Category Archives: Travel

Writing about Phnom Penh

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If you’ve been reading the posts on this blog from the few weeks, you might have noticed that the majority of the posts were about the places I visited during the one full-day we had to do a day trip in Phnom Penh, Cambodia during my trip to several Southeast Asian countries with my cousin about a year ago. The reason why we included Phnom Penh in our itinerary in Cambodia was to learn about the country’s history. We did accomplish that, but what I personally didn’t expect was the impact it had on me after the trip was long over. So, before continuing on with more blog posts from other places we visited during this Southeast Asian trip, I thought I’d write a little bit about my experience remembering, processing, and reflecting about this one day visit to Phnom Penh.

A travel writer named Dave Fox wrote in a book called Globejotting about the meaning of the word souvenir as a remembrance (or something to remember an experience with). Coming into this trip, I had an objective of creating a photojournal about the trip that I could use to tell the story about my experience as I visited places and experienced the culture. So, during this trip, in addition to taking photos, I also took short notes using my Blackberry so I would remember the interesting details I learned from the visit or those that are important to remember (like the names of the people we met).

When I got back home in the United States and worked on the photojournal, the short notes were very helpful in remembering the details of the trip, as without it, I would’ve mixed up many details that were somewhat similar between places we visited (e.g., there is a wall with ramakien frescoes at the Grand Palace in Bangkok, and there is a similar looking wall with ramaketi frescoes at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh). The one photojournal I wanted to create ended up to be too big to have as one album, so it ended up getting split up by cities that we visited. I was quite happy with this souvenir once it was done (around 600 photos divided into eight albums), but as I went through the process of putting together the captions to go with the photos, I realized that while a photograph may ‘speak a thousand words’ there are some things that it cannot convey (e.g., feelings, thoughts). So then I thought may be it would be an interesting exercise to take the short notes and the photos (including the thousands that didn’t quite make the cut for the photojournals) and retrace my steps during the trip and recount the experience in writing.

There is a site called TravelBlog that is similar to WordPress as a blogging site, but it’s specifically oriented towards travels (e.g., it’s indexed by travel locations). A lot of people use it to blog as they travel to provide a nice update to people they know who want to follow their journey as it happens (very nice especially for folks who are doing epic journeys like the Round the World travels). In my case, I didn’t use it during my actual travel, but I thought it would still be nice to write entries about my daily experiences during the trip after the fact.

I started writing the entries, and it went fine until I reached the day in Phnom Penh. The challenge with this one day is because of the emotional nature of the experience, and recounting the horror seen at Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek was very difficult. If you go to TravelBlog and read entries from people who visited these places in Phnom Penh, the majority of them would either simply post photos they took there, or only summarize their experiences with words like ‘sad’, ‘angry’, ‘depressing’, or ‘appalling’. If you know even only a little bit about these places and their role in the Khmer Rouge genocide, those are the right words to describe these, but someone reading the story wouldn’t necessarily know much or learn about it beyond that. So rather than simply doing the same thing, I tried to write down more descriptively what I saw and experienced there, and added relevant facts around it so even those who had not heard of the Khmer Rouge atrocities (like I was prior to the trip) would at least take away something after reading it.

The process of writing the ‘one day travel entry’ for Phnom Penh ended up taking me almost three months to do. I could picture the experience very clearly in my head, but it was very difficult at times to find motivation to sit down and put those in writing, especially when it’s difficult to find words to express what I felt about it. In some cases, I ended up browsing through sites on the Internet to learn more about the historical aspects of this and the impacts it had on people, rather than writing the entry itself. It also caused me to reflect on what I think and believe about some very difficult topics that the Cambodian people had to struggle through, such as the idea of forgiveness and retribution, and how to deal with hardships.

In the end, I did manage to finish writing about that one day in Phnom Penh, and in the last few weeks, the posts in this blog, especially those that are related to Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, were largely based on what I wrote last year.

The photo below was one that I ended up selecting as the cover photo for my photojournal on Phnom Penh in flickr. It’s the memorial stupa at Choeung Ek that from far away it looked quite majestic, and served as a wonderful way to honor the victims at this site (it housed the remains of the victims found in the nearby mass graves).

Memorial Stupa

Romdeng

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We got back to our hotel around 4 pm after our day trip in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It’s still too early to go for dinner, and we were exhausted mentally and emotionally after the day’s experience. So we decided to spend a couple of hours to rest and take it easy for the rest of the day.

For dinner, we decided to go to a restaurant called Romdeng. The restaurant was highly-rated for its authentic Khmer food. It was also unique as it served as a training restaurant run by an NGO to help street kids learning skills to work in hospitality / restaurant business.

