Tag Archives: phnom penh

Irreverent Tourists

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When visiting any new place or meeting people, it’s important to be aware of the background context and the local etiquette. As a guest, you want to show the proper respect for your host and the place you’re visiting, especially those that are historical in nature. Sometimes there are tourists who are ignorant or very arrogant when they’re interacting with the locals or visiting important places, that they leave bad impression and become poor representation of the country they came from.

When we visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, we observed some of these irreverent tourists. As we were getting ready to tour the grounds, we saw a big tourist group arriving. The group was led by a tour guide who provided information to his group in a language that Kristi and I recognized.. Indonesian. Kristi and I decided to stand near the group huddle to listen to the guide talking while we’re taking photos of the surrounding areas.

From the information given by the tour guide and the comments that some of the tourists made, it was pretty clear to us that many in this tour group did not know about Tuol Sleng and its significance. One of the tourists even loudly made a sarcastic, ignorant comment about how smart the Cambodians were for charging money and making profits from such a rundown ‘tourist attraction.’ Several others were talking and laughing loudly, oblivious to the posted sign with an image asking the visitors to be reverent given the context of what had happened at the place we’re visiting. Some others would go into the rooms that were the interrogation and torture rooms, talked loudly, and had photos taken with smiles as if they were standing in front of something scenic.

Kristi and I didn’t say anything and we slowly moved away from this group as we didn’t want to be associated with them. It’s sad, but that day I felt embarrassed to be an Indonesian after seeing the behavior of these tourists.

The photo below was taken at the grounds of Tuol Sleng not far from where the tourist group was gathering and being very obnoxious. The sign was in Khmer, but anyone could see from the picture that they asked visitors to be reverent to honor those who perished at this place.

No smile sign

Tuol Sleng

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The Tuol Sleng / S-21 Prison is an old high school building turned prison right in the heart of Phnom Penh, Cambodia that now serves as a museum to remember the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime. In this prison, more than 20,000 people were imprisoned, and only seven prisoners survived the four years of horror at the prison.

We went to Tuol Sleng after finishing our visit to the National Museum of Cambodia. When we arrived at there, my first impression of the place was that it’s somewhat different than what I had thought in my mind. While I knew that Tuol Sleng was located in Phnom Penh, I didn’t realize that the complex was right in the middle of a dense residential area. You could see people’s homes right across the street and surrounding the complex.

The building itself looked old and run down, but eerily it looked somewhat familiar to me. The building was a high school before the Khmer Rouge regime converted it into an interrogation center and prison. As such, the three-story high school buildings with their classrooms looked very similar to my junior high and high school buildings back in Indonesia. I think my school buildings were built around the same era as when the Tuol Sleng buildings were built, so it makes sense that they look kind of similar.

One part that gave a visitor a clue that this was not just an ordinary building was the fence around the complex. The fence was covered with corrugated metal sheets and barbed wires — looking more like prison than high school.

I took the photo below from the third floor of one of Tuol Sleng’s buildings. You can see the courtyard, and the surrounding dense residential neighborhood. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in a neighborhood close to a place where thousands of people were tortured and killed.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Culture Almost Lost

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Sometimes you take for granted the value of something until you realize that it was once almost lost, and that you’re fortunate to still be able to experience/see it. Such was my feeling after visiting the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. The museum houses collection of artifacts from the rich Khmer history. Many of these were almost lost during the Khmer Rouge reign, as the regime attempted to erase the culture and history and ‘start over’ in the agrarian society that they envisioned.

I made some observations as I walked around viewing the exhibits. There were some groups of school students in uniform listening to young tour guides explaining the exhibit to them in Khmer. I think that was nice to see the young generation of the locals also coming to the museum to learn about their own culture and history, considering that most of them were not even born at time of the Khmer Rouge reign (more than 80% of Cambodian population was under the age of 30 in 2010).

