Phnom Penh

First impressions of Cambodia are of a much poorer country than Vietnam - probably more akin to Laos. However it is more like Thailand in terms of the wealth of gold and gemstones present in their religious artefacts. Within the Royal Palce we visited the Silver Pagoda so called because of the solid silver tiles that cover the floor. There are 5,329 tiles in total each weighing 1.125 kilos. There are hundreds of small Buddha statues in the pagoda and one Central one which is about a meter high, solid gold with 2,086 diamonds decorating him. The biggest is 25 carats and the next biggest is 20. Behind him sits a smaller but still a significant sized sitting Buddha carved form a block of emerald. The architecture in Cambodia is very similar to that of Thailand. Ceremonial costume is also like that in Thailand. Vietnam is much more influenced by their Chinese heritage. Cambodians are facially different to the Vietnamese and have darker skin. The ancient Khmers whose kingdom covered much of Southeast Asia have much in common with the people of Southern India. The writing looks similar and is nothing like Chinese characters.

Our guide in Phnom Penh is young and very outspoken about the government - not in a supportive way. He is also very much anti the Vietnamese. Eventually his reasoning became apparent in that the CPP party which is the ruling party is in debt to Vietnam in helping to defeat the Khmer Rouge. In his view the government have given away too much to Vietnamese interests. A few examples are - The temples at Angkor are controlled by a Vietnamese company which takes most of the entrance fees which must be millions every year; a huge area of forest has been given over to Vietnamese interests and they are felling trees and clearing the forest; there are large numbers of Viet immigrants who are not legal yet they are allowed to vote. Also there may be some baggage left over from the KR because part of their beliefs were that the Khmers were a superior race to the Vietnamese and Chinese.

Our visit to the Killing Fields was quite blood curdling. I imagine it is similar in ways to a visit to a Nazi death camp. The monument and visitor centre outside of Phnom Penh is only one of a number of such death camps across Cambodia set up by the KR. Given that in the 4 years of their reign of terror they managed to directly murder about 25% of the population (that excludes the others they managed to starve to death because they didn't allow them enough food to sustain them in their hard labour in the fields) there would need to be a number of such 'facilities'. Apparently they brought them from the prison, where they'd been tortured, during the night when no one could see and then killed them. They spared every expense in the methods for killing the victims - most entailed bludgeoning them to death with sticks or hoes. They also used the serrated edge of parts of a particular palm tree to sever the arteries in the neck. They have identified 129 mass graves although only 86 have been excavated. There is a permanent monument which houses the retrieved skeleton parts -there are over 9,000 skulls in this one site.

There seems to be little in the way of a clear philosophy for determining who they arrested, tortured and killed. The KR wanted to install a very strict Maoist/Marxist system taking the country back to 'year zero' where there was only an agrarian way of life. All educated people were the enemy so they were targeted. Members and supporters of the previous government including their army were targeted. Inferior races were also eliminated - Chinese, Vietnamese, Chams. People of religion were included so the number of Buddhist monks was decimated. However they then turned on the ordinary people on the flimsiest of excuses. It seemed to us that Pol Pot was a psychopath.