It’s not a place I’m going to forget anytime soon. I spent the first day here seeing the cultural sites, the Royal Palace, National Museum, Silver pagoda, Wat Phnom. All were worth a visit.
You don’t get in to see most of the palace, but I gather it’s the outside of the buildings that are most impressive. And the Silver Pagoda, so named because the interior floor is made entirely of solid silver tiles, is home to a very impressive collection of silver and gold Buddhas and other fine jewelry. There’s a large jade Buddha and a gold one encrusted with diamonds, the largest of which is said to weigh 25 carats. But you can’t take pictures of any of it. So you’ll just have to take my word.
The Silver Pagoda
The National Museum is home to an exquisite collection of stonework, pottery, and bronzes, many of them rescued from Angkor Wat during the Pol Pot era. It’s housed in beautiful, open-air structure with four courtyards and a lush interior garden with fountains that cool the air.
Some of the Khmer sculpture is magnificent, with perhaps the finest craftsmanship and delicate artistry I’ve ever seen. Just astounding stuff. But again, no photography allowed.
Wat Phrom is a public temple with lots of Phnom Penhers coming to pray for good luck and success. It reminded me a lot of the stupas in Nepal.
But it’s very hot and humid here, and by early afternoon I was fairly wilting. So I fled back to my hotel for an air-conditioned nap.
The next day I explored the legacy of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I started at the Tuol Sleng Museum, also known as S-21, which stands for Security Prison No. 21. It’s a former high school right in the middle of a quiet neighborhood in Phnom Penh, and it was converted into the largest detention center and torture chamber in the country between 1975 and 1978. More than 17,000 Cambodians passed through there, almost all of them tortured and then sent on for extermination at Choeung Ek, the notorious Killing Fields.
Tuol Sleng (S-21) Torture Room
It’s a devastating place. One building houses the rooms where the inmates were subjected to various tortures, usually strapped to a bed frame. Another building is where they were warehoused, and it is now filled with the pictures of the thousands of Cambodians whom the Khmer Rouge photographed before and after the acts of inhuman barbarity. Walking among the pictures of men, women and children staring blankly at the camera, all of them aware that they were certainly going to die horribly, was more disturbing than I can describe.
I sat through a one-hour documentary telling the story of a couple of Khmer Rouge cadres who fell in love and got married, a crime against the regime for which they were tortured and killed.
Words fail me. It’s just unfathomable.
Choeung Ek Pagoda
All but 43 of the 129 mass graves are just large, empty pits now. The 43 have been left untouched so far. But you can’t walk along the paths between them without stepping on bone fragments and tatters of clothing. There’s a tree in the quiet, park-like grounds that is labeled with a sign saying that it was used to smash babies against it. Another tree was rigged with loud speakers to drown out the moans and cries.
Most of the skulls in the pagoda bear the marks of the iron pipes that were used as bludgeons before the victim’s throats were cut to save bullets.
I just cannot comprehend what went on here.