod or other means. Guns were rarely used as not to alarm neighbors as to the happenings there. I understand more now why the whole world vehemently protested the “Vietnam Conflict”, this travesty was also a by-product of that war. As if 2 million displaced and dead Vietnamese peasants weren’t already enough.

Monument dedicated to those murdered at the "Killing Fields" (this entire monument is filled with actual skulls removed from the fields)

closeup of inside the monument

one of the tiny converted prison cells at S-21.  Imagine a regular school-room being split up into about 25 prison cells.  I could barely fit through the thin door and could touch both side of the cell with out-stretched arms.

Brief History Lesson-in 1969 Cambodia was drawn into the Vietnam conflict (as was Laos but that’s another story as well). The USA secretly commenced carpet-bombing suspect communist base camps in Cambodia thought to be aiding the North Vietnam Army as supply chains to fight in the south of Vietnam. America and South Vietnamese troops then invaded trying to root out the forces. This failed. But the invasion pushed Cambodia’s indigenous rebels, the Khmer Rouge, into the country’s interior. Savage fighting engulfed the country. Pol Pot their leader, implemented one of the most radical, brutal restructurings of a society ever attempted. His goal was the transformation of Cambodia into a peasant-dominated, agrarian cooperative. Hundreds of thousands were relocated into the countryside, tortured or executed. Pol Pot’s goal was to rid their society of anyone educated, so if you spoke a foreign language, were a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, in government or position to inform someone, you were tortured and executed or enslaved in farming work camps, but likely killed. Children were to defect from their parents as the new parent would become “The State”. Children were brainwashed as seeing parents as not part of their true family. Over time Pol Pot would have an entire culture groomed to farming work, production and submitting to StateHood Programs and the “Good Welfare of the State”. Perhaps 2 million Cambodians died between 1975 and 1979 as a result of these policies. That’s right 2 million. We’ve learned this was not a “genocide” as genocide is defined as a war against a specific group “like the attacked Jew in the holocaust”. This was classified as a “War Crime and Crime Against Humanity” as it was simply attacking people with different ideas and political views. At the end of 1978 after winning the war, Vietnam then invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge, who fled westward to the jungles near the border of Thailand. They maintained a guerrilla war through the 1980’s, armed and financed by China, Thailand and indirect US support as well, against the Vietnamese-backed government. In 1991 the warring sides came together in Paris to sign a peace accord which enabled UN-administered elections in Cambodia to finally occur. This was hardly a democratic triumph, but it did help usher the slow death of the Khmer Rouge, by defection and splitting of the party members. Pol Pot was put on trial in 1997 but died on April 15, 1998 perhaps forever robbing the Cambodia people of the chance for truth and justice. Many of the very high leaders in the Khmer Rouge were still at large and enjoying freedom until the early 2000’s still as the government hypocrisy and politics aided by the UN assembly kept them from international tribunals.

The last week has really been a sickening eye opening experience to view all that history has seen up close.

one of the convereted 8 prison sections at S-21.  these 3 story units were once just a school.