Phmom Pen: Death, Darkness and Disarray

Ooh, what an ominous title.

Don't worry though, its not all doom and gloom. Backpacking can often be described as a pretty light hearted and joyful exercise in experiencing the world. You can come and go as you please, live your days at your leisure, flit from excercise to excursion as the mood strikes. Certain places however have sites you have to see. Some out of wonder, some out of curiosity but also some out of education and to an extent duty. Phnom Penh holds such a place.

When first strting my travels in Bangkok, i naturally enquired amongst the more seasoned travellers as to what my upcoming destinations would be like. Phnom Penh was the first stop described to me in anything less than effusive terms. I was told it was dirty and seedy. Further enquiry however uncovered a more apt term for it. A description from the tourist information advisor.

Phnom Penh is a sad city.

As the capital of Cambodia is the most developed location I have witnessed throughout the country and by some margin. It has high rise buildings. Bustling main highways and intersections. Branded shopping malls. Uptowns and downtowns. You can see the freshness to some of it and feel the strengthening beat of the urban pulse which is slowly building towards the fully fledged modern heartbeat developed by cities such as the Bangkoks and the Hanois it is ultimately destined to emulate.

Cambodia is a poor country though which has not had it easy. Phnom Penh has been front and centre for the struggle. It is growing to diversity through adversity. To even get close to understanding this, you need to visit the killing fields.

Getting there it self is like a trip between worlds. You catch a tuk-tuk (of course) and it drives you through smoggy sprawl of transport and commerce that are spread across the streets and the roads, neither exclusively set on one or the other. You are as likely to find a fruit seller strolling down the middle of the main road as you are to find a motorbike weaving through pedestrians in search of short cut.

Ultimately you get to the infamous killing fields. They are symbolic of attrocity. Moreover they are the site of attrocity. To think that one such place exists is heartbraking. To think that it is one of many throughout the country is unbearable.

I am not qualified or informed enough to give an adequate description of its history or context. Suffice to say that a bad man by the name of Pol Pot got some crazy ideas and some influence, he used this to convince a large proportion of undeducated peasants to join a cause they didn't truly understand and form an army called the Khmer Rouge. At this point in time Cambodia was still suffering from the battering it had had taken on behalf of the Vietnam war, meaning that when the action came, it was not ready or able to defend itself. The Khmer Rouge took the city, took control and just like any crazy tyrant, Pol Pot started wiping out his enemies.

The killing fields are an execution ground. An execuition ground of mass graves that span vast fields. Just as power breeds paranoia, especially the ill-gotten variety, more and more people became classed as enemies and now across the country fields like these exist. Appartly out of a population of 9 million people, 3 million were massacred. Please don't judge me on any faults in those details, I am just trying to recall it from memory. It seems strange to be part of a generation that grew up just after these events happened. Too late to have born witness to the news and yet too fresh to have the perspective to have studied it as history. I don't know if I speak for all my age but I know a lot of people who are aware that something bad happened there but dont know the story.

Now I think I will never forget it. I mean these are real, authentic mass graves you are walking amongst. They are still uncovering fragments of bone and clothing even to this day. I visited the morning after a heavy storm and had a hard time being able to atually compute that the cordoned off mud pits with bone shards sticking out of the dirt were not props. Pirates of the Caribbean, this aint.

You can only imagine that a day spent in such surrounds requires an evening to reflect but a night to forget. Some sights may never leave you but you cant fault a distraction from them. Duly socialising abounded, hair was let down and the night began. Then came time for the night to move on. The last bar was closing, it was time for a club.

Enthusiasm was rife, a location was set and a ebullient group of us set off in tuk-tuks, the rest following behind, the destination: Code Red. Great club, great drink offers. We had been dealt a winning hand.

One catch though, the ace in our pack turned out to be a joker.

Here is a piece of trivia for you. A lot of the tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh, don't actually come from Phnom Penh. They come from far and wide, they are drawn to the bright lights and the commerial buzz. The catch being, they don't know the city and they don't know where the hell they are going.