Just like the previous night, we went outside our hotel to get a tuk-tuk to take us to the restaurant. The tuk-tuk driver from the previous night was not there, but there was another driver waiting for passengers out there. This time I discussed the price for the ride with the driver ahead of time.

The restaurant was only about 15-minute tuk-tuk ride from our hotel. On the way we got to see more of the night life in Phnom Penh. There were local street-side restaurants everywhere, similar to Bangkok and Jakarta. Romdeng itself was situated on a side street. The restaurant was housed in a big, old house. There were some tables outdoors under the trees, and there were some indoors in air-conditioned rooms. We were seated inside, and the ambience was pretty nice. The walls were decorated with artwork made by some of the students that the same NGO supported.

Since Romdeng was a training restaurant, the service was quite interesting. We had several people taking turns serving our table; the servers were mostly students who came with their teachers to our table. The students would do most of the work while their teachers observing their work. At times the students were not sure on how to respond to the customer’s request, so they would ask their teachers to help. At our table, the students did very good job in serving us. I could tell that some were being extra careful in doing their job as they knew their teachers were watching.

The food at Romdeng was very good. One particular dish that was popular among the foreigners who dined at Romdeng was a local delicacy that might be too extreme to try for many: the deep-fried tarantula appetizer. Cambodians started eating this out of necessity during the hard times, but over time it became a delicacy. We decided to give it a try. It turned out that it tasted not as bad as it looked. It tasted like eating chicken liver. It was cooked similar to Indonesian way of deep frying chicken liver and gizzard, with turmeric, coriander, and soy sauce to spice it up. So after the first bite, it wasn’t really that bad or scary for us.

We also had a refreshing salad dish and a fresh water fish dish. Both dishes were good. To close, we ordered a couple of desserts, a rice flour and turmeric crepe with caramelized banana filling and coconut gelato topping, and banana-filled rice dumplings with palm sugar syrup. The crepe was a great ‘east meet west’ dish. The rice balls were good as well, but they were too filling to have after the meal.

As we paid for our bill, we were asked to fill a survey to rate our dining experience. I thought that was a good way to provide feedback to the program. Judging from our own experience and the other patrons at nearby tables, I think everyone was satisfied with their dining experience. I know personally I would definitely come back to Romdeng the next time I’m in Phnom Penh again.

The photo below was taken as we’re about to try the first dish delivered to our table… the aforementioned deep-fried tarantula appetizer. As you can see, it’s presented quite nicely, though you can still tell those are tarantulas that we’re about to eat.

Deep-fried tarantula

Friends

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As Cambodia is developing and recovering from the years of destruction due to the Khmer Rouge time and the civil war, there are many foreign and domestic organizations that have been instrumental in making positive changes in the socio-economic condition in the country. These Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) were able to help in ways that allow private donations/funding to have direct impact on their target group of people to help without getting the funds being diverted to potentially corrupt government officials like typically happening in developing countries. The NGOs have different missions, and many encourage foreign visitors coming to Cambodia to help further their missions by either donating, volunteering, or purchasing products or services while the visitors come and visit Cambodia. Some travel guidebooks I read even suggested that doing these would be a better way to help making positive impact to combat poverty in Cambodia rather than giving money to beggars you meet on the street.

One of the NGOs based out of Phnom Penh is an organization called Mith Samlanh (or ‘Friends’ in English). This organization’s mission is to help the Cambodian street children and their families to be independent and be productive members of the society by providing them with education, training, and medical care. They have outreach programs and several businesses that serve as training grounds for the street children. Two of them are restaurants that consistently show up on the list among the best restaurants in Phnom Penh, Friends Restaurant and Romdeng Restaurant. At both places, the street children are given training and experience in the hospitality industry — basically you have restaurants staffed by trainees, and the proceeds from the sales also go towards the program. So, as a guest, when you eat there, not only you would be able to enjoy delicious meal, but you also help support the program that contribute in positive way to local society. We decided to eat dinner at Romdeng on our last night in Phnom Penh.

The photo below was taken as we wrapped up our dinner at Romdeng. Before we left, we were asked to fill out a feedback form to rate our dining experience. It was not a normal way to finish a dining experience, but knowing the importance of the program, I gladly filled out the form and provide the feedback for the excellent experience we had there.

Survey at Romdeng

Driving Around Phnom Penh

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The visit to Choeung Ek was the last item on our itinerary for the day trip in Phnom Penh. It was still midafternoon when we were done with our Choeung Ek visit; apparently even though it was a very intense day emotionally and intellectually, we didn’t really spend a long time at each of our destination. Since our driver was available to take us around for the rest of the afternoon, I asked him to drive us around downtown Phnom Penh when we got back to the city. We had not been to the river front area yet, so I thought it would be nice to at least drive past the area to see the part of Phnom Penh that’s usually considered as the popular destination for the foreign tourists.

