Once in a while you travel to a place that changes you in unimaginable ways- a place that alters your perception of the world and stays in your heart and mind forever. For me this place was Cambodia, which completely took me by surprise.
As we drove through Siem Reap to our hotel in a little tuk tuk, I was instantly blown away by the city. There was something about it, aside from the beauty of the colonial “downtown” area that really struck me. I just couldn’t quite put a finger on it yet. That night at dinner, I learned a very important lesson about Cambodia- it is a place that is struggling to overcome a terrible and deeply traumatizing past. Now, that is not to say that the other countries we have visited aren’t; it is impossible/irresponsible to draw such a comparison when each place has experienced it’s own terrible hardship that still affects it today, but for me Cambodia was just different. In retrospect I think I was so impacted by this country because I was ignorant to its history and so narrowed in on Angkor Wat as the only important thing it had to offer, that I was shocked by what I saw when my blinders were removed and I suddenly had the full picture.
Our beautiful hotel
That night at the restaurant, along with our menus, we were given pamphlet after pamphlet about the orphanage issue in Cambodia- Don’t give money to begging children, Don’t help starving children on the street no matter what, Call the authorities if you see a child in a strange situation with an adult, Don’t go to orphanages, Children are not tourist attractions, Sex with a minor is a crime…the list went on and on. I was so rattled by this that as soon as we got home I spent some time doing research on the topic of orphans and child abuse in Cambodia. In short, the orphanages that were once used to house the 74, 000 children who were orphaned during the genocide in the 1970s, have now become for profit tourist attractions that, for the most part, severely mistreat children and use them to get tourist donations. There are now ~600 orphanages in Cambodia and ~50,000 children living in residential care, about half of which are not actual orphans but poor children whose parents leave them there to have a better life.
Cambodia is now also the child sex trafficking capital of South East Asia, with tens of thousands of kids being sold a year, often by their own mothers. “Virginity selling” is a widespread source of revenue for poverty stricken families. This is a country that is so broken, so torn apart by years of horrific violence and desperate poverty, that many of it’s citizens are forced to make the terrible choice to use the only “asset” in their possession to make the money they need for survival. Here, children are a business, they’re a commodity to be sold, purchased, used and reused for the purpose of survival- it’s hard to fathom. When you learn about something so terrible, you can’t help but see it everywhere you go, in the eyes of every child and adult you pass on the street- and it breaks your heart in an irreversible way.
Now onto the more uplifting part our trip- our day at Angkor. Our first morning in Siem Reap our tuk tuk driver picked us up at the crack of dawn (4 am) to catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. It was a truly spectacular experience, and the most beautiful sunrise we had seen on our trip. After taking it all in we ran over to the temple entrance to get in line because this place was PACKED with tourists, there were definitely about 100+ people there already. Luckily we got in before the crowd and had a good hour of uninterrupted exploring time.
Sunrise over Angkor Wat
Though Angkor Wat is truly amazing, it wasn’t my favorite temple of the “complex”- that would be Temple Bayonne, our next stop. Because we finished fairly quickly (2 hours) at Angkor Wat, we managed to make it to Bayonne quickly enough to have it basically to ourselves. This place was incredible. The entire temple is made up of stone faces; some stand out, and others fade into the overall façade like an optical illusion. I could have spent hours here- it was absolutely amazing.
From there we followed a little path that lead through the woods to a series of other temples. Here again we were all alone. At one point we stumbled upon a beautiful stone entry way and a few smaller temples that were just sitting in the middle of the woods. It was surreal, we felt like it was our secret place, our discovery. We spent the rest of the day in a similar way walking from temple to temple and getting lost in history. The Angkor temples were/are by far my favorite of all the historical sites we’ve seen.
Our last day in Cambodia was a lot like our first days: difficult and full of grief. To end our time here we decided to spend a day at the country’s capital, Phenom Phen, to go visit the Killing Fields. From 1975-1978, Cambodia was ruled by a brutal communist regime known as the Khmer Rouge. Led by the devil himself, a man named Pol Pot, the regime brutally murdered approximately 2 million (out of 8) Cambodian people, specifically targeting intellectuals, professionals, monks, foreigners, and anyone who looked like they associated with any of the above. The Killing Fields of Phenom Phen are one of hundreds of locations where Khmer Rouge soldiers brutally tortured, murdered, and buried their victims.
These aren’t the Killing Fields- just a picture of the Cambodian country side
The Killing Fields changed me; in fact I truly believe they change everyone who walks its grounds. We had heard terrifying stories about what happened here, and what we would find, but our knowledge of this genocide was so new that we could never imagine what to expect.
When you first arrive, nothing stands out. You take an audio guide and begin to walk the grounds and learn about all of the atrocities committed here, but still, it’s hard to imagine. From my experience going to Auschwitz-Birkenau, I realized that when something is so terrible, so violent, so far beyond what you’ve ever seen or experienced, or even thought to be possible- it is very difficult to truly place yourself in the scene and feel deeply without mindfulness and reflection. You need to be present, know the history, and do the best you can to imagine.
This was my struggle at first- until I stepped on a shirt. An old tattered shirt that was slowly emerging from the ground, uncovered after hundreds of steps and a bad rainy season had washed away the layers of dirt that kept it hidden for almost 40 years. I stopped and was overwhelmed by emotion, overwhelmed with the immensity, the horror of what was right in front of me. This shirt belonged to someone, and if it could talk I bet it would tell the story of a normal person who lived a normal life. Maybe it would say that of all the places in the world, here, right under my feet, buried under ground was the last place both it and its owner ever expected to be. But here it was as a tangible symbol of the last memories this person every made. Never before in my entire life had I been forced to face death and tragedy in such a poignant unavoidable way.
As we kept walking and listening to the harrowing stories of brutality and tremendous suffering, I saw more clothing coming up from the earth: shirts, shorts, pants, underwear… everywhere. Then I saw a bone, a fragment of a person, a real person who was brutally murdered on the ground that I walked on, and in that moment I felt that a part of me had broken. All of a sudden it was real- it was imaginable, it was life and death, it was the enormity of realizing that this was the culmination of the lives of millions of innocent people. I struggle to describe what it felt like, the overwhelming sorrow and horror, but when I left I felt just a little different. Like I finally understood what human beings are capable of, and the power of hatred and ignorance. You look at what’s going on around the world, what we as humans have done to one another, and you realize the importance of tolerance and love.
The rest of the day we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which is set up in an old high school that was used as a torture facility for the Khmer Rouge and continued learning more about what happened in this beautiful country. At the end of the day we were devastated, sad, heartbroken, and just downright broken. I will never forget this day, what I saw, what I learned, what I felt. I debated whether or not I wanted to write so much about it, until I realized that everyone needs to know about this place. They need to know about what happened in Cambodia, and what is happening now in similar circumstances around the world.
I look back on Cambodia and feel so much for this amazing country. It is a place that has suffered and continues to suffer so deeply, yet has not stopped fighting for a better tomorrow. Every local we spoke to knew it was time to move forward, and felt they could influence change. If they can hope and dream, then so can we.
To the people reading this, go to Cambodia. Go and see all of the beautiful, vibrant, and delicious things this country has to offer. Go to learn, to think, to open your heart and mind. Go to change.
Cambodia, thank you, you hold a very special place in my heart.
Now on to Vietnam.