There was also an exhibit explaining about an archaeological site in rural Cambodia where they found many artifacts from the golden age of the Khmer Empire. It’s interesting to read the story how the site was initially discovered. A farmer found some of the metal artifacts, and initially collected and sold them in the market as scrap metal. It turned out that the site was one of the richest archaeological sites ever excavated in Southeast Asia. One of the purposes of this exhibit was to educate people about the importance of these archaeological finds in learning about the history, and how it’s a loss for the society when the treasures fell into the hands of looters and art dealers. I think that would be a difficult concept to get people to adopt, especially when many people lived in poor condition and the short-term gain from selling those artifacts was more appealing than the long-term gain for the society from turning over the findings to the archaeological research groups.

As I walked through another section of the museum, I overheard a tour guide explaining some artifacts to a couple of foreign visitors in French. What’s interesting to observe was that the lady who guided the tour seemed to be a Cambodian in her 50s. That means she’s old enough to have gone through the Khmer Rouge era. Given her knowledge about the art history, I wonder if she was an educated person who fled the country before the Khmer Rouge era or if she was a survivor who lived through the Khmer Rouge time and managed to avoid being identified as educated and killed by the regime. Either way, I thought that was great to have someone from the previous generation who can help link the culture to where it was before the dark times.

So there it was, a brief visit to a museum that holds a nation’s treasure. It may not be as well known as what you find in other history museums in the world, but when you consider what this nation had gone through, this is definitely a collection that should be appreciated. I hope as the country becomes more developed and more of the Cambodian people become more educated and come out of poverty, these national treasures become more known and they can appreciate the richness of their own culture and history.

The photo below was taken at the front of the museum, as we wrapped up our visit to this museum. Notice the group of young people walking out in white shirts. Those were the students that I mentioned above.

Students at the National Museum

National Museum of Cambodia

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The National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh housed a large collection of art work from the Khmer culture, dated back to the periods even before the Khmer Empire. This museum was opened in 1917, but during the Khmer Rouge era (1975-1979) it was abandoned. The museum building was left in disrepair, the roof rotten, and it became home to a vast colony of bats. In 1979, it was repaired and reopened to the public. As we visited the museum more than 30 years later, the museum was already back as an important place to learn about the Khmer art history.

As we entered the museum, the ambience inside the museum reminded me to the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta that I visited years ago. The museum building itself was an old building (93 years old, as compared to the Indonesian one that’s almost 150 years old), and it was also started by the colonial government that occupied the land when the museum was founded (the National Museum in Cambodia was founded by the French, while the National Museum in Indonesia was founded by the Dutch). The collections of art work were also similar that they represent the history going back to hundreds of years ago.

I think to really get an appreciation of the importance of the artifacts we’re seeing at this museum, we would need a guide and / or good understanding of the historical context of the culture and time where the artifacts came from. We were on our own and we only had short time to visit this museum, so unfortunately our tour at the museum was very cursory.

The photo below was taken at the courtyard inside the Museum. It’s nicely set up and felt very nice and peaceful to be there.

National Museum of Cambodia

Encounter with Poverty

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When you’re visiting a developing country, especially one that had just emerged from years of civil war like Cambodia, you’re likely have to deal with the reality that many local people are struggling economically. I had read in the guidebooks and on people’s travel journals about encountering poverty in Cambodia, with many children begging for change from tourists. But I wasn’t really prepared to experience this personally.

After finishing our tour of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, we continued the day with a visit to the National Museum of Cambodia that is located pretty close from the Royal Palace. When we arrived there, I went to the ticket office to purchase tickets. As I stood in front of the ticket counter to wait for our tickets, I felt a gentle tug on my shirt. I looked down, and under the ticket counter there was a little boy, looking at me with a sad face, asking for some change. This caught me off guard. I ended up looking back at the little boy, shook my head to say no, and walked away. He stayed there and waited for the next visitor to come.

Many guidebooks suggested to tourists not to give money to the child beggars, as in most cases, the children actually wouldn’t benefit from the money as they were taken advantage of either by their own parents or by other adults. They suggested donating through other means, like by supporting Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that work with the street children to help them out of poverty. Logically that made sense, but emotionally it’s still hard to just walk away and not do anything for the little boy.

I took the photo below few minutes later from a little distance. The little boy stayed there at the ticket counter, and asked for money from the next visitor coming to purchase ticket. The person at the ticket counter didn’t do anything and let the little boy stay there.

Child beggar