It took us some time to realise this. I would say roughly an hour. Give or take. The giving and taking referring to giving directions and taking lies. Giving advice and taking false nods of understanding. Giving grief and taking confused looks. Giving up and taking another option for a club that was nearby and seemed acceptable.

And it was. It was called Heart of Darkness but that was somewhat misleading. A literary title for a gaudy electro pop nighclub. It may seem like a strange name that teeters along the titghtrope of inappropriatess given the books connection to the Vietnam War. Then again there was a club in Saigon called Apocalypse Now so really, who is to say.

Either way it seemed like a good enough time, and wouldn't you know love was in the air. Amongst all the dancing, frolicing folks a local Cambodian lad, couldn't have been older than twenty, he found affection. Clearly someone who understood him, someone he could share his spirit, certainly someone who got him. So what if this partner in question was a western man, who was clearly past the age of retirement. You could seem the connection in their dancing. And grinding. Why, the old, roughly unshaven, creepy old white guy had such a close relationship with this young Cambodian chap, he even trusted him enough to count his money.

And the say romance is dead.

I sat down in the other end of the club, trying to reflect on everything that I had seen that day. The sorrow, the confusion, the vibrancy, the frivolity, the vice and the festivity. It was a rich synaptic cocktail to digest and I wasn't sure how it was going to go down.

The answer, naturally, was to dance.

In this less populated end of the establishment, a group of waitresses finished their shift, put on a traditional local song and started dancing in a circle around a bar stool. They tapped my friend and I on the shoulder and invited us to join in. It was something I had never done before, I didn't know the moves but they just seemed happy. It could have meant all kinds of things, it could have meant nothing but amonst all I had seen, sharing in these people having a good time meant everything. I knew nothing of what was going on but at that moment, it made all the sense in the world snd that counted for a lot.

Siem Reap/Phnom Penh: Backpacking Karma - A Tale of Two Monkeys

One fact that is inescapable in South East Asia is that despite all the rife madness and debauchery they are incredibly spiritual people. You see temples in abundance and shrines in every establishment laden with offerings of food, drink and incense.

The prevailing religion in this region is Budhism, definitely one of the more interesting and peaceful religions as far as I am concerned. Despite having actually studied this particular faith in school some many years back, I could not provide much in the way of detail when it comes to their particular practices. One key element that I am aware of however is that of Karma. This is (basically) the notion that in the cycle of life good actions will reap good consequences and the same conversely with bad actions.

As I have mentioned before I am not a spiritual person and I could not begin to say how this Karma thing actually works but the following story makes me think there may actually be something to it.

You see as I tore through the streets of Siem Reap in the back of a tuk-tuk, my Karma meter was definitely rising. So was my heart rate and the contents of my stomach.

It had seemed simple enough at the time. A fellow backpacker had just departed on a night bus for their next destination and unfortunately left their camera behind in the bar. It had since found its way in to my possesion due to being one of the last faces to be photographed on said camera. The solution to this quandry seemed simple. I would go to reception, inform them of the unfortunate circumstance, they would hold on to the camera until its owner got in touch, at which point they could forward it on to the next set address.

The thing is, Cambodia does not do simple solutions.

Upon explaining the situation and all the relevant details, the receptionist told me to stay there and a series of frantic phonecalls ensued. I kept trying to explain what needed to happen but they were having none of it. A few confusing minutes later, said receptionist pointed at me and I was ushered outside. I dutifully followed and noticed that the receptionist was hailing down a tuk-tuk. It was at this point I clocked on to the new plan. We were going after the bus.

I timidly climbed in to the vehicle and the receptionist jumped in after me. I am not sure precisely what she said to the driver but sometimes physical comunication is universal enough. One such gesture is the tapping of the watch and the firm point in a specific direction. That means floor it, preferably with even scanter regard for sense and safety than you would normally practice. It also means the following: Hold. On. Tight.

The bus had a significant headstart on us but thankfully it had stopped further on up the road to collect more passengers. Ultimately we caught up with it and I was able to stride on the bus, return the lost goods and play the role of the hero. The shaky legged hero with a pale face and even paler knuckles, but the hero none the less.