As we reached the river front area, our driver took us to an area called the Diamond Island. It’s a newly developed area where you could see many new real estate developments in the city. There was a huge convention hall that had been built there. Not far from there, a huge casino called Nagaworld was opened several years back, and it’s billed as one of the largest casinos in Southeast Asia.

As we were about to leave the Diamond Island, our driver brought our attention to a bridge that we’re about to pass. This bridge was the scene where less than two months before our visit a stampede happened during the Water Festival celebration there, and 395 people died on that bridge. A tragedy that you wish didn’t have to hit a nation that had endured so much. But life moved on — we wouldn’t know that was the site of the tragedy if our driver had not told us.

The area near the river front (Sisowath Quay) was pretty much like what we expected. It was a very dense area, full of choices of services for tourists. There were shops, restaurants, and lodging options for pretty much any budget level. It reminded me somewhat to the Khao San Road area in Bangkok – the main destination for tourists to go especially as the ‘happening place’ to meet other foreign tourists.

We also drove past the Wat Phnom area. Wat Phnom was a temple on the only hill in Phnom Penh area. Legend has it that this was the place where Lady Penh established a temple on top of the hill (thus, the city was named Phnom Penh — Penh’s hill). Our driver asked if we would like to stop there to visit the temple. We were already pretty tired, so we passed on the offer and asked to go back to the hotel instead.

The photo below was taken from our car as we drove through the Diamond Island and about to pass the bridge where Water Festival stampede tragedy happened. As you can see, life went on and it all looked normal.

Water festival stampede bridge

Khmer Rouge Tribunal

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After finishing our tour of Choeung Ek and thanking our guide Mr. Chanteng for guiding us, we checked out a small museum on the Choeung Ek grounds that had more display to educate the visitors about the Khmer Rouge atrocities. In the museum, they had a display showing a sampling of tools that the Khmer Rouge used to kill people. There was also an exhibit showing the organization structure of the Khmer Rouge leadership, and some information about the Khmer Rouge tribunal that was still ongoing to put the ex Khmer Rouge leaders on trial for crime against humanity. It’s been more than 30 years since the end of the Khmer Rouge reign, but the tribunal process was still going on.

The tribunal process only put the leadership of Khmer Rouge on trial. The other ex-Khmer Rouge members were re-integrated into the Cambodian society as the organization was disbanded. I asked Mr. Chanteng how people dealt with this. He said most people didn’t really discuss much about it and moved on, so over time you wouldn’t be able to distinguish those who were part of Khmer Rouge in the past anymore. I also asked him if people thought these ex-Khmer Rouge cadres should also be punished for their role in the past atrocities. He said it’s not an easy decision to make, as many of the ex-Khmer Rouge cadres were young, uneducated people who were brainwashed by those in Khmer Rouge leadership, and many joined the Khmer Rouge out of need for survival (either they followed, or they would die themselves). So, the common position is to put the blame on the leaders, and let the others go.

The tribunal process had been going on for several years and had cost more than USD$70 million, and only recently (July 2010) it yielded one guilty verdict (on Duch, the head of Tuol Sleng Prison, who admitted his guilt and was sentenced for 35 years in prison — considered inadequate sentence by many Cambodians). There were five more Khmer Rouge leaders currently waiting for trials — they were already in their 80s in 2010. Some people questioned whether the tribunal was worth doing, given that the large of money spent ended up consumed by a corrupt administration. In the meantime, many of the victims, the Cambodian people, still lived in poverty. Many suggested that the money would be better spent if used to build infrastructure in the country. Again, this was another difficult question that the Cambodians had to wrestle with.

After we’re done checking out the exhibits at the museum, we spent a little bit of time resting outside the museum before we left Choeung Ek. As we sat there, we saw in the distance the tall memorial stupa and a Cambodian flag flying next to it. It felt quite peaceful at that moment — I think it’s a good symbol for what the Cambodians hoped for the future: a peaceful and prosperous Cambodian society that doesn’t forget its past to ensure that the dark history will not be repeated again.

I saw the photo below at the museum in Choeung Ek. It’s a photo taken of Duch during the initial trial that’s mentioned above. One interesting development that happened since then (early this month, February 2012) was that he appealed the conviction under the arguments that he’s only following orders from those above him, but in a surprising turn of events, the appeal was denied, and instead his sentence was changed to life in prison instead.

Duch trial