And the karmic reward for my actions? Some bastard stole my bloody flip flops.

I loved those flip flops.

After a lifelong aversion to wearing such footwear, I relented in 2009 during my time in Florida and finally purchased a pair. Unrivalled in comfort and durability, these flip flops had been with me ever since, on various holidays and adventures. They had never let me down but for some reason, this was to be the day the universe saw fit to part me from them.

I was staying at the Mad Monkey hostel in Siem Reap and one great feature of this hostel is a rooftop beach bar, covered in sand with hammocks and good times in abundance. One poor feature of the hostel was having to take your footwear off before entering the bar. It means putting your trust in your fellow patrons. Some patrons are bad people. Sure enough when it came time to leave the bar, my beloved flip flops were nowhere to be found. I drunkenly searched high and low. By that I mean I swore a lot, stumbled round in circles and gave up looking after almost falling over my own feet for a third time.

At this point I made what peace I could with my loss. I had other shoes and I was leaving for another city the next day. I guess it was goodbye. It wasn't all doom and gloom after all. There was still a night out to be had and I was determined it would be a good one. It certainly was. I said goodbye to Siem Reap and one of my longer term travelling buddies in a suitably fitting way and ended up having what was at that point one of the best nights of my trip. Flip flops be damned, the universe didn't hate me that much.

Right?

When I awoke the following night in Phnom Penh to the news that my room was flooding, I questioned it once more.

The journey had been fine and we were staying in another Mad Monkey hostel, the sister venture of the establishment from Siem Reap. It was another good fun hostel, I settled in, had a few beers, met some nice people and called it an early night just as the rain began.

Turns out this wasn't just rain, this was a tropical storm. A real one. No one had seen fit to inform our dorms bathroom plumbing that such a storm would be occuring so it decided to burst a pipe in protest. When I awoke, the water was ankle deep and rising. The only people who seemed more bemused than the occupants of the dorm were the staff members who had been called up to fix it. They stood around literally scratching their heads. After a few minutes of optimistic discussion, they decided that what was called for was some good old fashioned Cambodian improvisation. I couldn't tell you exactly what they did but it involved various lengths of wire and a hammer.

A flooding en-suite in a Cambodian hostel. Talk about first world problems in a third world country.

Amazingly whatever they did happened to work and my belongings along with my self were unscathed and unsoaked. I did my part to rouse the fellow inhabitants of my room and in the end all was well.

I was pissed off with Karma though. As far as I was concerned I had done good deeds and this was simply not karmic cricket.

Maybe the universe agreed. After an intense following day seeing sights that took my mind far from any of these concerns I returned to my hostel and lay down for a power nap. I woke later and was just heading out of the dorm to join my friends for dinner downstairs when I stopped. I looked down. On the floor, two bunks over were my flip flops.

Like, actually MY flip flops. Not similar flip flops. Mine. For starters they were the only ones like that I had ever seen. They also had the same scratches, the same wear marks, the same missing decorations that had fallen off after years of use. No mistaking, no questioning. It was them.

I was incredulous. I had traveled close to ten hours across the country and my flip flops had seen fit to follow me. The person who had taken them could have gone to any city next, in that city he could have stayed in any hostel, in that hostel he could have stayed in any dorm, in any bunk. There are so many ways I could have never seen them again, yet here they were. Clear as day.

When the perpetrator returned I politely inquired as to whether he had just come from Siem Reap, without meaning to sound weird of course, if those were in fact his flip flops. His resulting expression was sheepish to say the least. Thankfully he was gracious in response, explained that his flip flops had too been taken and he picked up the nearest pair out of necessity. I don't know if he was telling the truth or not but at this point, I didn't care. Against all odds, I had my flip flops back.

I could have reprimanded the guy, could have chastised him, could have called him out as a thief and general vagabond. But I chose not to. Instead, when I saw the guy in the bar later, I bought him a beer and said that even though i'm not sure how it happened, I was pleased that it had.

It seemed the right thing to do. Just maybe, if I was the bigger man and did the nice thing, Karma might find a way to reward me.

Or maybe it will give me dengue fever. I don't know. I guess time will tell...